Windfall tax will only be a short-term sticking plaster

Panellist Marina Purkis was correct in saying he needs to take real steps to get there. That includes not alienating his core support, supporting strikers and engaging with real and effective policies.

Starmer’s energy fix till April is at best half-hearted. It won’t solve anything, he has no plan for controlling energy prices across the board. Small business, pubs, restaurants and most of the high street will be forced to close in the face of extortionate price increases – one pub’s bills quoted to be rising from £45k to £120k plus.

The Tories have gone walkabout, they’re doing nothing except allowing the whole economy to be trashed by energy producers. The market is broken.

It’s ludicrous that inflated gas prices – just one relatively minor part of the energy production sector – are used to set the price of all other sectors. With no increase in production and supply costs, this has transferred to the excessive and obscene profits. While reclaiming these excess profits through a windfall tax is essential, that is only a temporary sticking plaster to a grievous wound.

Current government policy is to set communities against each other through individual handouts to try to placate them – those on benefits, pensioners, the sick, various business sectors etc. The only real and practical solution is to recognise the whole market is broken, that it is intrinsically wrong that multi-billions of pounds have been hived off to shareholders that should have been reinvested in the infrastructure that has effectively been dismantled or left to wither on the vine (water, sewage and other privatised companies the same) and to return the sector to full public control and accountability through national common ownership.

This a solution from the top that alleviates energy poverty and excessive cost for everyone, every market sector, every business we need to help to save our economy and our living standards.

Thatcher’s real legacy is revealed as the catastrophe most sensible people always knew it would be. We must bite the bullet and sort it now.

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh

HAPPILY, I am able to apologise immediately to Mr Brian Lawson for any hurt caused by the gentle ribbing in my letter published on Wednesday. I certainly did not intend to ridicule his views – merely to cast a different light on the subject and perhaps inspire a change of opinion.

I wrote in what I thought was a humorous style having been given the confidence to think Mr Lawson would take it in the way intended by his statement that he had

stood for election over a 25-year period – I felt sure he would have had some very robust exchanges in that time. I certainly have had some interesting experiences on the doorsteps in my over 50 years of campaigning.

Turning to the subject matter of my original letter, which was to pass on the brilliant news that any referendum organised by the Scottish Government would be entirely legal due to the provisions in the Treaty of Union.

That should be extremely welcome news to all independence voters. We are constantly bombarded with statements from every direction that we need a UK court decision in order to hold a legal referendum. Reassurance of this statement being yet another lie needs to be spread far and wide.

I am sure that every worried voter met on the doorstep will be very happy indeed to know that a legal vote can be organised straightaway – they won’t be concerned about when the Claim of Right and the principle of the Common Good were enacted, merely that we have the right and we can move forward.

Although I am equally sure that they would be hopping mad at having had to wait over more than 300 years to exercise these rights.

Today, that step forward has been taken in Edinburgh to assert that we, the people, do indeed have power over any government, foreign or domestic.

The Edinburgh Proclamation has been read out and a Notice to Quit issued to the UK Government by the Scottish Sovereignty Research Group and Salvo.

The whole readership of The National will want to sign this proclamation [on salvo.scot and elsewhere] and build the Scottish Liberation Movement into the juggernaut that will free us all from the tyranny and bondage of the implacable financial burdens that we are currently carrying.

Sarah Mackenzie

Lochbroom

I WAS reading all about these vast increases in energy bills and it said the Russian gas pipeline to Europe had closed operations.

Are these increased high energy costs in the UK because the sanctions of Putin’s Russia on the West are maybe far more effective than sanctions on Putin’s Russia by the West?

I Archibald

Edinburgh