Chancellor Rishi Sunak's £30 billion boost is a drop in the ocean

While a seemingly large sum, when one looks at the potential economic collapse coming down the line, this is unfortunately akin to using a pea shooter against an elephant.

With the OECD predicting four million unemployed, bringing the unemployment rate to 11 per cent, what the Chancellor has done is temporarily protect jobs and livelihoods rather than providing the stimulus needed to guarantee these jobs in the long-term and get the economy moving again.

READ MORE: Shona Craven: Tories need to keep calm and make up some catchier slogans

We have seen VAT reduced to5% for the hospitality sector, but this is a fraction of the across-the-board cut that was made in response to the 2008 global financial crisis.

What we need is major investment to rebuild the economy and yet we have had the paltry amount of less than £10bn being used for housing decarbonisation and green homes.

There is an immense amount of capital at very low prices for the Government to borrow and invest, and this will not always be there.

The economy was already stuttering in the first quarter and has now fallen off a cliff, with the OECD predicting the UK economy will take the biggest hit in the industrialised world this year. And that is before we fully exit the EU single market and the inevitable economic challenges that creates.

We need a genuine New Deal, with billions pumped into the economy through additional borrowing if we are not to leave an economic and social wasteland for both this and future generations.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh

IF you live in England then Boris Johnson says care homes did not follow procedures – it’s their fault.

If you live in Scotland, Jackson Carlaw says it is the fault of the Scottish Government It is everybody’s fault.

Care homes have been allowed to be seen as a cash cow – great profit to be made at the expense of very low or minimum pay for care staff and the use of volunteer good-hearted people/organisations providing extras.

We have allowed care homes to become profit-making industries – staff cut to bare minimum and moved around at will, possibly taking infection with them, and mostly paid minimum wage on temporary/zero-hours contracts for one of the most important jobs there is.

READ MORE: Jackson Carlaw squirms on Sky when asked about Scots virus fight

Care homes do not have enough qualified nurses who know about and can provide barrier nursing.

So when the very best of carers did their very best with lack of PPE – limited staff, no sick pay in contract, and in some cases bosses who did not listen to concerns of staff – staff working their socks off are to be blamed.

Now that we have a situation where in England the Tories voted by 133 not to provide weekly testing for staff and all six Scottish Tory MPs voted against testing, we have Jackson Carlaw having to find something else to complain about.

I cannot for the life of me see the difference between being treated for cancer or mental health issues and being treated for dementia (the largest number in care homes) or other age-related conditions, but you don’t have to sell your home to be treated for cancer of mental health problems.

You could go on a world cruise more cheaply than some of these homes are charging per week.
Winifred McCartney
Paisley

THE National is a source of views and thoughts that build up until the only way to release the tension is to write a letter. On July 7 Iain Black wrote on the use of narrative evidence in changing people’s minds, ie, we are story-telling beings. This was a valuable analysis and succinctly ties together the principles of imagination, or empathy as it is now called, and the techniques of putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and always emphasising the positive.

With this positivity in mind I agree with the letter on July 9 from Alan Magnus-Bennett, which is appreciative of the long letter by Andy Anderson (July 7), who tells that he voted SNP with his first vote and Green with his second. This is my own position.

When we are independent I will vote Green with both votes.

Enough of the Mr Nice Guy. As a member of the Green Party which is an international movement with clear policies and important aims, I was most unhappy about Kevin McKenna’s description July 8 of the Greens as “a vanity project”. This puts your correspondent in the same pigeon-hole as those Scotsman letter writers that show their distressed psyches in their abuse of Nicola Sturgeon.
Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell

KENNY MacAskill has been a loose cannon since returning. My view is that telling voters to vote for another party even for strategic reasons but without the approval of the party leadership is grounds for being tossed out.

READ MORE: Kenny MacAskill urges Scots to consider voting against SNP

He can take his ego problems elsewhere for me. He wouldn’t be missed.
Henry McVey
via thenational.scot