Readers' letters: Indy cause means SNP are bound to fail

" The SNP are not interested as they would lose their grievance if they showed that devolution does work”
The report has advised the Scottish Government to ‘declutter' secondary school examsThe report has advised the Scottish Government to ‘declutter' secondary school exams
The report has advised the Scottish Government to ‘declutter' secondary school exams

Indy cause means SNP bound to fail

Neil Findlay asked if our MSPs are up to the chall-enges that face them (News, September 6).

He went on to cite where much work is needed – economy, drug deaths, education, NHS, mental health, transport, housing and much more.

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I wish the answer to the question could be yes, but unfortunately as long as we have a nationalist government only interested in one topic and no SNP MSPs willing to insist on the issues that their constituents face being dealt with, we will continue to see a decline, as we have done for the last 14 years.

The SNP obsession with looking to Westminster to compare themselves is as irrelevant and useless as comparing ourselves with any other country. We have what we have in the way of funds, we have the means to make changes to how issues are dealt with as the majority of these areas are devolved. All that is missing is the will to make our lives better. Of course the SNP are not interested in doing that as they would lose their grievance if they showed that devolution does work.

Jane Lax, Aberlour.

Boris’ cunning plan based on inequality

James Watson (letters, September 7) suggests Boris ‘grasps the nettle’ to solve social care. Given his trail of disasters this is risible.

There are two problems with Boris’ cunning plan. Raising NIC to pay for social care is highly regressive. Those on low wages will bear the brunt while those pulling down over £50k won’t. It’s a tax on people in paid work and will bite savagely at the same time benefits are cut and food and energy prices are rising.

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Second, it’s unnecessary because the government doesn’t need to raise taxes to pay for public services. The government taxes to remove money from the economy to prevent overheating and inflation. Taxes don’t fund government spending. Money creation does and unlike households, governments cannot run out of money. Boris could instruct the Bank of England to create the money at a keystroke, just like it created £300 billion to deal with Covid, which included billions wasted on a failed test and trace system and useless PPE sourced from crony companies.

However, when it comes to funding public services, the Tories balk because they care only about protecting the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. What they should do is tax wealth at the same rate as income. A capital gains and investment income tax increase would be a step in the right direction and help alleviate our obscene levels of inequality.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.

Leaving UK risks Brexit times ten

Professor Mark Blyth - who lives in the safety of the US - is one of Ms Sturgeon’s economic advisers.

He has publicly criticised the SNP’s economic plans for a separate Scotland as being not plans at all. There is, he says, ‘a complete lack of specificity’, and it would take decades to restabilise the Scottish economy after any vote for secession. Welcome to our world, Prof Blyth! It is a consistent criticism that the SNP has no economic or financial prospectus for a separate Scotland.

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The SNP's main objective is to be like a Scandinavian country. Norway used to be the example of choice, but it has been replaced by Denmark. ‘Why wouldn’t we be a successful small country like Denmark?’ blares SNP propaganda. Prof Blyth ridicules this: ‘No, you wouldn’t be Denmark. Denmark took 600 years to become Denmark’. This is the best answer I have seen to that SNP fake news question. His diagnosis is that leaving the UK risks being ‘Brexit times ten’.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

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