As the Prime Minister sets about misleading the public in the Autumn Statement and he and his Chancellor shamelessly seek the credit for falling inflation we should remember the numerous occasions when the same people told us that rising inflation was caused by global forces outwith their control.

I anticipate the usual attempts at gravitas and the usual pretence that only the Conservatives can manage the economy, despite a report this week from campaign group Best for Britain detailing £99.4bn of public funds wasted by the Conservative government over the last four years. This includes unusable PPE, HS2, the Rwanda project and £1.7m on painting the PM’s airplane. These facts won’t prevent Douglas Ross and his Scottish colleagues also doing their best to mislead the public as to their party’s economic competence.

“Misleading the press and public” is the heinous crime of which Michael Matheson is accused for an incident which cost the public purse zero.

The hypocrisy of opposition politicians regarding Matheson is only overshadowed by most of the Scottish media who, clutching their pearls in fake outrage, declaim how unprincipled it is for a politician to mislead them in their fevered quest for a political head on a stick: about as credible as a gang of bank-robbers taking the moral high ground on finding their getaway car stolen.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is due to deliver his Autumn Statement today (Picture: Aaron Chown/PA Wire)

Robert Farquharson, Edinburgh

Scrooge threat

As the country anxiously awaits the Chancellor rising to his feet and delivering the Autumn Statement, the question is, who will be the winners and who will be the losers?

Only last month we heard the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt MP say he was proud to live in a country where “there is a ladder everyone can climb, but also a safety net below which no one falls” – astonishing words, which Mr Hunt needs to act upon. Yet we have already heard from the Prime Minister that the Autumn Statement may well include tax cuts and a squeeze on benefits, actions that do not sit well with Mr Hunt’s sentiments last month.

The Conservatives are airing the possibility of a shift from the current arrangements to benefit increases. Those increases are based on the rate of inflation in September the previous year. However, the Conservatives are airing the possibility of a move to October. This would result in the uplift being dropped by 2.1 per cent, disproportionately affecting pensioners, single parents, the disabled and many more, begging the question: who exactly is the “safety net”catching, who is it there for?

The Autumn Statement must address the cost-of-living crisis we are all living through daily, it must address the housing crisis due to massive increases in mortgage rates, it must address the energy crisis of domestic fuel costs and it must address the queues at local foodbanks. This Autumn Statement must not be a sticking plaster for those in desperate need, while giving handouts to the rich through a tax cut. Christmas is almost upon us. We hope Scrooge will not make an appearance today.

Catriona C Clark, Banknock, Falkirk

Futile exercise

Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement will be an exercise in futility. He claims to seek economic growth but doesn’t understand the first thing about how to achieve it – and neither does Keir Starmer’s Labour.

The source of the UK’s stagnation lies with the financialisation of its economy. Under Margaret Thatcher, it moved from productive industrial capitalism towards non-productive rentier/financial capitalism. Thatcher decimated the UK’s industrial base and replaced it with non-productive financial services. The irony is that 19th century industrial capitalism got rid of feudalism, where landowners, bankers and monopolists extracted rent from assets without producing real value. But now feudalism is back, with the FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate – forming the basis of a neo-rentier economy as well as controlling the politicians. The UK is incapable of generating desperately needed industrial capital because it’s too busy extracting economic rent from fixed assets.

UK tax policies favour the wealthy and the privatisation of public goods – transport, energy, communications, and increasingly healthcare and education – has kneecapped the economy. The private banking system serves monopoly interests, not small businesses. Wages are deliberately held down, workers are crippled with credit card debt, student debt, and rising rents and mortgages and, as a result, have less to spend on goods and services. Trade unions have been weakened, a fifth of households are in poverty and the rich grow richer.

There’s nothing Jeremy Hunt can say or do to change this dismal picture. What’s needed is a different nation and economy, one that serves the interests of the people.

Scotland can be such a nation but only if it ends the Union.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

Destructive hate

People hate for a host of reasons. Hate can come from ignorance, brainwashing and indoctrination at an early age, which often leads to involuntary bias.

I attended a Catholic school and wondered why people from a “different” school “appeared” to hate me. I “appeared” to hate them right back. I quickly realised that people are irrational and dividing them at an impressionable age did not make sense.

Hate is a powerful emotion, and with some sensible thinking it can be reduced, but when blood is spilt hate can go to a different level. Cue the Israel/Palestine conflict. People who are not involved in this feud and ignorant about its origins are quick to take sides, some for political reasons – the left are pro-Palestine, the right pro-Israel – others simply because of an involuntary bias which makes them anti-Jew or anti-Arab, sometimes for reasons they find difficult to properly explain.

So, why are Jews and Arabs murdering each others’ children? Maybe it is time some people “caught up with themselves” and read a reputable book or two. One pro-Israeli and one pro-Palestinian.

Jack Fraser, Musselburgh, East Lothian

Key debate

No doubt Hamas will have put all their rockets on stand-by and the IDF will be joining them in waiting breathlessly for the result of yesterday’s monumental debate in Holyrood on a ceasefire.

Peace in the Middle East, it would seem, hinges on the crucial life or death vote decision taken in a debate in a devolved assembly in the northern sector of the UK. If a ceasefire vote is passed, may we expect an immediate laying down of arms on both sides? You may laugh, most everyone does, but that is the impression given.

Every day that passes, every statement made, every march, seems to take us further and further away from reality. Why does the administration running Scotland at present not spend their time and energy on matters that do concern them and over which they exercise a modicum of control? As, for example, a debate on the honesty and integrity of ministers?

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Green lunacy

Tickets for next year's Glastonbury festival sold out within an hour. Tickets cost £355 plus £5 booking fee. The climate footprint for this will be enormous so why is this not disclosed and a climate tax of 20 per cent added to tickets to go towards climate resilience. Same for sporting events, musical events, motor racing and especially fireworks displays.

Stupid suggestion? Of course it is, but so is the UK trying to reduce its 1.0 per cent of global greenhouse gases when most of the world is increasing its use of fossil fuels, especially coal. Green lunacy.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Ross’s wing man

I was intrigued by the headline of Brian Monteith’s article (20 November): “Matheson is now an albatross around Humza Yousaf’s neck.” Is this a new member of the Ross clan called Albat sent to assist the Tory leader?

Rev Dr Donald M MacDonald, Edinburgh

Defective Holyrood

If we didn’t already know it, we can now see how defective Holyrood is. It is bad enough that unelected Greens can become government ministers, that there are no checks/balances, and that, as both William McRae Allan and Victor Clements assert (Letters, 21 November), there is no accountability. As Mr Clements says, no-one seems to have vetted Michael Matheson’s extraordinary roaming expenses claim.

Of relevance is the convention that Matheson’s fate is decided by the First Minister. It is theoretically possible that he could lose his cabinet job following a vote of no confidence, but Nicola Sturgeon solved that by bringing the unelected Greens into coalition with the SNP. There might conceivably be a few SNP rebels but probably not enough.

Mr Yousaf’s own future is entirely in his own hands. It is up to him alone whether he refers himself to the parliament’s watchdog for an alleged breach of the ministerial code, over his false claim about Scotland having the “majority of the renewables and natural resources” in the UK.

The fundamental problem, however, is lack of accountability. The Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, does sterling work, but there is no evidence of ministers feeling obliged to take heed of what he says, for example about the need for transparency in government. As Mr McRae Allan says: “There should be an independent inquiry…into the whole system of accountability at Holyrood.” Or else close it down.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Readers' letters: Tories' reputation for economic competence is a pretence