Experience pays

On Sunday morning I listened to the Sunday Politics Scotland programme on the BBC (3 March) with increasing incredulity over the performance of Derek Mackay, Scotland’s Finance Secretary.

I began to wonder what qualifications or experience he might have gained in commerce or industry to assist him in the management of a

Scottish Budget with an estimated portfolio expenditure of circa £40 billion. With only Wikipedia as a reference point, it became very clear, very quickly that there was no experience apart from being a councillor and career politician that qualifies him for such a position.

Any benefit of the doubt that he might deserve was again quickly dispelled when, in

an answer to a question from Gordon Brewer of the BBC, he referred to “the notional, structural, estimated Scottish deficit” (whatever that is?) and proudly announced that we would keep the pound until the Scottish Government deemed it time to either join the euro or have another currency.

The time must surely have come for even diehard Nationalists to realise that the SNP has no credibility whatsoever around the financial management of the economy, not just right now but in the future. This without raising the work of fiction that was the Independence White Paper of 2014!

RICHARD ALLISON Braehead Loan, Edinburgh