Readers' Letters: Scotland can't afford to spend millions on foreign aid

Once again, the people of Scotland are landed with a problem not of their making. The SNP run Scotland at present and their remit specifically does not include overseas aid. Nevertheless, they have decided it would anyway donate £12.5 million to “African education”. They must have plenty to spare in the taxpayers’ kitty to afford this, after funding all their responsibilities.

Good cause as that African schools' project may be, with education in Scotland in the perilous state it is in and teachers perhaps being laid off in their hundreds, it is an unfathomable, absurd decision.

A portion of our UK taxes already covers these good causes overseas. Is it necessary to squeeze Scotland's education system even further than it has been, in order to make a few nationalist points?

Schoolchildren in Malawi, one of three African nations the Scottish Government hopes will share a £12.5 million donation (Picture: Andrew Cawley)

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

A nation betrayed

How astonishingly quickly this Labour Government have built mistrust amongst the electorate, primarily driven by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. The evidence is clear cut and will be confirmed and presented to the jury (aka the electorate) via the Budget by the key witness Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer. In a little over 100 days, the evidence will show that their manifesto and statements detailing “commitments were fully costed” and that there would be “no increases in tax for working people” were at best disingenuous and at worst untruthful.

Eventually the electorate will realise raising taxes is in Labour’s DNA, ultimately to meet the demands of their union paymasters and their overriding desire to make those with “the broadest shoulders” distribute their wealth. Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves insist that growth of the economy is the objective. We are about to see how that objective will be consigned to the bin as businesses and job and wealth creators will be hammered in the Budget.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh

Save our NHS

I grow ever more convinced as I observe the sleekit machinations of Wes Streeting et al in their dealings with the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, that the long germinating forces of popular sovereignty and action will need to flower both in NHS England and NHS Scotland if the sick and disabled are ever again to be properly and timeously attended to. The electoral aristocracy in English Labour have been consorting with those gracious “providers” of care long before they set out their candour-free general election manifesto. These “care corporations”, I hear, have kindly offered to invest the princely sum of £1 billion in NHS England if they were to be guaranteed “long term” contracts.

This market strategy has no doubt been informed by informal understandings with foolish would-be ministers who have manifestly not, despite the albatross legacy of Tony Blair’s PFIs, understood the aphorism that it is not ever advisable to do a deal with the devil, either morally or economically. Perhaps it is a case of “there are none so thick as will not learn” when party and personal funding reps are in the classroom.

Meanwhile, back at home in Scotland the hamstrung devolved NHS administration, every week presiding over unnecessary, untimely deaths and suffering, is failing to inspire and engage our citizens into taking the care of our own sick and suffering into our own hands as a matter of the greatest urgency. In recent years a plethora of moral irrelevancies has preoccupied the Holyrood elites, most clearly seen in retrospect.

The people of Scotland must assert their sovereignty by taking to the streets and to whatever elements of the mainstream media are willing to help to demand an urgent national health convention to deeply scrutinise when and how taxpayers’ money is siphoned off by vested “caring” interests and set about a people-driven “Reformation” of Health and social care provision in this land before Big Pharma and Big Starmer do their worst.

Direct and participatory democracy and the redemption of representative politicians must be delivered in this decade or our children and grandchildren will inherit an increasingly desolate and dangerous future, of which a two-tier NHS will be only one feature.

(Dr) Andrew Docherty, Selkirk, Scottish Borders

Scottish too!

Torquil MacLeod is entirely justified in saying that His Majesty King Charles is “mostly German anyway” due to Hanoverian lineage and the Germanic ancestry of his father, the late Prince Philip of Greece (Letters, 18 October).

But let’s not forget that hefty dash of distinctly Scottish Stuart and Bowes-Lyon blood.

Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh

Time to vent

You report a claim that electric wallpaper produces “less mould” and doesn’t dry the air as much as traditional central heating (17 October).

That's a somewhat conflicted statement. Central heating does not dry air but it can make mould less likely. In most occupied houses, the relative humidity will be between 30 and 50 per cent. It should certainly be kept below 60 per cent. If it is too high and there are cold surfaces, mould will occur even with central heating. Humidity will be high if wet activities like washing and showering are frequent and there is little or no mechanical ventilation.

Electric wallpaper, which can warm people but not the air, will not eliminate mould. Only control of humidity and good insulation will do that.

Steuart Campbell, Edinburgh

Goal is survival

Even non-football supporters must be dismayed by the financial plight of Inverness Caley Thistle (your report, 18 October), leading to a possible deduction of points, and liquidation. We must feel for the full-time players, whose livings are jeopardised, and their manager, Duncan Ferguson, whose gesture to work for free must be applauded.

The reach of football stretches far beyond the club, deep into the community, and it's pertinent to ask why Inverness, a city with a population of over 60,000, can't sustain a football club. The weekly attendance at matches fell disappointingly below expectations, even when the team were successful in the Premiership.

The root problem exists in their long name, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, and the days when they boasted three teams in the Highland League – Inverness Thistle, Inverness Caledonian and Inverness Clachnacuddin. Their attempt at a merger proved controversial from the start, with Clachnacuddin opting to stay out and remain in the Highland League.

Sadly, in order to survive, football clubs increasingly require a “sugar daddy”. Caley Thistle's neighbours, and rivals, Ross County, have one and they sit comfortably in the Premiership.

This reliance on sugar daddies can't go on forever, as there aren't enough to go around, and there are far too many clubs flirting with the dire situation Caley Thistle find themselves in. In the short term, let's hope they can find a sustainable solution.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Wrong Footed

Murray Foote has resigned as SNP Chief Executive and with his exit it looks as if the party is literally over. It was either sink or Swinney but you can only fool some of the people for some of the time. The SNP ship – there is no ferry – has long since lost its compass and hit the rocks. It is every man for himself time. The voters ought to get a say, too.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Whose wind?

Neil Anderson (Letters, 17 October) accuses Peter Hopkins and Martin O'Gorman of being “climate change deniers” when in fact both said the climate has always been changing. He argues that Scotland is subsidising England with wind electricity, but the wind farms plastered all over Scotland and at sea are owned mostly by foreign companies or foreign governments.

Amazingly, 42 per cent of the UK's offshore wind farms are owned by foreign governments, including China. The outcome of the auction last month for nine new sea wind farms will see 70 per cent of them built by the Danish company Orsted. And Spanish multinational Iberdrola, the owner of Scottish Power – which owns 40 wind farms – made £3.5 billion in net profits in the first six months of 2024. So it's not “Scotland's wind” any more than it was “Scotland's oil”.

Last week I trekked to Dunnet Head, the most northerly point of mainland Britain, and was reminded by the wind farms on the Latheron-Thurso road of how far they are from the main electricity markets. While the big 2GW coal-fired power stations like Longannet, Ferrybridge, Fiddler's Ferry, and Ratcliffe-on-Soar were near markets, windy sites are generally far from urban areas, necessitating long power lines and numerous sub stations.

The other problem, which is becoming more and more difficult to solve as thermal power is taken offline, is stabilising the grid at 50Hz. Various wacky schemes are being proposed to do this to minimise blackouts, including building 100 giant flywheels weighing hundreds of tons placed around the country and driven by giant lithium batteries.

As I write, the National Grid is buying electricity from France, Holland, Belgium and Denmark for 15 per cent of its supply, while wind power is producing 18 per cent of our electricity. Drax, the huge coal-fired power station converted to burn trees from North America, for which it receives £500 million in “renewables” subsidies every year, is producing 10 per cent.

William Loneskie, Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire

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.