Impossible dream
Regarding “Nursery system ‘impossible for many working parents’ ” (20 February), this should have been obvious from the start. The SNP is very good at coming up with attractive schemes, almost always “free”, to curry favour with the electorate.
After almost 11 years of SNP rule, the hollowness of many of these promises are now being exposed. We need a booming economy to pay for all these great SNP ideas but they have been unable to provide it, so it should come as no surprise that failure is the new norm for the SNP.
The list of other devolved areas with problems is growing longer daily, such as the NHS, transport, education,taxation, housing, the police, the fire service and free personal care. We may have the brand new Queensferrycrossing but we also have potholes in every other Scottish road. It is the entire SNP system that is now “impossible” for many Scots. (DR) GERALD EDWARDS
Broom Road, Glasgow. Labour is in no position to lecture the SNP on Tory austerity, (Henry L Philip, Letters, 20 February) as on 13 January 2015, 28 Scottish Labour MPS, including Ian Murray, voted with the Tory UK government for £75 billion of cuts and tax rises. Even at the general election last year, Labour were still committed to retaining £7bn of Tory welfare cuts, hitting low-paid families, despite all the damage this has done to our economy and wages, with the resultant additional pressures on our public services.
Apart from Westminster’s ongoing cuts to the Scottish budget, the figures quoted by Mr Philip ignore the fact that more money is going directly to schools from the Scottish Government, and since the formation of Police Scotjust land councils now contribute much less to cover policing costs.
Mr Philip also misses out two crucial points over Edinburgh’s council budget settlement. Edinburgh and Aberdeen are bottom of the average funding mechanism thanks to a long-established deal between Cosla, which is still largely Labour dominated, and the then Labour / Lib Dem Scottish Executive, which was partially mitigated by John Swinney in 2011 to give Edinburgh a better deal, and the SNP also gave councils much more flexibility on how they apportion their budget compared to Labour’s ringfenced straitjacket.
FRASER GRANT Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh