Readers Letters: Trump should not be 'most powerful man in the world'

Donald Trump has upped the ante on his threatened purchase of Greenland, by force if necessary (your report, 8 January). This would be bizarre, if it weren't so dangerous.

Increasingly, we're looking at a President elect who is scarily out of control even before he starts. He has even posted Donald Jr to Greenland to distribute MAGA baseball caps, adapted for the purpose of, wait for it, MGGA. Along with veiled threats over the Panama Canal and annexing Canada as the 51st state, this makes for a lethal cocktail.

Trump's recent press conference was described as “rambling”. All too often he seems to be detached from reality, a well-practiced stranger to the truth. Already, it appears well past the time to question whether he is physically and mentally fit for the role of the most powerful man in the world. Surely America can, and must, do better than this.

US President-elect Donald Trump at Tuesday's controversial press conference (Picture: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Warmonger

Yesterday I thought even Donald Trump couldn't contemplate starting another war, but today it seems like having an avaricious friend like Vladimir Putin is very, very infectious. Surely the American citizens will refuse to go to two wars based on greed and not to protect themselves?

M Dickson, Edinburgh

Irresponsible?

The debate on the SNP's budget inevitably included the two-child benefit cap. I don't understand why those, like the Tories, who defend the cap – or even Labour, who say they want to scrap it but are scrabbling for excuses not to – don’t reiterate the following.

In the past seven years tens of thousands of families had at least one additional child when they either knew, or should have known, that a third, fourth or fifth child born after April 2017 would not get the benefit. Just to be clear, families with more than two children born before that date still get the benefit.

And if they knew that, why, as one of the callers on Tuesday's BBC Scotland phone-in said, did they not employ the same family planning methods other responsible Scots use (for example my own two kids and their spouses, the parents of my four fantastic grandchildren), unless they simply wanted more children and knew and accepted the responsibility and costs?

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Helping children

The Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) has estimated that scrapping the two-child payment cap will cost £200 million by 2030.They also raised the possibility of some people moving from the rest of the UK to Scotland to benefit from this. This was based on an eligible three-child family receiving £8,000 a year they would not receive elsewhere.

One week before the general election, Dame Jackie Baillie came out with the eminently sensible suggestion that Scotland should have an Immigration visa (similar to Canada and Australia). Scotland badly needs recruitment in the care sector, hospitality and agriculture, with the situation particularly acute in the Highlands and Islands. It was to allow firms to recruit staff from overseas who earned less than the income threshold set by the Home Office. We are told Scotland’s population is set to fall from 2045 and that presents challenges in funding public services.

However, the suspicion that Baillie’s proposal – which had never appeared in the Labour Party manifesto – was a cynical “back of the cigarette pack” attempt to garner yet more votes was, for me, confirmed in October, when the UK Labour Government said they were not considering such a proposal.

There are major benefits in attracting immigrants ie reducing problems in the sectors mentioned above. International students can be tempted to stay after qualifying. Increasing Labour supply can boost productive capacity and economic activity. The entrepreneurs boost the Scottish economy by billions.

While it is difficult to get hold of the average Scottish immigrant income, overall average pay is £31,000 and EU Nationals contribute over £4 billion of Scotland’s £90bn of tax receipts. In short, they put more into our economy than they ever take out. Allowing asylum seekers to work would bring in another £30m.The SFC, seemingly, implies an army of benefit scroungers would suddenly appear at the border.

We must not lose sight of the fact the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has commended the Scottish Child Payment as the biggest single policy intervention in 40 years in Europe, and responsible for reducing poverty by another 4 per cent. Scrapping the child payment cap is just part of an ambitious package of measures of which Scotland should be immensely proud as we tackle child deprivation.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing. Fife

Getting better

Alastair Majury (Letters, 8 January) must have missed The Scotsman report on 19 December that a new Centre of Teaching Excellence is to be established at Glasgow University, or about the new Education (Scotland) Bill, meaning the scrapping of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and creation of the new Qualifications Scotland body.

On 10 December, the Scottish Government reported that the proportion of pupils achieving the expected level in literacy and numeracy across primary and secondary schools has reached a new high.

For numeracy, a record 80.3 per cent of pupils across P1, P4 and P7 reached expected levels, while S3 also reached a new high of 90.3 per cent. For literacy, achievement is also now at a record high in both primary (74 per cent) and secondary (88.3 per cent).

The attainment gap between young people from the most and least deprived areas meeting standards in literacy has also reached a new low, according to the latest Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels 2023-24 statistics (ACEL).

The latest figures show that 95.9 per cent of 2022-23 school leavers were at a positive destination three months after the end of the school year and that is more important than PISA ranking, which has very little statistical rigour and offers nothing in the way of improving educational practice.

Misleading claims that only 40 per cent of S4 pupils passed their maths exam do not help the education debate, as this figure is merely based on the total class size, not the actual number of pupils who sat the exam, as many wait until their Nat 5 exam. In fact, 68.2 per cent of those who actually sat the maths exam in S4 passed, which is a 5.7 per cent improvement on the previous year.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh

Busted flush

Amid the uproar caused by the current spat between Elon Musk and Sir Keir Starmer on the issue of child protection, some extremely important economic news appears to have skipped the attention of much of the UK media. That news concerned UK long-term borrowing costs and the fact that they are now at their highest level since 1998 after 30-year bonds, known as gilts, reached an interest rate of 5.21 per cent on international markets. That level is even above the rate caused by the backlash to Liz Truss's disastrous mini-budget of 2022.

During the 2024 general election campaign Labour was betting heavily on achieving the necessary levels of economic growth to fulfil its manifesto pledges. For their strategy to succeed Labour needed businesses to flourish and job numbers to significantly increase, providing the funding through taxes to meet commitments. After only six months in office and as a direct consequence of Rachel Reeves’s National Insurance tax hike it has been reported by the British Chambers of Commerce that business confidence has sunk to its lowest level in two years.

If the economy continues to nosedive and Rachel Reeves does more Treasury bidding to hike taxes, yields will continue to climb. This will impact upon every mortgage holder and business owner in the country. The Treasury clearly doesn’t know what it is doing.

The Labour Party has got itself into a real mess by its refusal to take the one piece of relevant action which would boost business growth and confidence in our economy, rejoining the European Single Market. Such action would not be revolutionary. One part of the UK – Northern Ireland – remains ensconced inside the Single Market. The people of Scotland were told in 2014 that by remaining within the UK we would continue to be part of the Single Market. Due to Labour's fear of upsetting voters in England we are stuck outside it and all of the economic advantages it brings.

As far as the UK economy is concerned, things are not gong to get better. Scotland has options and in the run-up to 2026 its people will seriously have to think quite radically about them.

Jim Finlayson, Banchory, Aberdeenshire

Come to blows

In The Scotsman article over grid upgrades for ferry recharging facilities (8 January) the CEO of Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (Cmal) is reported as saying wind turbines were not an option because they did not provide power in calm weather. If an individual working for a provider of ferries recognises such a problem with the technology, why do politicians plan to add 45GW of such an unreliable generation system to the Scottish grid, especially if the fourfold increase in decarbonisation costs of Scottish homes also applies to all green projects? The debt from such a policy adds £540 billion to the £130bn cost to “green” all Scotland’s homes. That raises the question Holyrood refuses to address – can household budgets underwrite such debt?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway

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