Our industrial decline gives a lie to Better together claims

The Herald Scotland

5 hours ago

The collateral damage has been massive with whole communities, dependent on these jobs, being virtually abandoned. The subsequent social damage is all too obvious with the skilled jobs that sustained previous generations being replaced by a gig economy characterised by short-term, poorly-paid and often unskilled work. The consequences are there in plain sight – growing levels of poverty, lengthening queues at food banks and the scandal of children going to school poorly clothed and hungry.
Of course, a healthy economy depends to a certain extent on inward investment but over the last decades the ownership of a whole host of British companies has moved overseas. Scotland has been hit particularly hard with the loss of control over our once-famous banking and finance sectors. Scottish Power and SSE are largely owned by Iberdola and a Qatari investment company. While foreign capital investment must be welcomed, it brings with it the constant threat of closures and asset-stripping.
Regrettably however, it is not just our industrial and financial sectors that have been taken over but vast sections of our utilities and public services as well. In a famous speech in 1964, Harold Wilson slammed the Tories for glorying in a country "where the rewards go to land racketeers and property spivs". It was Neil Kinnock who described the then Conservative government's privatisation policies as "selling off the family silver". However successive governments both Tory and Labour have overseen vast swathes of our public services falling into private hands. So, for example, there are now 27 separate rail companies operating in England and Wales and 10 water companies.
The long-suffering public have experienced worsening standards of service and ever-mounting costs while huge bonuses and dividends are being paid out to bosses and shareholders. What makes the situation even worse is that the Government pays out vast sums in subsidies to these failing companies. When you consider that in England large sections of welfare, care, probation, prisons, schools and even the NHS are now in private hands then it is no wonder that our national debt continues to soar while public complaints about failing standards rocket. Is this really the future promised by the Better Together campaign?
Eric Melvin, Edinburgh.
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Indy would mean 'normal' politics
John NE Rankin (Letters, June 20) is obviously a stickler for accuracy. He castigates attributing the "ongoing ferry shambles" to Calmac rather than Caledonian Marine Assets Ltd and, ultimately in Mr Rankin's opinion, the SNP Government. He cannot then resist taking a swipe at supporters of this government, which he says "could not run a country". Whether or not the SNP could successfully run an independent Scotland is a matter of opinion.
What is a matter of fact, however, is that Mr Rankin's opinion of the SNP would be tested by the Scottish electorate in all subsequent elections post-independence. The SNP would stand or fall on its record of government alone. In other words, we would have "normal" politics where voting would be dominated by the same concerns as every other Western European democracy.
And, oh yes, the Scottish electorate would not have its near neighbour's choice imposed on it by sheer weight of numbers.
David S McCartney, Forres.
Make Scotland a beacon for peace
Watching the latest developments in the Middle East war from Scotland can make you feel depressed and powerless. Yet Scotland is involved, and should be taking a strong stance against the war.
Firstly Scotland is acting as a staging post for the US bombing missions in Iran and their assistance to Israel's war. Prestwick Airport, which is owned by the Scottish Government, has seen large numbers of US war plans landing and being refuelled on their way to wage war on Iran and to assist the Israeli war effort. It's time the Scottish Government closed this route for war by banning US warplanes at Prestwick.
Secondly if this war in the Middle East extends to a global war Scotland's nuclear base at Faslane will be the number one target for attack and if it's hit then much of Glasgow will disappear surely it's time that this expensive and ineffective nuclear base was closed.
Thirdly Scottish arms industries are supplying the Israeli war machines with vital spare parts and it's time this was ended.
Of course I realise that none of this can be achieved while Scotland is part of the UK and where Keir Starmer's Labour Government is guilty of failing to condemn Israel for genocide in Gaza or the US for its warlike interventions' instead they are grovelling to Donal Trump in the hope of crumbs from his table.
Support for Scottish independence has reached a new high of 56% recently. Now let's turn that into a pro-independence majority in the Scottish elections next year. If that happens the Scottish Parliament should declare our independence and end our complicity in war and instead make Scotland a beacon for peace in the world.
Hugh Kerr, Edinburgh.
• I'm an idiot. I admit it. I believed Donald Trump when he said before his election that there would be no more of America's endless wars far from America's shores.
Instead he has thrown in his lot with America's triad of evil – the military industrial complex, the Neocons, and the powerful Israeli lobby. Benjamin Netanyahu, facing three charges of corruption at home, has achieved his long-held ambition of bringing the United States into a war with Iran.
Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine. He hasn't. He promised to bring peace to the Middle East. He hasn't. Instead he has continued with his country's history of bombing countries and killing thousands. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Vietnam. Cambodia. Laos. Iraq. Somalia. Libya. Syria. Yemen. Iran. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
William Loneskie, Lauder.
Donald Trump (Image: PA)Give us back our licence fee
BBC Scotland boasts that Scotland gets 90% of its licence fee for funding. Given the heavy Anglo-centric bias of the BBC platforms funded by the UK-wide licence fee (BBC News 24, Radios 4 and 5 etc), why don't we have 100% of our licence fee back, and use it in Scotland to make programmes relevant to us, our history and culture?
Scots traversed Europe for 500 years, then the globe for the next 300, so it need not be parochial.
There is also income from BBC Commercial, which brings in a couple of billion pounds a year. Why does Scotland not share in that?
GR Weir, Ochiltree.
Politicising the bus pass
The US Government's cackhanded launch of a 'Trump card' golden visa scheme, its promotional card bearing the visage and signature of that country's current elected head of state, conflates state functions with the personal identity of an incumbent officeholder. That sort of nonsense befits authoritarian tyrannies not democracies
Sadly but somehow not surprisingly, the shambles echoes the sorry state of Scotland's bus passes. Rather than simply calling them bus passes, as happened for decades, the separatist regional government emblazons them with the crux decussata. They carry the irrelevant legend 'Saltire cards' (not even their formal name), predictably stylised without a space.
English bus passes are at least more suitably named to reflect their purpose. They do bear a St George's Cross though: Scottish separatists' divisive identity politics have spread poison down south, alas.
Ought one, though, to call Scotland's bus passes merely 'bus passes'? The scheme's website describes what is properly known as the national entitlement card as 'Scotland's National Smartcard', again grammatically wrong as well as ideologically questionable.
In principle, enabling some local government services to be offered digitally could be a helpful move. But an overtly politicised design combined with the Orwellian whiff of identity cards introduced by the back door bear the grubby fingerprints of nationalist authoritarianism. Witness their unthinking use on buses even by primary school pupils.
Christopher Ruane, Lanark.