THE Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has predicted the decline in trade since Brexit will continue. The OBR forecasts show that imports and exports are down 15% on where they should be had Brexit not occurred. This information was quietly released on the day of Rishi Sunak’s Budget.

The Tories decided to punish those on benefits. Universal Credit will go up by 3.1%. The Resolution Foundation warns that this will push one million people into poverty. That means more debt, not being able to eat properly and having no ability to keep warm. The reason for the cut is that inflation is at 6.2%, its highest for 30 years. Additionally, pasta has gone up by 9.4%, milk by 11.1%, and electricity bills by 23%.

Rishi Sunak is the richest man in parliament. He refused to say whether or not he would personally benefit from the increased share price of Moderna due to its government Covid-19 vaccine contracts. The hedge fund he co-founded was a major investor in Moderna. However, his investments are allegedly in a blind trust.

The dire financial costs of Brexit were well known and predicted precisely by experts. These were dismissed by the lying Tory Brexiteers who are now running the country. This dire financial situation could be remedied in Scotland with independence. However, there is no serious campaign for this and no leadership to bring it about.

Workers in Scotland must now mobilise to remove the Tories and bring about liberation. This can’t be done through the existing structures and tainted institutions. It must invoke George Buchanan’s right of resistance.

Alan Hinnrichs

Dundee

THE ever-worsening energy price/supply crisis has intensified the debate on the energy mix requirements of our modern society.

Even with efficiency measures, it is clear that our energy requirements are on an upward trajectory. Added to this is the priority of reducing and ultimately eliminating our greenhouse gas emissions, in order to tackle the climate crisis.

So how do we balance these priorities at the lowest cost and environmental impact? My advice would be to call the engineers.

If you want to provide a mass transport link across a major river, you would call in the engineers, tell them what you wanted to move back and forth across the river, then leave them to work out and report back with the most cost-efficient solution. My belief is that we need to follow this route to supply our short, medium and long-term energy needs.

A list of energy requirements given to engineers might be as follows:(1) 100% of the energy supply for the UK will be from zero-carbon systems located within the UK. (2) The generation, storage and delivery systems will be reusable/recyclable to reduce the lifetime costs and environmental impact of systems. (3) Zero-carbon power systems capable of replacing all the internal combustion engine and gas turbine systems currently utilised in the UK, with particular regard to eliminating air, water and noise pollution.

I would contend that the above list of requirements could already be met by technology which is currently available for deployment. The real sticking point is the fear in the political arena of facing down the incumbents in the UK power and energy delivery industries.

If, as is my preference, Scotland was to choose independence, then Scotland could apply the above-mentioned criteria, and at a much faster rate, as Scotland is already further down the energy decarbonisation route than the UK as a whole.

Jon Southerington

Deerness

IT seems to me, after reading the report on UK austerity and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, in The National, that there is something seriously wrong with successive UK Governments.

The fact that small EU countries, such as Latvia and Estonia and other Baltic states, have the highest percentage pay growth rate in Europe and leaving the UK well behind by up to £4000 PA over the last 15 years, poses some real pertinent questions.

The one fundamental thought that comes to mind is the background education of most of the parliamentary ministers and perhaps ordinary members, particularly those of the Conservative Party.

I can remember, back in the day, when Labour Party contestants were of working class and understood the people whose vote they needed. So much so, that if the likes of my granny and grandparents needed a lift to the polling station they were given a lift in an available car.

So, getting back to the Tory classes and education, it is becoming more common that, such as the current government, most are from the same public schooling and follow up university, namely the Oxford University.

This has created an incestuous clique consisting of what has turned out to be a gang of insolent, self-centered, money-grabbing fortune-hunters who have used the political system to furnish their own selfish needs. Putting it generously of course.

The public schooling of the likes found in Eton produces students taught with the skills of an acute selfish means of survival in a world where everything is provided with the least effort of gain. This is the Tory, this is Johnson, this is his UK Government.

But, this is not, and never will be ... Scotland!

Alan Magnus-Bennett

Fife

I too have a gripe with the Duolingo Gaelic course. They marked me wrong for translating “thòn” as “arse” and insisted on “buttocks”.

And for “mo chreach!” they wanted “my goodness!” and not “Aw fur f***’s sake!”.

Jack Foley

Hamilton