Readers' Letters: Funds must be found for social care of aged and infirm

The stark statistic that those over 85 years of age are set to double in the next 25 years (your report, 9 April), hides the significant fact of the numbers who are active well into their eighties, most of whom are net contributors to society.

Jackie Baillie (Perspective) makes the good point that growing old is to be celebrated, not feared. It's tragic that any celebration should be marred by a large hole in the finances to support those in infirm old age. What are our priorities? At a time when money can rightly be found for arms to defend an increasingly precarious Europe, surely funds can be found for the social care of the aged and infirm.

Meanwhile, carers are overworked and underpaid. For old age to be properly celebrated, care for the elderly should be valued financially as well as ethically in the crisis facing our aging society.

Growing old in Scotland should be something to be celebrated, not feared (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Trumped

During the 2014 referendum on Scottish Independence, one of the arguments used by the Better Together campaign was that an independent Scotland would have to pay higher borrowing costs than that of Greece. At that point in time the Greek economy was the subject of massive financial pressures and turmoil.

On 9 April it was reported that longterm UK government borrowing costs had climbed to their highest level since 1998, when the interest rate on the UK government bond (30-year gilt) rose to 5.507 per cent – significantly higher than that of Greece, by 1.12 per cent, or 112 basis points in market speak! Meanwhile Ireland, a small independent nation which doesn't possess anywhere near the same level of natural resources as Scotland, can borrow on international markets at a rate of 3 per cent. The arguments of Better Together now lie in tatters.

In the same way many US voters who fell for the bogus economic arguments of Donald Trump will pay a very heavy price for their gullibility, many Scottish voters who fell for the bogus economic arguments of Better Together will continue to suffer similar impacts. It is to be hoped that the lessons from this will not be forgotten.

Jim Finlayson, Banchory, Aberdeenshire

Stand united

This northerly region of the UK most certainly needs a change of administration at the earliest possible opportunity. The concept of a “Scottish Executive”, based in Edinburgh, seemed fine at the time of its inception in 1999, following the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. This entailed Scotland being granted devolved powers by the UK Government at Westminster.

But alas, the political scene was shortly afterwards, usurped by a nationalist faction in the form of the SNP. Throughout history “nationalism” has always led to trouble and strife – and in Scotland's case this has proved to be no exception. We have experienced the power struggle created by local leaders such as Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon to no avail. The current leader, John Swinney, is probably more sincere – but ineffective. In today's world it is essential that such a comparatively small nation of the UK remains united.

Unfortunately in 1998/99 a lot of money was spent on the creation of the “Holyrood” Parliament. This could well be described now as a rather grand venture when one considers its regional concept.

Hopefully, at the Scottish Parliament's election early in 2026 we Scots will see a major change in the power struggle within Scottish politics. That might just be an appropriate time for changes to be implemented within the whole political structure in Scotland.

Scottish Nationalism has created a “grandeur” within the political scene which is unwarranted and totally false. Surely we are better together?

Robert I G Scott, Northfield, Ceres, Fife

Too soon?

John Swinney thinks he could well still be First Minister after the 2026 Holyrood election, but is this premature? The SNP will have had 19 years in office yet Scotland has not progressed during that time. Now he will have another crisis to deal with (“Finances ‘unsustainable’ as number of elderly increases”, 9 April). Where is the headroom to raise taxes even higher, or alternatively cut the increasing welfare bill or introduce tuition fees, both of which are the bedrock of SNP policy?

Mr Swinney is going to find out the hard way that the past largesse of his party cannot keep being swept under the carpet when questioned on the doorstep. Has the SNP finally run out of steam?

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Dark parallels

The current parallels with the 1920s and 1930s are indeed disturbing, as Andrew HN Gray details (Letters, 9 April). In fact I would say deeply worrying, with a new Axis of five powers and several fellow travellers – particularly the ease with which much of the past three years’ Comment fears a third World War would break out.

Also, it is not just Putin who is “aggrieved” at Soviet Russia’s loss of its empire – he is supported to the hilt by the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and numerous other leading Russians, and by their control of TV and printed media they distort history and falsify the factual information on which the ordinary population depends.

The West was unbelievably complicit in Russia’s descent from its fledgling democratic development in the late Gorbachev/early Yeltsin eras, with our politicians, diplomats, military attaches, academics and business leaders apparently naively and myopically assuming in the early 2000s that little would change despite the rump-KGB having taken over the Kremlin. The same naivety and short-termism by the same people applied to our handing over to China our technology and productive capacity with no quid-pro-quo whatever.

We are too close for comfort to Churchill’s warning that, rather than the world moving forward “into broad sunlit uplands”, if we fail “then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

Confront hate

S Beck (Letters, 8 April) makes the interesting point that until a number of cases are brought to court and precedents established, there won't be a description of what constitutes “hate speech”. So, as a society, are some of us so naive regarding hate speech that we will have to wait until our legislative powers gen up on what constitutes it?

Let's look back at how the mass murder of Jews under the Nazis in the Second World War came about. It started with hate speech which vilified some Jews for being dirty and unkempt. Maybe they were just poor. This hate speech quickly escalated into blaming other Jews for being Communists and others for being greedy and selfish capitalists. German legislators took far too long to oppose this hate speech – perhaps they were frightened or perhaps they agreed with it – but we all know how this tragically ended.

It was a different story in Britain when Oswald Mosley started his fascist hate speech in the Jewish and poorer areas of London. A vast movement of workers and others stood up and, without waiting for any legislative description of what constituted hate speech – they already knew – they challenged Mosley's hate speech. There was no waiting for cases of hate speech to come to court; only a mass action against his racist speech.

I believe conciliatory approaches instead of direct and quick legislation is a problem facing our society. I also believe most of us know what constitutes hate speech. It must be confronted firstly in the home, then in our schools. This won't be easy, especially when we know there is a problem with racism, misogyny and other hatreds in our public sphere, particularly on irresponsible social media channels. We can't and should not hide from this ever-increasing monstrosity.

Jack Fraser, Musselburgh, East Lothian

Powerless

There is yet another deafening silence from the SNP over the current high pressure weather conditions resulting in low levels of power output from the 17 GW of wind capacity in Scotland. Once more Scottish households are dependent on the production of power from English gas turbines to keep the lights on North of Hadrian's Wall!

That raises the question as to what outcome does John Swinney expect when he saddles Scottish consumers with the hundreds of billions of pounds of debt by Increasing wind capacity to around 60 GW, as detailed in the SNP energy plan. Do SNP politicians really believe a threefold increase in wind capacity will actually produce any extra electricity when dunkelflaute weather conditions – a period of low wind and sunlight – strike?

Note that the dunkelflaute problem experienced in December strikes again in less than three months. What has happened to the master plan of building 25 GW of hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine plant?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway

Think again

Allan Sutherland (Letters, 8 April) appears to imply university psychology degrees only date from the past 30 years. Not so.

The University of St Andrews celebrated the 50th anniversary of teaching psychology as a separate discipline in 2019. In other words it was well established during the 1970s and ’80s, when only about 10 per cent of school leavers went to university, a time Mr Sutherland appears to consider to be some golden age of Scottish education. Although I was a beneficiary of that system I don't think I would go that far.

Jane Ann Liston, St Andrews, Fife

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