No10credibilitystretched

Boris Johnson is a massive liability that neither the Conservative Party, nor the British people can afford.

His political inexperience shows through repeatedly, he is little more than a jumped-up journalist.

His lack of any real political background has encouraged and enabled the current climate of corruption and sleaze to proliferate through the COVID PPE and Test and Trace debacles.

The Old School Tie is strangling the government’s credibility and dragging it deeper and deeper into the mire of sleaze and corruption.

Former minister Johnny Mercer recently described “Boris Johnson’s government as the most distrustful, awful environment I have ever worked in”, “Almost nobody tells the truth.”

Johnson’s former boss, Max Hastings, who edited the Daily Telegraph, said Johnson “would not recognise truth, if confronted by it in a identity parade!”

He continued Boris Johnson “is unfit for national office because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification.”

Hastings was prophetic in saying “his premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability.”

Remember his government has repeatedly tried to break the law, even international law.

On PPE contracts, cronies have been enriched with million pound contracts, and a recent report on race, was reputedly rewritten by No 10, and greeted with disbelief by expert bodies quoted in the report, who were not even consulted.

Bearing in mind the latest responses from former insider Dominic Cummings, and the ongoing civil war in Downing Street with unelected Carrie Symonds emerging as the dominant figure, the comment on “order and stability” by Max Hastings, remains relevant.

Andrew Milroy and Singapore have some of the highest life expectancy figures in the world, 85 and 83 years respectively.

Geoff Moore

Alness, Highland

Clearly the topic of the economic consequences of separation causes the first minister great distress and is one that she is desperate to avoid discussing candidly.

The inevitable inference is that Nicola Sturgeon believes the economic consequences of splitting the UK to be disastrous for Scotland and Scots. Otto Inglis

Fife them cycling on the pavements, where they should not be.

Secondly, I would request the police should now wear their cameras on their person, then regularly walk round the pavements of Perth to record all the cyclists who still persist in cycling on the pavements and endangering pedestrians.

The Highway Code states that “You MUST NOT cycle on a pavement”. Janet Martin

There are also no formal timescale that countries must work to as part of this process.

Therefore, a deficit of three per cent of GDP or lower is not an official requirement for entry to the EU.

The EU could grant an independent Scotland a transition period, as it has done with others, that would allow the country to join the EU with an initial budget deficit of more than three per cent.

There is precedent for countries with deficits higher than the three per cent limit being allowed into the EU. Croatia, for example, joined in 2013 when their deficit was at 5.3 per cent of GDP.

The EU’s deficit rules have also been suspended until 2022 due to the economic impact of the pandemic and recent reports state European leaders will not be “overly rigid” when the rules come back into force.

Scotland is not an independent state so it is hard to determine what the deficit of it would be, but what is clear is that a deficit exceeding three per cent of GDP would not prevent an independent Scotland joining the EU. Alex Orr