Readers' letters: Why no windfall tax on record profits?

With energy giant, Shell, revealing record profits of more than £7 billion in the first three months of the year, along with profits of £5 billion from rival BP over the same period, this amounts to a staggering profit of £1500 a second.

Household bills are soaring on the back of these profits, renewing calls for a windfall tax.

While the UK Government is claiming that this will impact on investment by these companies, the irony is that BP boss Bernard Looney has said that such a tax would not impact on its proposals.

Other countries also do not seem averse to imposing such a tax. Italy has imposed a windfall tax, to cushion the impact of energy price rises, with the levy on energy industry profits rising to 25 per cent from 10 per cent.

Spain has also agreed to remove taxes from home energy bills, which would instead be paid by enforcing a windfall tax on companies profiting from the surge in energy prices.

It is highly immoral that oil companies are benefiting from excess profits, while households struggle, and yet the UK Government is unwilling to act to impose a one-off windfall tax to cushion the blow.

Alex Orr, Edinburgh.

Hell of a week over US court flag ruling

Following the US supreme court victory by a Christian group who successfully argued religious freedom as grounds to fly a Christian flag over Boston City Hall, a Salem-based Satanic temple is now, quite rightly, asking for the same right to mark Satanic Appreciation Week, from 23-29 July.

Boston’s Property Management Department had originally argued that flying a religious flag could violate rules against the government establishing an official religion, but now all hell is breaking loose.

Could there be a more delicious demonstration of the need for Secularism and the separation of church and state?

Neil Barber, Edinburgh Secular Society.

How not to run a country, Scots style

In the future I am certain the SNP’s ferry fiasco will be taught to students in developing countries as the perfect example of how not to run a country.

With our taxes to pay for the finest brains and economic and engineering expertise advice money can buy, the SNP managed to screw the whole thing up and the documents relating to whom made the decisions have conveniently ‘’disappeared.’’

There have been surely few better examples of mind blowing incompetence from a party in power in the civilised world. Yet an equally screwed-up and divided opposition and electoral system retains them in power no matter what it would seem.

A banana republic would do be too embarrassed to govern in this way.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.

It's time greyhound racing was stopped

MSPs have been urged to lead the way in the UK by implementing a full ban on greyhound racing in Scotland.

The Scottish SPCA has revealed that 197 dog injuries and 15 deaths were reported between 2017 and 2020 at Shawfield Stadium in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, which is Scotland’s only regulated racetrack.

Greyhound racing is cruel. It’s about time it was banned and I hope it comes to pass very soon.

Mrs June Fleming, Musselburgh.

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