Milton view Responding to MSP
Dear Editor Once again I have to take fingers to keyboard to respond to Claire Haughey’s column in your paper on October 25.
She mentions a decade of decline under the Tory government, which has only been in power for over eight years (they are not good at maths).
Her own government has been in power for over 11 years, yet have achieved nothing of any real value.
In eight years of Tory government, about 3.2 million people have found work, (about 1000 for every single day of Tory rule) and unemployment is at its lowest for decades, with employment at its highest for over 40 years. She wants the UK Government to listen to Nationalist plans on the economy, yet who in their right mind would listen to a party that are economically illiterate? Think of the 2014 White Paper and this year’s Growth Commission.
She also wants to lift the benefit freeze, allowing people on benefits to get more from not working than the average wage of workers (about £26,000 per annum). What a disincentive to work that was, and would be again. She attacks the two-child benefit limit, a common Nationalist gripe. Thus her policy is those on benefits can have as many children as they like, paid for by the state, namely workers and taxpayers, who themselves have to budget and only have those children they can afford – madness!
And once again all the Brexit nonsense, and what Scotland voted for. The UK is the EU member, and the UK as a whole voted to leave. Why is this so difficult for them to understand?
Yet only this week, the EU membership rules were highlighted, for potential new members, in the dispute with Italy over their proposed budget. A deficit of about 2.2 per cent of GDP and overall debt of no more than 60 per cent of GDP. Scotland’s current deficit is about eight per cent (£13.4 billion last year) and its debt, after independence, would be about 110 per cent of GDP, about £180billion based on future UK debt projections and Scotland’s share of this on separation.
Thus, an independent Scotland would seriously fail to meet EU financial criteria for joining, in my view for decades if not forever. So leaving the UK would mean Scotland never joining the EU based on these figures.
The final paragraph of her column talks about SNP ‘hope and progressive policies.’ The truth is the SNP are hopeless and any policies they introduce are either bad for the economy (high taxes and business rates) or shambolic, unworkable and usually against public opinion such as the Named Persons Act, smacking and minimum pricing – I could go on.
John Rankin Via email Dear Editor On Sunday, November 11, the people of the UK will commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War.
The British Red Cross has a near 150-year history of supporting people in the UK during times of crisis and, between 1914 and 1918, more than 90,000 people volunteered for the organisation, working as Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADS) in auxiliary hospitals at home and overseas.
Most of these volunteers were women and included such notable figures as the author Agatha Christie, campaigner Vera Brittain, Wimbledon champion Lottie Dod and suffragist Sophia Duleep Singh.
However, the vast majority of First World War volunteers were ordinary women, and men, who cared for the wounded and sick, drove ambulances and acted as clerks, cooks and storekeepers.
Now, your readers can use our new online VAD database to find out if their ancestors, especially women relatives, performed a civilian role during the war.
Searchable by name, location and occupation, the database includes service records and, in some cases, photographs.
Anyone can access the website at www.vad.redcross.org.uk and potentially discover new and illuminating facets to their family history.
Dr Alasdair Brooks British Red Cross Heritage Manager