Opposition won’t benefit from this

I take grave exception to the remarks reported to be included in Ruth Davidson’s speech in Birmingham (your report, 8 October). As a taxpayer and contributor to national insurance for 40 years I feel that I have made a substantial payment in excess of the benefits I have so far claimed from the state.

Now that I am a pensioner, I continue to contribute income tax on my small pension income, but I also contribute by volunteering to work with a charity (as I have done for the past 17 years).

It is therefore galling to read of these insulting suggestions that I and the thousands of others like me are an unwarranted burden on the welfare state.

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If this is the kind of attitude that we can expect from Davidson’s party the public should be demanding from her a statement about what Tory policies we can expect to see in force should the voters reject independence in the referendum.

She and Johann Lamont repeatedly challenge Alex Salmond to tell us what policies his party will employ should Scotland become independent, yet none of the unionist parties make any effort to spell out what horrors they have in store for us should they gain power in a post-referendum Scotland (independent or otherwise).

They continually make frightening predictions about the effect of SNP policies, based on the negative, contradictory and unsubstantiated evidence produced by Westminster mandarins.

BEN CHEETHAM

Wellside Road

Balloch, Dunbartonshire

I despair of listening to those demanding cutting back on free prescriptions and bus passes on the grounds that those who can “afford” to pay for them should, then in the next breath moan about the “tax burden” to “wealth creators”, making it obvious that they believe in that evil creed of social Darwinism – let the weak be trampled under the mighty.

It was one of Tommy Sheridan’s better points when he went to Fettes and told the shocked sons and daughters of the well-to-do that if he was in charge they’d be entitled to free school meals. The Beveridge Report was a child of a war that made all of Britain realise, regardless of social strata, that there truly are some areas in life in which we are all in it together, no matter how much others would have it otherwise. None of us knows whether the random finger of fate tomorrow may turn our world upside down.

The more we try to exclude the better off – already opting out of NHS hospitals and state schools they’ve given up on after decades of wilful political mismanagement – from those social benefits they are currently entitled to, the less they’re going to feel any reason why they should continue to pay their due share and seek ever more ways to avoid doing so – and you could hardly blame them.

Age and especially illness are no respecters of wealth and status, and it’s the mark of how civilised a people we are that we remember this.

Mark Boyle

Linn Park Gardens

Johnstone

Bob Taylor (Letters, 8 October) makes an invaluable point in his letter about the hidden benefits of 
the concessionary travel scheme. What he is arguing for is more “joined-up thinking”, an approach to decision making which this country seems to be entirely incapable of implementing.

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I suspect that what lies at the heart of the unwillingness to make the restructuring necessary to achieve this way of thinking is sectional self-interest and the power of the lobbyists, and the failure to make the required investment.

This latter failure is a consequence of the total lack of appreciation of the differences between economy (counter-productive penny-pinching), efficiency (penny-pinching with a fancy name) and effectiveness (the identification and realisation of meaningful outputs).

John Milne

Ardgowan Drive

Uddingston

Bob Taylor is being over-
optimistic about the benefits of free bus passes for the over-60s. Far from keeping many bus services going, the bus operators receive less than half the fare.

In March, the money allocated to pay bus operators for carrying bus pass holders ran out and bus operators had to carry those with bus passes for nothing.

Many operators find that the scheme costs them money and have raised fares for other passengers as a result, making bus travel more expensive and less attractive.

As a bus pass holder, I would be happy to pay half fare for off-peak travel as this would be of genuine benefit to bus operators and would be without the administration cost that is inevitable with any form of subsidy.

DAVID WRAGG

Stoneyflatts

South Queensferry

May I express my thanks to Bob Taylor for so lucidly and succinctly articulating the case for my bus pass.

I was under the (it would appear) erroneous impression that its place in our society was unassailable – after all we, for the most part, will all qualify for it, a fact that is readily appreciated by the average pensioner and the intelligent politician!

George Cooper

Westgate

Leslie, Fife