Readers' Letters: What happened to Swinney's vision of cheaper food?

The recent travails of the SNP all revolve around money, and so it continues (“Mansion tax risks lasting damage, SNP is warned”, 7 July). Money is at the heart of everything the SNP does, from wasting it to losing it to ridiculous schemes to take ever more of it from a rapidly shrinking target market.

This new “mansion tax” will raise very little but do enormous damage. While the SNP ponders this issue it is fair to ask, for those at the other end of the cash divide, what has happened to the much-touted SNP election pledge to reduce the cost of the essential goods in everyone's shopping basket? This particular trail appears to have gone somewhat cold.

Money is not only the root of all evil, it appears the SNP just cannot get the balance right, even with its own policies or accounting.

First Minister John Swinney has said he wants to legally cap the price of up to 50 'essential' food items in supermarkets (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Failed economics

It appears some regular contributors to these pages would rather return the UK to the failed economics of Lettuce Truss, perhaps through a UK government led by Farage the Artful Dodger, or even Count Binface, than enable Scots to determine their own future.

Furthermore, in struggling to admit that Britain is indeed broken, Brian Barbour (Letters, 9 July) appears to take the contradictory stance of lauding free-market economics but arguing that council tax and Scottish water be capped to CPI increases while the energy companies and other private providers (whose pricing impacts on the cost of living of most people to a much greater extent), including supermarkets supplying essential foods, are allowed to charge whatever they like.

Reader David Millar also seems to struggle to accept Britain’s sad state and again seeks to divert from confronting the macroeconomic issues confronting the UK by simply penning another tirade against the SNP.

Please wake up gentlemen. Britain needs fundamental change if it is not to be designated another province of Trumpian America, and constitutional reform is not only desirable but a necessity. If you are intent on rejecting Independence then at least take the time to propose some form of federalism that you believe could work. Either way devolution would come to an end, perhaps along with the SNP’s role in the government of Scotland.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Codswallop

A group of five Scottish Labour MPs have broken ranks, urging the UK government to back the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields (your report, 7 July).

These courageous MPs are Graeme Downie, Richard Baker, Kenny Stevenson, Torcuil Crichton and Lillian Jones. Graham Downie is a member of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee so his intervention is significant.

However, up pops a spin doctor posing as a spokesperson for the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, who says: “Our priority is to deliver a fair, orderly and prosperous transition in the North Sea in line with our climate and legal obligations, which drives our clean energy future of energy security, lower bills and good long-term jobs".

What a lot of codswallop. “Fair”? Tell that to the 13,000 who lost their jobs in the vital oil and gas sector. “Prosperous transition”? Does he mean the unemployment benefits? “Climate and legal obligations?” Are these the climate and legal obligations that at COP30 in Brazil saw 85 countries yet again refuse to commit to phasing out fossil fuels and to sign up to Nationally Determined Contributions spelling out in detail how they would cut their emissions?

"Clean energy future"? The world is still burning coal so reducing the UK's 0.8 per cent of global emissions to net zero at a crippling cost to industry and taxpayers achieves absolutely nothing.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

In the doldrums

Perhaps an apt description of the current state of the Scottish Parliament is that it is in the doldrums.

Key figures such as John Swinney seem to be constantly on the defensive; surely if they truly believe their policies to be sound, they should simply brush aside what they regard as undue criticism?

To mere onlookers such as myself it would appear that they take offence very easily and far too often rise to the bait. Overall, the level of debate at Holyrood is utterly uninspiring.

In my view, if the current situation is all that we Scots have to look forward to in terms of a regional government, then the concept has been a failure. What indeed is the whole point of what is merely sheer duplication?

In an ever-changing world, it is surely obvious to the majority of folks that the historical sections of the UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be better served by remaining together. Any deviation from this would have an adverse effect on governmental functions such as the economy. a central bank, foreign affairs and defence.

I make no excuses for maintaining my views on Scotland's current political scene. In my opinion we Scots could do better than under the present devolved system.

Robert I G Scott, Northfield, Ceres, Fife

Hang on...

When Albert Pierrepoint was asked aggressively at King's Cross by the press, “What was it like to hang a woman?”, he uncharacteristically snapped, “She deserved to die unless she was found insane, which she wasn't!”

Pierrepoint's blood was up because only a year earlier he'd hanged the vicious Cypriot murderess Styllou Christofi to no public rancour in the same Holloway death cell. As he put it later, the mass public sympathy for Ruth Ellis came from her being an attractive night club hostess with a sideline as a nude model, who had shot her racing driver lover. Had she been a shop assistant looking like Quasimodo, neither the Fourth Estate nor the public would have cared a damn.

It is exactly Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy's behaviour in granting this ludicrous pardon which exemplifies why Pierrepoint turned against capital punishment – the untrustworthiness of those wielding power for public relations interests ahead of Justice.

Ellis shot her estranged lover five times – many hanged previously for far less.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Nonsense charade

Our son stayed in the Dulwich area temporarily two years ago, and we wandered around. I can state that Dulwich College and grounds are truly magnificent. That's as it should be, after all, it is where the Establishment send their children to be educated, such as Nigel Farage.

I have not been to Clacton, though, and I'm unsure it has anywhere as grand as Dulwich College. What I do know for sure, though, is that the single constituency of Clacton does not get to decide the laws of the whole nation. So if Nigel Farage has broken parliamentary rules on donations, then it's the whole of the UK that decides.

This charade of “letting the Clacton people decide” needs to be called out for what it is: total nonsense.

Iain MacDonald, Broughty Ferry. Dundee

Fearful of Farage?

Thanks to an antiquated piece of legislation despite the suggestion that Nigel Farage MP is resigning, he is not. He is going to take an Office of Profit under the Crown to disqualify him from continuing as MP.

The other political parties are showing a complete contempt for the electorate by failing to give the voters in Clacton alternative candidates – but what else do you expect from folk that think they are holier than thou as political parties?

The opportunity to drag Westminster into the 21st century by getting rid of the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 and calling it what it is, resignation, has been lost, in my opinion.

As for the “change” promised in 2014 when does this country scrap the first-past-the-post electoral system and adopt the Single Transferable Vote ​​​​​​as the default electoral system?

When does this country stand up to the divisive rhetoric of Reform UK? Why are the main parties so scared that they won't stand candidates against Farage and give the electorate a choice – or does self-preservation matter more than real change?

When does this country get rid of the House of Lords or reform it, and perhaps even think of federalism?

Or maybe the real change Scotland needs lies with Independence. If parties are not willing to take Nigel Farage and his party on, that is easiest way to ensure no Reform UK government for Scotland.

Peter Ovenstone, Peterhead, Aberdeenshire

Back Binface

I was in Hartlepool at the count on the night Hartlepool people chose the football club mascot as their directly elected mayor. The people who lived there, who voted for him, just wanted to stick two fingers up at the entire political establishment here in the UK.

I have watched Count Binface, aka comedian Jon Harvey, debate at the Cambridge Union on the internet. He appears to be articulate and intelligent. I would vote for him instead of Zippy – sorry, Nigel Farage – if I was a resident of Clacton.

Nigel Boddy, Darlington

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