Readers' Letters: Private schools should stop whingeing about having to pay VAT

I suspect I'm not the only one to be wearying about the endless whingeing by the private schools over the application of VAT on their school fees (your report, 7 September).

Perhaps the schools concerned should question the exorbitant amount of their fees and in what ways this can be thought of as value for money. It’s beyond belief that private schools can claim charitable status through minimal lip service to the community.

Finland, with one of the highest rated education systems in the Pisa lists, possesses only a state system, which, I believe, is no coincidence. Perhaps the pooling of all the resources, ploughed into a universal system of state education would benefit both sectors, educational, financially, and indeed, morally.

The new Labour UK Government has decreed that private school such as Fettes in Edinburgh must pay VAT, causing fees to rise

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Spinning around

We have just learnt from a Scottish Parliament written answer that the cost of SNP special advisers (spads or spin-doctors to you and me) last financial year was almost £2 million – double the amount being spent when Nicola Sturgeon came to power.

The nationalists admit to employing 17 of them, with three costing the taxpayer in excess of £100,000 each. Special advisers, while paid for by us, are political appointees who principally engage in attempting to “influence” decision-making within political, economic and social institutions.

Unlike civil servants, they have no requirement to remain politically neutral. In Scotland, it seems they spend some considerable time and effort attempting to ensure that the SNP administration is presented in the mainstream media as favourably as possible.

There are, for example, more SNP spin-doctors than BBC political staff. Would it be too cynical to suggest that the SNP's words and deeds should speak for themselves? Or are the SNP administration's actions and behaviour so utterly unpalatable that it needs 17 highly paid individuals to lobby on its behalf? And yet, increasingly, most of us still see through the SNP's nonsense.

Martin Redfern, Melrose, Roxburghshire

Driving us mad

What a joyless world is coming for the motorist – proposals for an increase in fuel costs, the possibility of road charging, ever-rising parking charges and draconian fines, and now the likelihood of being charged to drive around some of the more scenic parts of one’s native land.

Efforts to improve tourism have been a huge success, turning the once quiet “NC500” from a couple of days in paradise to a brief sojourn in Hell. The powers-that-be on Skye are muttering about charging campervanners an entry fee of some kind, as are the McMandarins in Inverness who have, however, also come up with a sensible suggestion to charge said campervanners a small fee to use council facilities to park overnight and to use swimming pools and gyms for showering. Such a move is in tune with the attitude on continental Europe where campervanners are recognised as being good for local economies and as such are catered for rather than vilified. Caravan sites in Scotland are often fully booked in the holiday season (as indeed are hotels) so it makes perfect sense for campervanners to have access to alternative facilities. These same caravan sites and hotels are often closed over the winter, leaving campervanners with no option but to “wild camp”.

Public toilets in rural locations in the Highlands are also often closed over the winter, no doubt because the great minds of the public sector feel nobody needs to relieve themselves between October and April. It’s high time that some sensible thought was given to accommodating rather than punishing people. As to the spurious argument that campervans are damaging the roads, might I suggest heavy goods lorries and large farm vehicles are the main offenders in this area. I haven’t heard any suggestions that they should be charged just to drive around Scotland.

Alastair Carmichael, Tyninghame, East Lothian

Poor taste

It is disappointing (even if simply attempting to be “humorous”) that, seemingly to justify his criticisms of my views expressed in an earlier letter Martin O’Gorman (Letters, 7 September) decided to question whether I might previously have written for the “Russian Communist Party’s Pravda newspaper ”.

Given the betrayal felt by many Poles, particularly those who lost relatives massacred at Katyn and those who on surviving brutal treatment in Russian Gulags fought with Allied Forces to “free” Poland (not only from the Nazis but from the clutches of the Soviet Union) only to witness the appeasement of Stalin, such inferences for most of Polish descent (such as myself) are unwelcome.

Perhaps tellingly, rather than trying to defend “UK democracy” Mr O’Gorman employed his own “colourful language” in making reference to the film The Wizard of Oz. Can any of us, though, truly be proud of a so-called democracy where the peoples of the UK are effectively subjected to the rule of one man on the strength of the votes of 20 per cent of the electorate while the proportionally elected parliament of Scotland is denied the right to hold a referendum on self-determination.

The fact that Scotland, unlike Northern Ireland, has not been granted the facility to potentially hold a constitutional referendum every seven years may be acceptable to some, but surely any objective assessment would conclude, especially given the continuing appointments to the House of Lords, that regrettably the United Kingdom is a “democracy” in name only. Should Mr O'Gorman be intent on seeking examples of pervasive political propaganda perhaps he should, in spite of claimed “impartiality”, look more closely at the framing of news stories by our primary public service broadcaster.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Write to The Scotsman

We welcome your thoughts – NO letters submitted elsewhere, please. Write to [email protected] including name, address and phone number – we won't print full details. Keep letters under 300 words, with no attachments, and avoid 'Letters to the Editor/Readers’ Letters' or similar in your subject line – be specific. If referring to an article, include date, page number and heading.