'Thatcher’s legacy has been trashed by this Tory government' - Readers' Letters

Margaret Thatcher ruled with integrity, transparency and accountability

Ask any of the present Tory government who their greatest political influence was and most, I would guess, would say Margaret Thatcher. I disagreed fundamentally with most of her policies, and still do, but it is only with the events of recent times that I can look back and view certain aspects of her time in office in a different light.

She ruled the Tory Party with an iron rod but always with integrity, transparency and accountability. Any minister deemed to have crossed any of those lines, no matter how trivially, was required, not expected, to resign. Just ask Francis Pym, Lord Carrington, Cecil Parkinson or Michael Heseltine, to name but a few. And her mantra was always ‘value for money.'

Today, however, we have a Tory administration that spent £41 billion on a useless Track and Trace system, that awarded multi-million pound PPE contracts to its friends and donors via a VIP fast track route, £2.1 billion of this cash awarded having mysteriously ‘disappeared,’ with much of the PPE equipment unfit for purpose, a Prime Minister who pays for nothing whether it be holiday homes or ludicrously expensive wallpaper, a Chancellor with responsibility for taxing the mega-wealthy and multinational companies who just happens to be a member of a mega-wealthy family who own a multinational company, while cutting vital payments to the most needy in society, MPs who lobby for large companies and trouser hundreds of thousands of pounds for their efforts and see no problem with this, that ignores independent inquiries and court rulings that don’t happen show its ministers in a positive light and threatens to change the laws because of it.

This is just the tip of the sleaze iceberg and, during the current climate conference, it’s one iceberg that is not receding.

So is this government carrying on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy of integrity, transparency, accountability and value for money? You decide.

D Mitchell, Edinburgh

I’m on board with the ‘vaccination bus’

Whilst I am in the same over-70 category as some recent correspondents and have also not received my booster letter I would like to mention a little known fact.

My wife and I happened to be at Fort Kinnaird on Wednesday afternoon and we noticed a big double decker "vaccination bus".

On enquiring we were both able to get our boosters with absolutely no queue or fuss! Should this facility not have been advertised as it would have saved many over-70s travelling miles?

Again, shockingly poor administration.

Scott Miller, Edinburgh

A seat at the table

It is only narrow-minded parochial unionists who resent Scotland’s presence at COP26. Despite Boris Johnson’s wish that Nicola Sturgeon should not be heard, the leader of our nation managed to have discussions with world leaders including António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, President Joe Biden and Angela Merkel.

If Scotland was to become independent tomorrow we would be one of the top 20 or so wealthiest countries on the planet. Based on GDP per capita small countries like Norway, Denmark, Finland and Ireland all have a higher standard of living and better state pensions than the UK.

Small is beautiful and act locally, think globally are the guiding principles of the environmental movement and Scotland is setting a good example as we have ambitious targets. We have cut our greenhouse gas emissions by more than half since 1990, and since 2008 we have decarbonised faster than any country in the G20.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh

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