WE need to be constantly asking the question why. Why, for example, can’t we produce enough doctors nurses and other healthcare professionals to satisfy the requirements of the NHS? Is it because the UK is alone amongst countries in not having enough citizens bright enough to train for these professions. Why do we have to rely on Poles to do our plumbing? Why are teachers in short supply? Surely in one of the most advanced countries with one of the most productive economies we should be able to take care of ourselves rather than importing specialist labour as well as seasonal migrant workers?

Why does this happen? Why has government allowed this to happen? Why in Scotland are we entering another round of political bickering about increases in personal taxation to fund public services that are woefully inadequate at the same time as there is a Government sponsored arms fair down south, the profits from which will not trickle-down into the general economy but end up in a few select pockets?

It all boils down to money or the lack of it, yet when you look at money all it is is just pieces of paper churned out at will by a few private organisations having no intrinsic value whatsoever other than what speculators decide it is worth. The nose-dive taken by sterling in recent months bears testament to how ephemeral and precarious fiat money systems can be. To paraphrase Glasgow’s slogan “People make the UK” and without the co-operation and labour of all of us sterling and the economy would collapse, yet we collectively do not control something as basic as our national currency.

If Government controlled the creation of money rather than the banks as is the current status, then there need be no personal taxation at all, no shortage of doctors, no cuts in social care, no squeeze on education budgets, no funnelling of debt interest payments into the coffers of the rich, no trillions supposedly lying off-shore but actually being re-invested in property speculation. The list is endless as all poverty, all cuts, all waiting-lists are deliberate creations not inevitable facts of life.

Prince George started his education last week in a school that will never experience staff shortages or lack of resources. Why when it is a fact of life for us?

We already have a majority shareholding in the RBS and our central bank, the Bank of England, is supposedly nationalised unlike the USA’s Fed, which is privately owned so why does the Government not take the next step and nationalise the RBS and take possession of sterling? The answer to that is that HM Government is there to control us the people, not the country.

It always was and evermore shall be about money. Despite a decade of austerity and falling standards of living for most of us those at the top are still doing very well thank you. Shortages such as I have mentioned affect the majority of us but those who control sterling and through it the country are unaffected by them and they simply don’t care.

David J Crawford,

1 Finaven Gardens, Bearsden.

MARGARET Thatcher promised “a property owning democracy”. “Something to leave to your children”, she said. Houses were sold at knock-down prices and councils were not allowed to use the money to rebuild.

The right to buy coincided with the mushrooming of the private care home. Witness the spiv Ally Fraser in Auf Wiedersehen Pet rubbing his hands at the profits to be had from all the “old dears.” Some old people have been very disappointed to find their home being sold, frequently to a private landlord to pay for care home fees.

More than 40 per cent of ex-council houses are now in the hands of private landlords. The problem is particularly acute in London and the south-east of England where rents are extortionate and social cleansing is the result. Homelessness is rife. Well over a million people are on council waiting lists in England and it’s well over 100,000 in Scotland. Tens of thousands of families are in bed and breakfast accommodation and of course thousands sleep rough. Something I never witnessed not even after the bombing.

Of course Mrs Thatcher and her supporters were to blame. Of course Ruth Davidson again is quiet on Tory policy. She does not mention that the right to buy is still in place and is abolished only in Scotland.

Myra Gartshore,

16 Barloan Place, Dumbarton.