WHEN is First Minister Humza Yousaf going to comprehend that the success of the SNP hinges on the attitude and opinions of the Scottish electorate and not on the whim of his dedicated SNP supporters? We are currently witnessing the progressive collapse of the party which is in a self-destruct gear and on a delusional independence road to nowhere. Dennis Forbes Grattan, Aberdeen.
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Since the SNP has been in power our nation has got, poorer, dirty and less secure. They have damaged our economy, bogged businesses down, let our urban centres go to ruin and have presided over a rampant drug culture. We are all poorer and less secure than we were 15 years ago. You don’t need to take our word for it; just look outside.
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More knocking copy from a Scottish nationalist. Leah Gunn Barrett (Letters, 23 October) can’t tell us how Scotland would fare better outside the UK; she just “knows” it would. Her latest mission is to disparage Labour, now that it has shown in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election that it is a serious challenger to the SNP. Perhaps Ms Barrett would explain from where her secessionist Scotland would find the means to achieve her ambitions? Let her research how much it would cost to “renationalise public services”, for example. How many billions? Scotland already faces a £1 billion financial black hole, yet her apparent solution is to “increase taxes on wealth”, at the very point when even the SNP is realising how counterproductive that could be. With the SNP assuming more spending commitments at its recent conference and pledging to incur even more debt by freezing council tax, it is hardly likely to be able to improve public services — which have in any case deteriorated markedly on its watch — or to invest much. Disparaging the UK is easy in times of economic difficulty, but it is worth noting that the G7 country whose economy is predicted by the IMF to have the slowest growth this year is not the UK but Germany, the dominant force in the EU. The IMF’s view is that consumption in the UK is stronger than expected, Brexit uncertainty has reduced and the March global banking stress has dissipated. As for Ms Barrett’s persisting in calling Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland “England’s remaining colonies”, the juvenile inaccuracy of this has been pointed out frequently but indoctrinated Scottish nationalists are too blinkered to understand their error. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.
Mr Yousaf’s speech at the SNP conference was high in aspiration content but very low in factual detail. Two leading items on his wish list were a council tax freeze and the Scottish Government issuing bonds to fund capital spending. The Fraser of Allander Institute estimates that the council tax shortfall could be over £400 million. On the issuing of bonds, the Scottish government were unable to say how much would be borrowed or give any details as to how the scheme would work. More pie-in-the-sky dreams from the SNP. Jim Houston, Edinburgh.
The council tax freeze announced by Humza Yousaf will be welcomed by every householder in Scotland. But I would say it will not be welcomed by local councils. When he was in charge of Scotland’s finances John Swinney had council tax frozen for nine years, which is part of the reason councils are now struggling financially. The councils will now have to rethink their plans for next year, and it looks like more cuts to services will be on the way. Ian Balloch, Grangemouth.
£35m spent solely on redesigns for already over-budget ferry – STV N...