Scotsman Letters: No new ideas in budget to help Scots
The Scottish Budget brought a brace of letters from readers
Another SNP budget with exactly the same measures as all its predecessors: wealth redistribution (your report, 14 January). Scots have had this theme for 18 years and it has not really helped. All this does is encourage benefit claims and discourage enterprise.
What exactly can the SNP deliver in the next five years, if they are still the government, that will change this continuing race to the bottom?
Gerald Edwards, Glasgow
Same old
The reaction to the latest SNP budget is pretty much as it has been for the 18 previous years. Predictable, uninspiring, boring, those are the kinder comments I have seen.
But there is always one thing of which we can be sure with an SNP budget when they have our money to spend.
Overseas aid, which has always been in the UK remit – but who cares? – will be boosted and when the time comes the party leader can go with a team of photographers and cash in – always good when an election is near.
Then there is the Jollies Department. That gets an increase also, and the SNP members can line up for trips to New York and other choice destinations. Meanwhile the Scottish poor get poorer.
One day all this will catch up with the nationalists. I cannot wait.
Alexander McKay, Edinburgh
Band together
So the SNP budget has been delivered, yet again failing completely to foster an environment that creates jobs and the taxes that go with them, instead delivering a soundbite that “most Scots will pay less income tax than elsewhere in the UK”.
Indeed they will, to the tune of 60p per week, while those on modest salaries will see them paying £1,000 or more a year to enable the SNP’s wasteful spending. Soundbite politics.
It is time Reform, Labour and the Conservatives focused on what is most important to the people of Scotland, and that is ridding us of the total incompetence that is the SNP. However distasteful it might be, the other parties must work together to deliver a non-independence majority in Holyrood. A Scottish government that could then focus on improving our day-to-day lives instead of the constant division that is nationalism.
Come on Anas Sarwar, Russell Findlay and Malcolm Offord – work together for Scotland’s sake. As the very old seatbelt safety advert said, “you know it makes sense”.
Brian Barbour, Haddington, East Lothian
Staying power
Coverage of the SNP’s budget examines income tax (your report,14 January). Some pay more; others pay a bit less.
What does taxation deliver? An NHS free of strikes; world-leading universities; schools where across Scotland pupils achieved better exam results in 2025. If they are disabled or reach a relatively youthful 60-plus taxpayers benefit from emissions-reducing free bus travel. Everyone’s children and grandchildren benefit from free university tuition, and higher taxes enable children of the less fortunate to benefit from breakfast clubs and increased child payments.
SNP budgets always provoke a social phenomenon, already started on the radio phone-ins: some of the higher taxed will threaten to leave Scotland.
Journalists seldom – in fact, never – ask which relocation destination these higher taxed would-be emigrés have in mind. If they seek harmonious and settled lives, a small town or big city south of the Border with Nigel Farage in Downing Street might not suit. The picturesque English or Welsh countryside is largely unavailable, due to Airbnbs.
Within the EU? A cultured town, hillside village, or a Durrells-style Greek idyll? Brexit means no freedom of movement so Europe’s out as an easy choice. Scandinavia? If Scotland’s high taxation is the question, Scandinavia’s not the answer, although fair-minded Scandinavians themselves accept progressive taxation, sharing, and equality. Charming Baltic capitals such as Riga or Talinn? With Putin eyeing them up? Maybe not. Australia? Global warming and wildfires. President Trump’s USA? No. Canada or New Zealand? Vast distances to travel to attend a family funeral or wedding.
Which country has clean seas, pristine beaches and stunning empty wilderness; beautiful heritage towns and villages; clean energy; new rail lines and stations; free bus travel for millions; a distinctive, globally recognised culture; outstanding writers, performers, musicians and festivals; a commitment to Europe; a fair voting system; and the world’s best drink?
As St Peter answered, when Christ asked the Apostles if they would leave Him: “Lord, where would we go?”
Geraldine Prince, North Berwick, East Lothian
Bin Baby Boxes
According to a study by medical journal The Lancet, the “absolute effects” of the Scottish government’s Baby Box scheme, which costs around £8 million per year, “were small”.
In this election year the SNP continually reminds us of all the non-means tested freebies it provides, but given the minimal impact of baby boxes, would the money not be better spent in some other way, for example employing 160 extra nurses or teachers?
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire
Do the job
If Sir Keir Starmer cannot understand that the indicted and impeached President Donald Trump has gone completely rogue he should step aside to let someone capable address the global crisis Trump has created.
I suggest whoever steps forward might start by putting the British Ambassador to the US on a plane to Washington and telling him not to return without an assurance Trump will withdraw from countries he has invaded, pay for the restoration of damage his forces have caused and immediately cease and desist from threatening other nations and states.
Scotland must get out of the toxic union so that we can speak against US expansionism rather than sit under the shadow of the government in London that provides tacit support to the USA in any and all circumstances.
Ni Holmes, St Andrews, Fife
Hardly absurd
Jill Stephenson claims the SNP and Greens are all about biological men entering women’s spaces such as changing rooms, something she describes an “erosion of women’s rights” (Scotsman Letters, 13 January). But when I have pointed out to her previously that this would mean maintenance men not being able to enter such spaces or even mothers being able to change their infant son’s nappy in a female toilet. she has dismissed this reality as “a reductio ad absurdum” – which is a posh way of saying “your premise is too absurd to be taken seriously”.
Yet that is what the Supreme Court judges have said in their judgment. They have stated that the definition of a biological male applies regardless of age (para 174). When that was pointed out to the Equality and Human Rights Commission it was forced to withdraw its interim guidance issued after the judgment which stated that children under ten didn’t count – ie small boys could enter a women’s toilet.
If you want a complete ban on biological males in female-only spaces – as For Women Scotland advocate – then you have to explain how you propose to resolve the many anomalies this will create. For instance, will a midwife be breaking the law if she brings a newborn son from the neo-natal unit in a maternity hospital to be beside his mother in a female-only ward?
Robert Menzies, Falkirk
No ID, yeah?
The UK government does a U-turn on proposals that digital IDs become compulsory for anyone wishing to work in the UK.
Many of us had forgotten about the idea because we suspected it would all be dropped anyway.
Yet another U-turn from a government that seems to be making a habit of U-turns, which is no way to run a country!
William Ballantine, Bo'ness, West Lothian
Money for nothing
I am impressed by the factual and informative letters from Ian Moir, who regularly points out that wind electricity is highly subsidised (Letters, 14 January).
British electricity prices were among the lowest in Europe in the early 2000s but are now very high by global standards. Only Denmark, Germany and Ireland have more expensive domestic electricity, while UK industry pays at least 50 per cent more for electricity than does most of the rest of Europe.
The real reason is that the wind industry gets billions of pounds of subsidies every year above the strike price. What are they? Constraint payments, Contracts for Difference (CfD) and Renewables Obligations. The government CfD scheme guarantees companies a price for electricity so if the market price falls below this government – or should that be the taxpayer? – steps in to rescue these poor wind companies from economic reality. Since CfD started in 2016 wind power has received £9.1 billion in subsidies.
Politicians, the government and the wind industry are full of smoke and mirrors designed to fudge the true cost of electricity, and blame everyone else for the expensive electricity costs for domestic and commercial consumers, which has resulted in fuel poverty and tens of thousands of job losses.
Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian
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