Readers' Letters: Are former first ministers not busy or well-paid enough?

Former First Ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf both have companies to channel their extra-curricular payments (Picture: Andrew Milligan/Pool/Getty Images)

I see that following Nicola Sturgeon’s example, Humza Yousaf has set up a limited company to channel his non-public sector income.

The SNP has, of course, increased Scottish income tax to levels higher than elsewhere in the UK, especially targeting middle and higher income earners.

Sturgeon and Yousaf are each paid over £72,000 pa by the taxpayer for a full-time job as an MSP, yet seemingly feel they have plenty of spare time and need to enhance their already substantial income so much that they must establish companies to process additional wealth. Tax rates on income derived through a company are set by Westminster and are considerably lower than standard income tax paid by most of us.

Such behaviour isn't unique to the SNP, yet the SNP establishment has spent years virtue-signalling their supposedly oh-so-high moral standards, comparing themselves to Tory and Labour MPs. It seems to me that Yousaf intends to join Sturgeon in retaining an MSP role yet will focus on non-parliamentary work to accrue additional income while avoiding Scotland's inflated tax rates. Hardly dedicated public servants!

Even demonstrating double standards, perhaps?

Martin Redfern, Melrose, Roxburghshire

Thanks John

We must be grateful to John Swinney for taking time out from his paid job to recommend who to vote for in the US presidential elections.

Will he also come out for one of the frontrunners in this month’s presidential election in Romania?

Michael Upton, Edinburgh

Optimism bias

Brian Wilson offers an alternative perspective on Rachel Reeves’s Budget which no doubt many will welcome (Scotsman, 2 November).

The distinction between “doomsayers” – those who merely inform, advise, and commentate – and those in government who take the real decisions that affect us all is self-evidently important.

However, awareness of the technical limitations of economic forecasting is equally important: for example, the estimates prepared by leading forecasters such as the OBR, Treasury, Bank of England, IMF etc. are all subject to an error factor of plus or minus 0.5 per cent on average, which is significant in this context.

Two additional points of note: 1) The UK’s trend rate of growth in GDP is around 1.5 per cent per annum; 2) The Government’s stated objective is to raise this to 2.7 per cent by the next election.

In the absence of a post-Budget road map setting out a clear and credible pathway to more dynamic growth, the Government remains open to the charge of “optimism bias” – a factor forecasters are obliged to take into account as part of “soothsaying” best practice.

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Solar stupidity

Just how stupid can it get! By 1589 almost the whole of Central Fife (especially the Howe of Fife) was still unusable marshland, being partially drained by the River Eden. Wild boar roamed as they chose and royalty had their holiday home at Falkland.

It was due to generations of hard and dedicated work by Fife farming families that drainage took place and changed swamp into farmland. Now we are finding get-rich-quick individuals planning to reduce the agricultural area by the equivalent of “88 football pitches” by smothering it with solar panels!

Scotland is covered with large areas of unproductive moorland which is no doubt suitable for erecting solar panels, so why is application being made to use up large areas of good agricultural land?

Is the work of many farming families over many centuries to be thrown away for the sake of electrical energy that can be transmitted from anywhere to anywhere by overhead cabling?

Archibald A Lawrie, Kingskettle, Fife

All talk...

The 29th United Nations conference, COP29, will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from 11-22 November. So despite 28 years of climate promises we are told that the world will reach the much-feared 1.5C tipping point between 2026 and 2042.

One can only surmise that delegates enjoyed themselves at all 28 COP conferences, then went home and did nothing. So far 32,000 people have booked for the COP29 jamboree to sample the culinary delights and talk tall talk. Most will fly in and some by private jets. That makes nearly a million attendees over 29 years creating additional greenhouse gases. However, developing countries are going to Baku to fight for change and it is not loose change. They want developed countries to pay them at least $1 trillion every year to compensate for the destruction they claim has been done to their countries by the greenhouse gases emitted by the industrialised world over the past 200 years.

Never mind, they can ask again at COP30 in Brazil in the Amazonian city of Belem do Para.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Out of data

The letter from Barry Hughes (2 November) on power surges contained out of date data that needs to be corrected.

The cost of wind energy is no longer £44/MW hour but was uprated by 80 per cent by the Conservative government just prior to the June election, hence edging closer to the figure declared for gas turbine plant.

In addition, a review of the SNP energy paper released by Nicola Sturgeon immediately before she resigned as First Minister declared that there would be 25GW of hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine plant to keep the lights on in Scotland over the 200 days a year where there is insufficient wind to produce the power required to meet consumer demand.

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

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