THE UK Treasury is set to rake in a bonanza windfall from VAT applied to our gas and electricity bills while struggling households are worried about how they can find an extra £693 per annum, the sum by which the typical bill will increase.
Average consumers, who in April will be paying almost £2000 a year, will be bolstering the Treasury’s coffers by almost £100 in VAT payments each year, meaning the £200 the UK Government lends us will be clawed back in VAT payments alone within two years. However, bill-payers are still being asked to pay it back again at £40 per year for five years.
So much for Boris Johnson’s claim VAT on gas and electricity bills could be ditched after Brexit.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson's Brexit promises on energy exposed amid death warning
This situation is doubly galling for Scots.
Scottish wind farms produce more electricity than we use, but we are being asked to pay 32% more for our electricity, despite gas not being used in wind power generation.
While gas fields in Scottish waters produce 50% of ALL gas requirements for the whole of the UK, in April Scots will be asked to pay an additional 81% per unit to buy back our gas. Yes, that’s correct – 81% per unit.
Yet again it is the disabled and vulnerable, the elderly and low-income families that will suffer the most, and unfortunately the life expectancy rate between affluent and deprived areas will be widened.
If only Scotland had the opportunity to be like our Scandinavian neighbours Norway, Denmark and Sweden and give priority to equality and wellbeing.
Iris Graham
Edinburgh
WHILE Scots face rocketing energy prices our gas, oil and wind power are being squirreled away by big multinationals and sold back to us for obscene profits.
This 54% energy price increase that Scottish consumers and businesses are being asked to pay compares to only 4% for French customers.
I’m sure that if our “Auld allies” faced this rip-off they would be on the streets.
Jo Bloomfield
Edinburgh
I WANT to thank Dr Mark McNaught from the SSRG for his letter you published on Sunday in which he supplied answers to several questions about membership of EFTA of which my uncertain knowledge had restrained me from previously and enthusiastically supporting the idea of EFTA membership, shortly after we gain independence.
His points are well made. Membership of EFTA would provide us with what we really need – trade with the EU – would cause minimal problems regarding the Scottish border with England, and would not rule out full membership of the EU at a later date after we have (a) had a full debate on the rival merits of these two forms of membership, and (b) seen the result of changes in the structure of the EU, which seem to be under consideration at this precise moment.
Hugh Noble
Appin
ONE detail in Michael Fry’s article on the last years of Mary Queen of Scots calls for criticism: “Mary … thought killing a Protestant ruler could be justified: she did it herself, after all, to one of her consorts” (Plots, more plots, exile and execution, Feb 7).
Though the question has been debated continuously for four-and-a-half centuries, Mary’s actual part (if she had any) in the murder of Darnley has never been ascertained, and surely never will be. Certainly, a statement that she “killed” one of her consorts is impossible to justify.
Mr Fry of course does not mean that she actually performed the murder, but there is neither proof nor even strong evidence that she initiated it: the most that can be seriously argued as a possibility is that she passively connived at it.
Furthermore, Darnley was not a “ruler” as Elizabeth was. He nominally held the Crown Matrimonial, but never made the slightest attempt to take an active part in government: the Queen was obliged to have a metal stamp made of his signature for official documents, as he never bothered attending the council meetings at which matters of state were discussed.
Obviously this fact does not mitigate the crime of his assassination; but Darnley was no Elizabeth, and it is a historical error to equate his murder with the Babington plot.
Derrick McClure
Aberdeen
I’M with Owen Kelly (Letters, Feb 7) and his take on the unsavoury, offensive and unfunny alleged comedian Jimmy Carr, an immediate switch-off for me against whom I’d rather face a blank screen on a broken computer.
Don’t really want to know, but wonder if he first took to the stage having discovered he had a funny laugh, therefore decided to let the world enjoy it, or did he develop the funny laugh because he is simply not funny?
Tom Gray
Braco
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