Face the facts: the UK is both broke and broken

Since oil was discovered we have been governed by successive Westminster administrations incapable of strategic or economic planning beyond tomorrow’s newspaper headlines.

The recent abdication of parliamentary procedure whatever the merits of the motion’s phrasing, the promise and then denial of a second debate only confirm the futility of sending our elected representatives south.

HS2 will terminate at Birmingham not Edinburgh.

Were Mr Lakin to access his Government Gateway account HMRC will inform him that fully 12 per cent of his taxes was utilised not on repaying UK Government debt but just the interest thereon.

Rachel Reeves, Jeremy Hunt’s Labour shadow, says the party that wins the next election will have the direst inheritance of an incoming government since the Second World War.

The good folk of Rochdale have elected George Galloway with more votes than the combined total of Tory, LibDem and Labour.

Gerard Lyons, economist to then Mayor Boris Johnson, says the past 14 years have widened the UK’s divisions, and not just those between north and south. “It is London versus the rest of the country, cities versus rural places, coastal communities versus those inland, homeowners versus renters, the old versus the young and the skilled versus the unskilled.”

The UK is broke and broken.

Mr Lakin clings on desperately to “the democratic vote of 2014” and accuses independence supporters of being “ostriches”. Really?

Alan Carmichael, Glasgow.

The state of the nation

WHAT does it say about the state of politics in the UK when the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition are more shocked and concerned about the election of George Galloway to Parliament than they are about the slaughter in Palestine (aided by the use of weapons produced in the UK), the issue which galvanised Mr Galloway’s campaign and resonated with people of all backgrounds in Rochdale ("Sunak to give police more powers to tackle extremists", The Herald, March 2)?

What does it say too about the Prime Minister claiming that peace protesters are sowing seeds of division in the UK whilst failing to call out the racists and Islamophobes in his own party whose sole interest appears to be the creation of division and hatred?

And what on earth possesses Scots to agree to stay part of a country where government-sponsored division and racism is becoming the norm and indifference by both main parties to genocide is entrenched?

Chris Ewing, Cairneyhill, Fife.

• SO Prime Minister Sunak intends to give the police more power to tackle extremists. It is to be hoped that this will allow us at the very least to see Liz Truss, Suella Braverman, Nigel Farage, and Lee Anderson in handcuffs at the earliest possible time.

Dr RM Morris, Ellon.

READ MORE: Labour and the Tories have reduced politics to a sorry state

READ MORE: Our politicians must stop the posturing and get real on Gaza

READ MORE: Yes, devolution is failing. But the solution is indy

A permanent protest

THE economy of the UK has been going downhill since the days of Margaret Thatcher irrespective of which of the two major political parties has formed the Westminster government. How gullible, nae moronic, would you have to be to believe that the current Chancellor hinting at future tax reductions would fundamentally change the direction of travel?

It is patently clear that our first-past-the-post electoral system ensures that if the will of the Scottish electorate does not coincide with that espoused by the party that forms the government at Westminster it is simply ignored. Holyrood itself can never function properly while Westminster holds the purse strings.

I think it is time that we simply stop playing along with a system that patently works against the interests of the majority of all UK citizens, not just us Scots, the proof of that being the progressive uneven distribution of wealth in society. I think that all SNP MPs returned at the next General Election should go to Westminster but refuse to enter the building but rather stage a permanent protest at the door, as actually entering the building is obviously pointless.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

Pinhead and boneheads

THE SNP Government has proscribed porridge made from porridge oats as a processed food ("Porridge ban is not a healthy option", The Herald, March 2). Lateral thinking is required “outside the box” of porridge oats. Pinhead oatmeal, also known as steel-cut oatmeal, is unprocessed other than being steel-cut, is traditional, does require to be soaked overnight, and has other uses such as coating fresh herring prior to cooking.

Traditional and reliable Scottish fare, which is more than can be said for the SNP.

William Durward, Bearsden.

Why don't Brits want these jobs?

ON the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show on BBC1 (March 3), the issues of childcare, housing costs and the millions of economically inactive people in the UK were at last aired together on TV and thankfully doused in common sense by Sir Rocco Forte. For example, on the underused British labour force, he said only 23 per cent of staff in his Browns Hotel in London are British, and only 37% of the Balmoral in Edinburgh, even though a chambermaid can make £34k a year.

Availability of required skills and cost of childcare are only two issues and regarding housing, he pointed out that current housebuilding figures don't even match the number of legal immigrants every year.

I looked it up. Last year there were 54k "irregular" illegal immigrants in the UK, 1.2m legal immigrants and 508k migrants leaving the UK, meaning a net additional 692k legal immigrants.

This might make uncomfortable reading for those who see immigration as a good thing, but if it means our own people won't do what are often well-paid jobs, something isn't right. And I say this as someone who, at school and as a student, worked in four commercial kitchens (including one in Pennsylvania), numerous pubs, a woodyard, a building site, a brick factory, bin lorries, a hospital, a bank in Norway, the Post Office and fruit farms, including a Burgundy vineyard.

And I would do it all again if I absolutely had to.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven.

US faces an awful choice

ONE recently heard US President Joe Biden refer in a statement to Ukraine when he should have been referring to Gaza. That could be regarded as an unfortunate verbal slip. However, that misstatement is one of a number and makes one concerned about the future of the western world when its leading member is headed by someone of the age of Mr Biden with a susceptibility to verbal and physical episodes. He is leading an administration which has taken the US into a situation where it is providing Israel with weapons used to devastating effect in Gaza and at the same time the US is now flying in aid to Gaza and dropping it by parachute.

One wonders what President Putin and President XI Jinping are making of the performance of President Biden. It verges on the incomprehensible that the Americans could present themselves later this year in November with a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The phrase "between the devil and the deep blue sea" springs to mind.

Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.

George Galloway celebrates victory at the Rochdale by-election (Image: PA)

My despair over Gaza

I CANNOT do other than believe that, since October 7, many tears have been shed and anger expressed at the horror we witness nightly on our television screens unfolding in Gaza and on the West Bank.

I have already questioned in your Letters Pages the role the Church of Scotland ought to have played in this unfolding tragedy. One would have thought that the Kirk, and of course other Christian denominations, would have seen their role as being the nation’s conscience. But no. Silence, unless we go looking on their web pages. And how many knew to do that?

I despair at the Christian community’s failure to “shout from the rooftops”, to condemn what is being done in our name by way of supplying arms and offering moral support to such a violently extremist right-wing Israeli Government. Especially since there is no Westminster Opposition worthy of the name.

We may or may not be on the verge of a temporary ceasefire in Gaza (“Israel ‘signed on’ to Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal”, The Herald, March 4) but we can surely never ever put behind us the 30,000 deaths and the inevitably-continuing horror described in your article.

John Milne, Uddingston.