As recently as November 2019, the then Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, promised that a future Labour Government would create a £58 billion scheme designed to end a “historic injustice”. The contrast with the current UK Labour Government could not be greater. December 17, 2024 will go down as a day of shame for the party that once prided itself on defending the interests of the working class of this country.
John Smith, Dunblane.
We need reform of governance
IT is ironic that the UK Government website is currently promoting the Seven Principles of Public Life, the Nolan Principles. These include Honesty, at a time when government ministers seem to be being caught out being dishonest every other day.
People are shocked that the Labour Government has reneged on its promise to compensate the Waspi women, women who were left to struggle through five or six years at the end of their working life. Some of those women will have been impoverished in the years between 60 and 66.
Another of the Nolan principles is Accountability. This month, an Audit Scotland report commented: “The Scottish Government needs a delivery plan that clearly explains to the public how it will reform the NHS and address the pressures on services. Despite increasing funding and staffing, the NHS in Scotland is still seeing fewer patients than before the Covid-19 pandemic”. Nine years after the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital opened, a public inquiry has taken evidence about what went wrong in its construction, possibly causing children’s deaths. Will the SNP Scottish Government accept responsibility for the project and learn lessons?
We need reform of governance and public services. Reform UK is the only party which is committed to tackling the stagnation of public services.
Helen McDade, Perthshire chair, Reform UK, Pitlochry.
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Probity ought to be ingrained
WE learn that Justice Secretary Angela Constance and a family member went to the recent cup final in a government limo, again all at our expense (“Justice Secretary took son to cup final ‘on official business to discuss use of pyrotechnics’”, The Herald, December 19). Does it really need to be said that family members and friends should pay as the rest of us mere mortals do. Was there no gut feeling that this is wrong?
Probity should be ingrained at this level of public office. It should be automatic. It is clearly not taught or practised by the SNP. They should not need new rules to guide them.
Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.
• TODAY, the lady of the house attended a funeral with some neighbours using a share-a-car scheme. One drove, the others bundled into the vehicle.
Luckily, it was not a Scottish Government ministerial car, or they would all be on the front page.
Have we all gone mad? Minister’s cars are for ministers, and car sharing should be the norm.
William Douglas, Balfron.
See Norway and weep
KEIR Starmer was in Norway this week to discuss energy deals that he claims will boost economic growth and reduce energy prices (“UK and Norway ‘best-placed’ for carbon capture, says Starmer”, The Herald, December 17). Wrong on both counts. Growth is declining and UK electricity prices, among the highest in the world, are rising again in January.
Ever wonder why Norway, a nation of five million people, is among the richest countries on Earth? It’s simple. Norway retained ownership of its vast energy resources and revenues and created the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund valued at $1.8 trillion, $200,000 per Norwegian.
Read this and weep, Scotland. Norway established the fund in 1996 as a “rainy day” fund. Today it owns 1.5% of all globally listed stocks and is four times the size of Norway’s GDP.
For years the UK (Scotland) produced more oil and gas than Norway, but didn’t create a wealth fund.
In the 1980s the UK sold its energy assets to private corporations and governments which is where the profits flowed to.
This mass privatisation meant the UK lost $400 billion. The UK could have built a sovereign wealth fund of £850bn had the UK followed the Norwegian model. That’s £13,000 per person.
What did the UK do with the £67bn it got from privatisation? It cut taxes. The top income tax rate was slashed from 60% to 40% and the corporate from 52% to 33%. It also cut public investment from 4% in the 1970s to 1% in the 1990s.
Norway is now investing in renewables and owns stakes in several UK projects. It also invests in education, employment and training because it knows its people are its most valuable asset.
The lesson is to retain state ownership of public assets for the public good. But it doesn’t resonate with the UK establishment which has done very nicely out of the wholesale privatisation of the UK economy and doesn’t particularly care for the great unwashed public.
Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.
Pay MPs on a sliding scale
I HAVE an inherent dislike of the concept of state funding (ie, by all taxpayers) of political parties as revived by Doug Maughan (Letters, December 19) as I believe they should rely on public support and thus be self-funding.
I cannot see the justification for any more of our taxes being lavished on political parties rather than spent on the provision of essential services. Some measure of self-funding could be achieved in any party by a levy on its membership or better still on its MPs, bearing in mind each backbench MP enjoys a salary of around £91,000 (plus substantial expenses and allowances), whereas the average salary in London is around £47,000.
While on the topic of MPs’ salaries, why are they all on the same rather than graded, as they would be in other occupations? Accepting they all appear to need expenses and allowances, why not pay each backbencher in accordance with their own years of service as an MP? Thus, for example, first-year entrants would start at the London average of £47,000, rising with experience year by year over the five-year parliamentary term to £91,000.
Voluntary donations are the customary source of funding political parties, and I wonder if Mr Maughan’s objection to large donations from wealthy individuals or unions would be met some way if it was a statutory requirement that details had to be declared in a designated easily-available publication or media which would also publish alongside that detail any critical comment from opponents? The intention of all this would be so that any of the electorate who cared sufficiently would be well aware so as to take that into consideration when deciding for whom to vote.
Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.
Tragedy that really hit home
IN the run-up to Christmas I am sure that many despaired when they learned of the cruelty dispensed to 10-year-old Sara Sharif (“Government called on to change family contact laws after Sara Sharif’s murder”, The Herald, December 20). People have been disturbed about the life experienced by Sara, who would be looking to the adult relatives for love, attention, protection and encouragement and finding it difficult to understand the treatment to which she was subjected. I found most moving the note referred to which she had written for her father along the lines of saying that she was sorry and that she would try to do better.
Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, once observed: “We owe our children, the most valuable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.” How far short of that Mandela aspiration did Sara’s home environment and society’s care network fall ?
The short life and death of Sara Sharif will remain for long in the memory of many.
Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.
An affront to democracy
THE Transmissions Pathway to 2030 (TP) aims to “unlock ScotWind’s full potential” to provide power to the UK while helping to achieve net zero and mitigate the effects of climate change. This will require at least 1,800 kilometres of cables, a substantial proportion of which will be carried overhead on 60-metre-high high lattice-design pylons at an estimated cost of at least £20 billion. It will also need numerous substations and battery energy storage systems.
According to the transmission owners, the National Grid and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, their supposedly democratic “consultation” process has shown that “the public understand and support the benefits this massive investment could bring”. This is nothing more than pure spin because countless voices of opposition are being raised throughout the land. Like the wind industry they are also employing the tactic of offering a Community Development Fund amounting to a paltry £100 million in order to mollify concerns. We have been repeatedly told that the renewables sector would provide cheaper electricity but this fallacy is now plain for all to see and in addition we will duly see our pockets picked again when the TP costs appear on our bills.
The Labour Government has declared “war on nimbyism”. This is a blatant affront to democracy. However it is now actively pursuing the development and eventual large-scale deployment of zero-emissions small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). A single SMR occupying just a few acres will continuously generate 470 megawatts. This is enough to power around 470,000 homes which is the equivalent capacity of 150 onshore wind turbines. If our political masters had resisted the pressures of the Greens and not procrastinated for so long on this option then this reckless expenditure and disruption could have been avoided and perhaps the climate change gravy train would not be so lucrative.
Neil J Bryce, Kelso.
Is the consultation process over new pylons really fair? (Image: PA)
Jesus in Buchanan Street
YOUR Letters Pages are always stimulating and food for thought. Particularly piquant was the question posed by John Jamieson (Letters, December 19) who wondered what would happen to Jesus if he appeared next week.
A young, charismatic, anti-establishment Jewish preacher from a working-class background who claimed that his father was God, as was he and so was their coequal deity, a Holy Ghost; what could possibly go wrong if he tried that in Buchanan Street?
AJ Clarence, Prestwick.