Readers' Letters: Has Labour Chancellor just saved SNP from extinction?

Has new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves just saved the SNP from extinction?

It now seems unlikely that any sane Scottish pensioner will vote for the Labour Party at the next Scottish election after Labour removed the winter fuel allowance. It's also unlikely that many Scots who have elderly parents and grandparents will support a party which condemns their relatives to a lingering death from hypothermia. Based on the recent election, all those votes are not going to the Conservative Party, so maybe there will be a huge swing back to the SNP?

Ms Reeves might like to remember that it is usually a lot colder in Scotland than in her cosy London office during the long winter months.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has axed winter fuel payments for many pensioners in a bid to help plug a £22bn black hole in the public finances (Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images)

Bruce Proctor, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Austerity’s axe

By choosing to target around ten million UK pensioners receiving the winter fuel payment while not on benefits, Labour has refocused the austerity demographic. Instead public sector workers like teachers and junior doctors in England have been promised inflation-busting pay increases, following on from similar awards in Scotland, and large infrastructure projects have been shelved. Labour has put avoiding strikes before pensioners and protecting its fiscal rules, which will now need to be shelved. Pay settlements over double inflation will just add to the £22 billion black hole in public finances.

Having planned to replace the winter fuel payment anyway, with a Winter Heating Payment, the government here in Scotland can ensure Scottish pensioners are not adversely affected. It’s difficult to see the SNP not taking the opportunity to make a political point by protecting pensioners, including those in the rural Tory strongholds of Aberdeenshire and the Southern Uplands, where large numbers have settled from the rest of the UK. Taxes, however, may rise due to the loss of Barnett consequentials.

The direction of travel is clear. Labour is awarding its traditional voter base of public sector working people large pay settlements, with the axe of austerity turning on the elderly who, until now, have been largely protected by the Tories. Will the triple lock be next to be picked?

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Painful move

In deciding to burden ten million pensioners with a cost they cannot work to recoup, the new Labour government appears to have moved with indecent haste to settle the seemingly exorbitant pay claims of junior doctors.Are junior doctors not still trainees, still requiring to pass further exams while gaining work experience? In any other industry, such as law or accountancy, trainees are routinely expected to work unpaid overtime.

Once trained, should doctors not have a contractual obligation to the British taxpayer which has supported them to work in the NHS for a number of years ? If not, why not?

Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh

Lip service

It would seem that either Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar didn't do his homework in the run-up to the recent general election or he set out to mislead us in order to win votes.

Perhaps we should give the Scottish Labour leader the benefit of the doubt and assume that when he said “Read my lips – no austerity under Labour!” during a television debate he meant to add “for multi-millionaires like me”!

Alan Woodcock, Dundee

Plug the hole

If it is truly the case, as averred by Alexander McKay (Letters, 30 July), that the UK Government has allocated £11bn to be given to foreign countries as “Climate Aid” then surely, as Mr McKay suggests, this vast sum must be deferred and re-allocated to help to plug the so-called black hole in our own country's finances.

In fact, should not the whole question of what we annually disburse as many billions in foreign aid be similarly addressed, at least until such time as the UK Treasury is in a far better position to comfortably afford such fiscal profligacy?

The old adage “charity begins at home” has never been more appropriate.

David M Steel, South Queensferry

Broken Britain

It appears that two of The Scotsman’s regular contributors are so strongly convinced of the merits of Scotland remaining in the anachronistic Union that they feel compelled to mislead readers.

Jill Stephenson (Letters, 30 July) wrote “Mr Swinney is refusing to mitigate the cap in Scotland” while knowing that the SNP Scottish Government is already mitigating the impact of the iniquitous two-child cap in Scotland through the innovative introduction, unique in the UK, of the Scottish Child Payment which has already lifted an estimated 100,000 children out of poverty.

Alexander McKay (same day) wrote “the £20 billion ‘black hole’ in the UK's finances uncovered by the incoming government is indeed worrying” when the OBR and IFS, as well as the SNP, repeatedly warned of this “cover-up” which the Labour Party chose to ignore rather than be truly honest with voters ahead of the General Election.

Perhaps one day, in the not too distant future, we can have genuine debate in these pages about the fundamental change that is necessary to fix “Broken Brexit Britain”.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Needless in NHS?

We all want free medical care, and in Scotland we get it, even for some procedures that are purely cosmetic,

However, the expense of new drugs and techniques is now more than our government can afford. How do we fix this?

Dentists have already met this problem and solved it by listing those procedures and medications that are free on Scottish NHS Dentistry, and alternatives that they charge for. Is it time to do the same for NHS Scotland?

Is IVF for couples who have problems conceiving a curative treatment or cosmetic when there are babies needing to be adopted?

Is breast enhancement for healthy women who want fashionably larger or smaller breasts something we want to pay for?

Should our government set up a think tank of representative people to recommend the areas in which our NHS can continue to function as a free service? I believe that we should, and demand an answer within reasonable time.

Elizabeth Scott, Edinburgh

Think debates

Last week Scotland’s schools debating team won the 2024 World Schools Debating Championship.

Freedom of speech, dialogue and debate are notions that universities appear to have replaced with no-platforming, disinviting inviting speakers, trigger warnings and safe areas. A vital part of the purpose of education is to prepare young people to navigate the world and the impact it will have on them. The tools of reason and debate should therefore be an integral part of our educational system at an early stage.

Many young people do not know how to argue their case when faced with views that differ from their own. Every school should have a debating club, and every pupil should be a member and be given the tools and encouraged to use their critical thinking skills to take part. There should be inter-school debating contests, with a national final, with prizes for contestants and school. We owe it to our children to ensure they are better prepared.

As Logan Moss, a member of Scotland’s winning school debating team, said: “To be able to meet people from different countries and cultures who, nonetheless, share our passion for what we often feel to be a slightly odd, niche activity, was one thing, but more than this was being able to know that, in spite of the polarisation and social media-based wrangling that seems to have devoured today’s world, there is still a place among the young for reasoned critical discussion.”

Doug Clark, Currie, Edinburgh

Energise Dundee

I hope the new Government will think where the main benefit to Scotland could be when they decide where to base Great British Energy. I travel to Dundee regularly and am always struck by the deprivation of the population. There are thousands who have lost the jobs with the closure of the leading employers who once made it an important industrial city.

The jobs the new entity could provide are sorely needed there, not in the Central Belt.

Andrew HN Gray, Edinburgh

Ducking Donald

While I entirely agree with Neil Anderson's summation of Donald Trump's behaviour (Letters, 30 July), perhaps optimistically I disagree with his conclusion that he will win the election and American democracy will die. I agree that Donald Trump has returned to character in his incendiary remarks calling Kamala Harris “evil and a liar”. Has the man no sense of irony as a world class liar himself?

His deplorable treatment of women is legendary and has surely met its match in the strong and admirable woman that is Kamala Harris, who memorably has said that “she knows his type”.

Apart from his basic adoring support, I trust the American people to see through his dangerous self-serving narcissism and elect Kamala Harris the first female president and save American democracy.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

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