It’s crazy to give millions in aid to space age China

IT BEGGARS belief that £71 million has been handed to China in so-called aid (Mail). We can’t afford to continue to give pensioners a free TV licence, but there is a bottomless pit of taxpayers’ cash that can be sent abroad.

Any country that can afford to send a rocket to Mars certainly does not need aid. It’s time the Government realised voters are not fools and will not stand for this waste.

Mrs G. BRENNAN, Birmingham.

THE foreign aid budget should be available only for true humanitarian cases, such as earthquakes or the bush fires in Australia.

The Government needs to find ways to pay for the impact of the pandemic on our economy, so we can’t afford this ridiculous foreign aid spending.

SARAH MORRISON, Ormskirk, Lancs.

No money tree

WHY does the Government feel compelled to send vast sums of foreign aid to countries such as China and India?

Their leaders must be laughing all the way to the bank. It is the ordinary people I feel sorry for as I expect little of the money filters down to those who need it most.

If the Government is going to be so profligate with our taxes, we must make sure it benefits the needy and not regimes that spend millions on space research or have economies bigger than our own.

We can’t continue being the money tree for the world. Once our economy has been put in order, then we can be generous.

SIMON DREW, Bracknell, Berks.

WE HAVE given millions to promote human rights and democracy in China. Well, that was money well spent.

S. PERKINS, Grimsby, Lincs.

Crass merchandise

LABOUR has described the SNP’s range of branded face masks as ‘bad taste’, though surely that’s only the half of it. Nicola Sturgeon claims she is above party politics these days but it seems SNP fundraisers are not.

Imagine her vitriolic tweets had the Tories done something so insensitive and, let’s face it, crass.

Well in excess of 4,000 have died with Covid-19 in Scotland – does commercially exploiting the pandemic in any way mourn them or recognise those who battled to save them?

Let’s hope that at her next daily TV appearance Miss Sturgeon announces the withdrawal of this highly inappropriate line of SNP merchandise, accompanied by an unreserved apology.

MARTIN REDFERN, Melrose, Roxburghshire.

Nicola is no saviour

NICOLA Sturgeon may have been portrayed in some sections of the media as Scotland’s saviour, but let’s get some perspective here.

England has approximately ten times the population of Scotland and many larger cities so it’s obvious that the infection rate will be higher. Also, the absence of a credible Labour opposition thanks to comrade Corbyn and his cronies means many former Labour voters disaffected by the Tories have voted SNP.

Miss Sturgeon is deluded if she thinks she will get a better deal from Brussels than she does from Westminster. The pandemic has shown how much better off Scotland is as part of the Union.

JAMES WISHART, Dundee.

Low-profile leader

IT may be true that Labour under its ‘new management’ will see a revival (letters) but surely that will be in England only and not at Holyrood. Does anyone even know the name of the Labour leader in Scotland? Richard something isn’t it? Maybe one of your readers can fill in the blanks.

JIM ADAMSON, Cupar, Fife.

Pot and kettle?

IN not wishing to have another independence referendum, Boris Johnson is dubbed ‘a democracy denier’ by Ian Blackford of the SNP, who also tells the PM that he must ‘respect the will of the Scottish people’.

Well, what about obeying the will of the Scottish people in the 2014 referendum, a result the SNP has never accepted? A classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. WILLIAM BALLANTINE, Bo’ness,

West Lothian

Target the haters

IF the Scottish Government’s Hate Crime Bill ever comes to fruition, I trust that the first people to be prosecuted will be the bannerwaving racists at the Border and the mobs who marched through Glasgow shouting that they hate the English. Perhaps there will be a clause giving exemption to SNP supporters.

ALISTAIR HOWARD, Glasgow.

SURELY the first people to fall foul of the proposed Hate Crime Bill would be the extreme end of

SNP supporters. Stirring up hatred is their objective.

ANN MACDONALD, Nairn.

Give us indy facts

IN order to form a responsible rather than purely political view of Scottish independence, we need to understand the financial consequences. The last we heard on this subject was from Alex Salmond when he told us we were the fourth richest country in the world. Is this still the case?

Without a clear statement on the income of independent Scotland any debate is meaningless. JOHN ASHWORTH, Helensburgh,

Dunbartonshire.