Letters: The rich sharing their wealth could wipe out hunger

Last year, after a Black Friday surge in Amazon’s stock value, the wealth of CEO Jeff Bezos surpassed the $100 billion mark, making him more than $10bn richer than the world’s second wealthiest man, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

The rise of the $100bn man is a further milestone in the unprecedented growth of social inequality worldwide. Bezos’s wealth would make the robber barons of the 19th century green with envy. Worldwide, the five richest billionaires own as much wealth as half of the world’s population, some 3.5 billion people.

Bezos acquired his wealth through the exploitation of his 300,000-strong international workforce. Amazon workers make as little as $233 per month in India, to an average of just $12.40 an hour in the United States.

The UN estimates that it would cost $30bn to solve world hunger by providing 862 million people with food for a year. The World Health Organisation claims just $11bn is needed to halve the number of people without access to clean water. Also $26bn would provide education to every child that does not receive one.

Is it estimated that with $13bn, free maternal and prenatal care could be provided for every mother in the developing world. It would cost $11bn to house each of the 150,000 people who are homeless on a given night in the US. The cost of preventing four million malaria deaths would be $6bn each year.

The total cost for these essential changes would be roughly $97bn.

The vast wealth of the financial oligarchy, expressed in their ownership of massive corporations, must be seized and expropriated, while the complex technologies, supply chains, and advanced transportation systems must be integrated in an organised, planned manner to harness the anarchic force of the world economy and eliminate material scarcity.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

WHICH country does the UK regard as a nuclear threat? Not once have I read or heard anyone state which foreign country is a threat to the security of the four nations of the UK.

The only country under threat, in my view, is Scotland, and that from Westminster which insists nuclear weapons and submarines are stored 30 miles from Glasgow. As a deterrent, they are not.

North Korea was assumed a threat but no more. Even the Donald thinks his country is secure. India, Pakistan, even Iran could not be any threat. I doubt very much even China or Russia would want to start a war with another nuclear country.

Mrs May said she would be quite willing to press the red button. If she did, nothing would happen because she would need the US Government’s negotiated agreement first. And in any case, who the hell wants to start a nuclear war? Any country would not survive, in total, for five minutes. Three nuclear bombs strategically aimed at the UK would put an end to our very existence. So, Gavin Williamson, think on about all in Faslane, including your 8000 employees, as being a deterrent. To what and for how long is the question you obviously have not thought about.

Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife

BE nuclear-free with Trump? That’s what the American President says: his ambition is to make the Korean peninsula “nuclear free”. When, or if, he comes to Scotland, will he do us a similar favour and make us nuclear free also?

No such luck.We have to stay the bull’s eye, in the target, of a Russian retaliation. What’s even worse, we had an idiot minister in the Anglo/Brito government making the statement that, YES, he would be happy using those warheads in a preemptive attack.

So we are now no longer holding those crazy weapons as a deterrent, but now may become the real danger, and threat to the sane world. We never voted for Coulport, it was imposed on us, before we had our own parliament, or any say in the matter.

Feeble Labour back the Tories in this madness, and only the SNP puts not only Scotland first, but Scotland’s safety first. Roll on indyref2.

Iain Ramsay
Greenock

SO the UK Government are to name their new nuclear submarine HMS Agincourt. That will be two fingers held up to the French then. This is English jingoism at its very worst, but should we expect any better? This from a government who like to hark back to a perceived glorious past, but have no idea how to create a better future for all.

We need to get rid of this sorry shower and their WMDs as soon as possible!

Stuart Manson
Paisley

JEREMY Hunt’s warning to Boris Johnson that public criticism could undermine the UK’s Brexit negotiating is just the latest spat in the ever more divided Brexit Cabinet committee.

It is often said that the camel is a horse designed by a committee, so the country must now wait till Theresa May throws open the stable doors to see whether the Brexit horse or a camel emerges.

The Cabinet has failed for so long to choose between the two contenders for the Brexit horse that in desperation the Prime Minister has split it into two teams, apparently each still working on both horses.

This committee is so deeply divided that the most likely outcome will be either four camels or a white elephant.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry