Autumn Statement all smoke and mirrors

The annual deficit (or surplus) is simply the difference between government total income and total expenditure in any one fiscal year. The national debt is the cumulative amount owed by the government, and is by far the most important factor in longer term national prosperity (or poverty). Of course if there is a relationship, since an annual deficit will increase the total national debt while a surplus will reduce it, but that is the only connection.

In the current fiscal year to end-March 2015 the UK annual deficit is likely to be between £95 million and £100 million, certainly an improvement on the past but still far from satisfactory. The national debt stands at almost £1.4 thousand million, is still rising and will take many years of strong economic prosperity to pay off. Of course almost all independent nations run a national debt, but few have one of such a scale in relation to annual financial performance.

Mr Osborne now boasts that the deficit is only half what it was when he took charge, but it is still at least some years away from being in surplus. And the future position can only get worse as government receipts from income tax, corporation tax and oil revenues fall sharply, while interest costs on the rising debt continue to increase.

In simple terms, it is like an ordinary citizen who already has an expensive overdraft and whose annual spending is higher than his total income, boasting that he has cut the difference by half when that just means that his overdraft is not going up as much as it would otherwise have done. I am sure a great many hard-pressed citizens will relate to that situation in today??s impoverished Britain. But of course I don??t suppose it is something that a comfortable band of multi-millionaires in the Cabinet have ever experienced or will ever have to cope with.

Britain??s economy may well be improving faster than many other nations as claimed but its finances are still in a parlous state and it will take many more years of austerity, whichever party is on power, to return the comfortable affluence we once enjoyed.

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.

Following George Osborne??s Autumn Statement, which corrected an anomaly in the stamp duty bands which has been obvious for decades, Finance Secretary John Swinney has said the Scottish Government has taught the UK Government how to do taxation.

The stamp duty on a house costing £350,000 will cost £12,300 in Scotland compared to £7,500 in the rest of the UK.

What can we expect when Mr Swinney decides the income tax rates?

Alan McNeilage

Greenwood,

Lochwinnoch Road,

Kilmacolm.

On Wednesday evening I attended an academic review on the outcome of the Smith Commission in Glasgow University. The speakers were eminent economists Dr. Angus Armstrong and Professor Duncan MacLennan. The audience were mainly representatives of civic Scotland and a number of interested members of the public like myself. It was interesting that both speakers saw the Smith Commission as being unsatisfactory and only one step in an on-going process toward a stable settlement within the British Isles.

Dr Armstrong was surprised that all income tax was to be devolved while many other taxes, needed for balance,were not. Many economists he consulted felt the same. In his view there was insufficient clarity on borrowing powers and there were too many caveats within the report which could turn out to be contradictory

Professor MacLennan spoke mainly in comparing Scotland to the federal systems in Canada and Australia. In his view the proposed devolution to Scotland was at the top end of the range of powers within the many federal systems throughout the world. He compared the range of tax gathering powers at the various levels of government from national down to local and also considered the probable devolution of significant powers to the English metropolitan areas.

The elephant in the room that was never mentioned was where the Smith proposals and any future steps might take us. There was no talk of how an independent Scotland might fare in the world but in listening to them I suspect that they both see this as the final destination at the end of the road.

DS Blackwood,

1 Douglas Drive East,

Helensburgh.

I worry about the House of Lords in the same way that some people worry about excessive immigration. I??m sure that the majority of our lordships are decent people who feel they can make a contribution to the life of this country. The trouble is there are just too many of them concentrated in one place and, it has to be said, some of them - a minority mind you - seem to be there just for the benefits.

The other problem is that there seems to be no way of reducing or putting a cap on their number s. We have an ageing population. In the past, numbers could be kept in check by the process of natural selection. After some three score years or so a sizeable proportion used to slough off this mortal coil, do the decent thing and die. This created space for younger people coming behind them.

Now it is not unusual for peers to trundle on into their eighties or nineties, with their numbers being swelled daily by new arrivals in the form of retired cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers, the bishops who are always with us, the reduced proportion of hereditaries who are still producing offspring, luminaries from the law, medicine, stage, screen and sport, and the few other people who have got there because they actually have made a major contribution to helping the lives of others in society. For example, people like garbage disposal operatives ( bin-men we used to call them). They do a marvellous job, conscientiously, daily, for little reward and in all weathers. We know the awful consequences for society if for any reason, they down tools and withdraw their labour. Yet how many of them have made it to the House of Lords?

The SNP refuses on principle to accept peerages. It appears that Gordon Brown has resolved to do likewise. When will the Westminster Government implement the promised reforms? Or will it wait until the House of Lords has grown so large that the only possible solution is abolition? Come to think of it, maybe that is the only sensible solution. We??re just too ingrained in the status quo to realise it.

Dr Ann McClintock,

19 Grahams Point,

Argyll.