Readers' letters: Keir Starmer's a populist politician with a flawed vision

​Labour’s record in government in Wales is dreadful when compared to Scotland, and when Scottish MPs are outnumbered ten to one at Westminster it is fantasy to suggest that the Scottish branch office can influence events. Last week the Labour-supporting tax expert Richard Murphy wrote that the reason he is so disillusioned with Labour is that “far from offering an alternative to Tory failure they appear to me to be endorsing almost everything that the Tories have done whilst offering more of the same in the future”.

​Only the SNP is offering vision and hope through re-joining the EU and developing Scotland’s vast energy resources to match the much higher standing of living enjoyed by our independent neighbours.

​Fraser Grant, Edinburgh

Turn off life support

Your editorial (15 August) quotes Keir Starmer and his purportedly exciting new agenda as saying: “Malaysia and Munich currently own more of our offshore wind assets than we do – how do you explain that?”

Seriously? Where has Starmer been for the last 30 years? Privatisation began with Thatcher and was enthusiastically emulated by all successive governments, including the one he aspires to revive, ‘New’ Labour. They also mortgaged our hospitals and schools and their future to private finance.

As for Scotland being the “beating heart of a new Britain” due to yet more “tough” decisions: following a quadruple bypass and pacemaker, ‘Britain’ is a busted flush and Scotland needs to turn off the life support, utilising our resources for the Scottish people and not the aforementioned current owners of our assets.

Marjorie Ellis Thompson, Edinburgh

Payback time

The number of nurses and midwives leaving Scotland to work overseas has soared in recent years, with Australia by far the most popular destination (Scotsman, 14 August).

Earlier this year the General Medical Council reported that applications from doctors for the paperwork to register with overseas regulators has soared. Dentists are refusing new NHS patients.

Well, blame the Scottish Government which introduced free university education in 2007 without safeguards. The university fees of £9,250 a year are paid by Scottish taxpayers. The Scottish Government should introduce a legally-binding contract that free university education is conditional on those receiving it working in Scotland for five years.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Unfair tax

I agree with Ian Steele (Letters, 15 August). The Scottish Government consultation about a proposed, eye watering increase in council tax for bands E-H is nothing more than the usual tick-box exercise.

Many old houses are in the higher tax bands but those properties are the ones which cost more in maintenance and heating and are often much-loved family homes which people do not want to leave in their old age. Why should they be driven out of their homes by excessive council tax charges when they are already struggling to exist on their pensions?

In rural areas we don’t even have the services which most people take for granted. Our roads are not maintained and are the last to get cleared and gritted; bin collection is often a hit or miss affair and can involve a long haul to the pick-up point. Every part of rural Scotland is currently being decimated by wind farms, commercial solar parks, giant pylons and other industrial paraphernalia resulting in many properties suffering a decrease in value or at worst, rendering them completely unsellable. Any property affected by these obscene developments should be having its council tax band reduced, not increased.

Aileen Jackson, Uplawmoor, East Renfrewshire

Jargon alert

It seemed to me at the time that the Scottish Government's knee-jerk proposal to abolish the SQA in response to the “algorithm crisis” would end in tears. Where would the fresh blood and ideas come from for a shiny new body when the old enjoyed a virtual Scottish monopoly of examination expertise? Surely a massive poaching of talent from English exam boards would not be acceptable? Anything less, however, would represent a mere re-branding of what had gone before. Curricular structures might change but the overly prescriptive, jargon-ridden and bureaucratic culture would remain.

This is alarmingly evidenced in your latest report on the delay in introducing the new body (15 August), where one leading educational panjandrum addresses another on the changes with: “The delivery board are keen that, moving forward, there is a realistic delivery time-line and plan that is based on a bottom-up analysis of the outputs from the other strands of reform work to generate the target operating model for the new qualifications body.” Drop the dead donkey indeed!

John Wood, St Boswells, Scottish Borders

Coastal defence

How the Axis powers with their huge navies (Russia, China, North Korea and Iran) must laugh at the apparent inability of the British and French navies, and politicians, to control and defend a short stretch of coastline in the world's busiest shipping lane, from venal people traffickers overloading rubber dinghies with asylum seekers.

Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, of Dunkirk, Sicily, North Africa and D-Day fame, must be turning in his grave.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

Loose change

So the “go it alone we don’t need the Tories” census cost the Scottish taxpayer £140 million (Scotsman, 15 August). What’s all the fuss for? The country’s awash with money, so much so that civil servants can afford to buy nail polish and paper aeroplanes and when they’re skint they’ll just get more money, from you and me.

The stroke of a pen raises our taxes and all for a good cause, yoga lessons for example. Let’s not be too hard on them, they’re really good at what they do; squandering our money, that is.

Ian Balloch, Grangemouth, Falkirk

A ‘duty to die’

Christine Jardine is right to say that those who feel compelled to travel to Switzerland have been failed (Scotsman, 14 August), but the compassionate response is not to facilitate their premature death closer to home. The failure, rather, has been to ensure a higher standard of palliative care. Better care at the end of life for our most vulnerable fellow Scots is surely a kinder response than to prescribe a cocktail of lethal “medicines”.

Ms Jardine does not consider the wider impact of such a policy. One of the most troubling consequences is the invisible pressure that would be placed upon extremely sick and vulnerable individuals who may fear they have a “duty to die” lest they be a financial or emotional burden to relatives or the state. It’s also vital to consider what has happened in the small number of jurisdictions that have gone down this road. The reality is that once a practice is legalised, it soon becomes normalised, and it would be a matter of time before restrictions would be progressively removed as the criteria expand.

Michael Veitch, Parliamentary Officer, CARE for Scotland, Glasgow

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