Readers' Letters: Now we know for sure we can't believe political posts on X

The revelation that around 6 per cent of messages on X supporting the SNP and attacking England and the English suddenly stopped after an Israeli attack on Iran’s communications infrastructure is telling.

I was recently commenting on a YouTube video when I realised that the majority of other comments supportive of the separatists had a very familiar ring to them. There was something rather derivative about them. My reaction was to comment that I was probably one of the few real people commenting and that the rest were probably Russian bots.

The news about the Iranian bots shows we must expect at least the same proportion of the pro-separatist comments on such media sites to be from Russian, Chinese and North Korean bots. We know all these hostile forces know that what is bad for the United Kingdom and Scotland is good for them.

Scottish independence marchers in Glasgow - not one of them a bot from foreign shores (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP)

It is something that Scottish nationalists should consider when they wish to make Scotland "independent". The Axis of Evil would like nothing better than for them to achieve their aim. That would weaken one of the main bulwarks upon which the freedoms of the democratic West relies, namely a strong United Kingdom.

The freedom of all of us depends upon a strong UK. There are no broad, sunlit uplands to Scottish independence, only weakness and subjugation.

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

Toxic talk

Carbon dioxide (CO2), an essential “ingredient” in plant and crop growth and metabolism, has become villainised, on flimsy evidence, as a “toxin” promoting adverse climate changes.

In fact its impact on local and global weather patterns is very slight.

Victims of the huge African emission recalled by Professor Hugh Pennington (Letters, 28 June) were asphyxiated, as in drowning, by hypoxia, not poisoned by an excess of CO2. As H Douglas Lightfoot points out (Letters, 27 June), net zero-style attempts to deplete atmospheric CO2 are not only ruinously costly but also totally illogical and impractical.

Charles Wardrop, Perth

Cue problems

Instead of making cuts to disability and sickness benefits for all existing and future claimants, Sir Keir Starmer's U-turn means the cuts only apply to new, not existing, claimants.

So stand by for another wave of Waspi and two-child benefit-style campaigns to restore payments to people who no longer qualify for the benefits, backed by virtue-signalling politicians who try to win votes and con the public by saying they'd “like” to restore the benefits when in fact they have no intention of doing so because it's unaffordable.

In opposition Labour were the worst culprits of this cynical virtue-signalling so they may be getting a taste of their own medicine – in many cases from within their own ranks.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Tax take

When it comes to raising taxes, politicians, mainly on the left, try to strike a balance between assuming the moral high ground and raising as much extra income as possible.

To their dismay, the Scottish Government is finding out that their “progressive” income tax policy is not raising the desired extra revenue, or indeed, producing the desired economic growth. Certainly it would be interesting to see Scottish Government estimates of forecast extra income tax revenue versus that which has actually been achieved. I suspect, though, that it would need an FOI request to release this information.

Turning to the forthcoming UK budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves may well find the same problem in that many of her target areas for tax hikes, for example Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, non-doms etc can be (partially) circumvented, and not yield the desired extra revenues.

One area, though, where there is a little room for manoeuvre (by the taxpayer) is fuel duty and vehicle excise duty. Expect the motorist to be hit hard in the name of net zero, though maximising the tax take would be closer to the truth. Political naivety in understanding the law of unintended consequences is often in short supply when introducing new tax measures and I don’t expect any change in the forthcoming UK and Scottish budgets.

Alastair Neilson, Edinburgh

Soft soaping

It's useful to think back, at this time, as far back as 1956, when, in the Suez Crisis, the UK realised it was no longer a major power. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal, having failed to get US and international backing for the building of the Aswan Dam. Britain and France colluded secretly with Israel to seize and control the canal, but the military operation was a total failure, and Anthony Eden's government fell. The US and UN had given no backing to the project, and there followed financial crisis and fuel shortages for the UK.

The EU and “coalition of the willing” are in a similar position of weakness in the worthy aim of assisting Ukraine, which explains the fawning sycophancy of Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte in trying to woo Donald Trump back into Nato and backing Ukraine. Never mind also the small matter of having probably not managed to eliminate Iran's nuclear ambitions. Rutte is fully aware that Trump is an unreliable, erratic criminal President bent on destroying democracy in his own country. But he has to try the soft-soaping anyway.

Crawford Mackie, Edinburgh

Odd question

New guidance has been issued after requests from universities for clarity on how they could uphold freedom of speech. Isn't this like the Vatican requesting clarity on how it could uphold Christianity?

Doug Clark, Currie, Midlothian

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