WHICH country is Suella Braverman referring to when she says “our country”?

I can only assume she is talking about England when she stated that “people coming here illegally do possess values which are at odds with our country”.

In that one statement alone she has posed two more questions, namely “people (immigrants) arriving illegally”.

I thought immigrants from any country had a legal right, recognised internationally, to arrive at any country of their choice. So where has the “illegal” accusation come from?

Secondly, what are the “at odds” she again is referring to? Are they cultural because of the different countries involved? Similarly, it might be some form of religious odds, for the same reasons.

Perhaps it’s the mode of Middle Eastern or African dress that Braverman has a problem with., all may I add, with a total obvious disregard for her own ancestral background.

Any “odds” involved already exist in her country, in my newly adopted country, and in Wales and Northern Ireland. This so-called United Kingdom has many different religions, all exercised in peaceful conditions, as are the modes of dress seen up and down our high streets where we can find many forms of food being sold that arrived with the decades of migration these four countries have seen to date.

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I cannot help thinking that Braverman is not concerned or has even considered the existing harmony that the United Kingdom enjoys with its multicultural population. Her only reasons for the migration policies she has created appear to be simply bound up in some form of Tory racism.

Humza Yousaf , Scotland’s First Minister, has demonstrated he has no fears about immigration by demonstrating his own religious beliefs and culture – not even privately but publicly.

Scotland welcomes people from any country, even England, and should be allowed its own migration policy.

Alan Magnus-Bennett

Fife

KEIR Starmer has flip-flopped on renationalising energy, first pledging to do so, then not, and now vowing to create a public company, GB Energy, powered with Scottish renewables. And Ian Murray, his faithful Scottish minion, claims Scotland will prosper under a Labour government.

It’s the same old story.

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The UK feasts vampirically on Scotland’s energy to resuscitate its moribund economy, bleeding Scotland dry. Scots are penalised with higher bills, no new jobs or businesses are created from the renewables bonanza and Scotland gets zero revenue because it allgoes south.

To think this will change just because another BritNat party gains power in London is a fantasy. English Labour knows that Scottish renewables have the potential to dwarf the income the UK got from our oil and gas, which is why they won’t let us go.

It’s classic colonialism with economic exploitation the cornerstone. The Union has resulted in Scotland being underdeveloped and poor.

It’s why the Scottish economy lags far behind our prosperous Nordic neighbours, and why more than a fifth of Scots live in poverty.

Our assets have been sold off to profiteering foreign conglomerates with the Scottish people receiving nothing in return. After our oil was stolen, the second great energy rip-off is underway.

Meanwhile, the coloniser tells us that we can’t survive without the UK’s largesse and the ridiculous GERS, concocted by Westminster, reinforces the lie.

The biggest threat to the British state is the Scottish people realising that sovereignty lies with them, not with the feudal British ruling class or corporate elites.

Reclaiming our sovereignty means reclaiming our energy, land, ports, transport, health, education, civil rights, foreign and economic policy. It means reclaiming our future. Until we do, the plunder will continue.

Leah Gunn Barrett

Edinburgh

IN response to Stan Grodynski’s letter (Apr 25), I would simply say that two wrongs don’t make a right.

Pointing to the past and vast Labour financial nightmare that is PFI [private finance initiative] and to current overspending in UK Government contracts from HS2 to NHS track and trace and even the London Underground does not make the massive, and partly unaccountable, multi-million-pound Port Glasgow ferry situation vanish into a Scotch mist.

Pointing to the two so far rather unreliable UK aircraft carriers is not a good idea from a Scottish point of view as they were actually assembled in Scotland.

We will have to keep our fingers and toes crossed that the Port Glasgow ferries do not suffer a similar fate when they are eventually in service.

READ MORE: Paying massive bill for delayed ferries will limit our other spending

I remember raising the PFI scheme, at a public meeting, with my then Labour MSP Wendy Alexander probably more than 20 years ago.

I told her then she was buying new schools and hospitals with a government credit card and something very close to payday loans rather than a preferable not-for-profit scheme.

Auditor general Stephen Boyle said last year that £128.25 million of public money paid to Ferguson Marine is unaccounted for.It is an amount more than the estimated cost of the coronation of King Charles.

The largest luxury cruise ships currently sailing the seascan accommodate over 6000 passengers and over 1500 crew. They cost around £1000 million to construct and can be completed in about two years.

They are very many times larger than our two ferries and infinitely more complex to design and build but apparently cost only just over twice as much.

It appears that the Port Glasgow yard has a direct debit with unlimited access linked to the Scottish Government’s bank account and given that the ferries will eventually have to be completed, almost regardless of cost, the only variable in this equation is what will be the final bill to the taxpayers of Scotland.

Let us by all means remind the public of the financial disaster that is PFI, and the SNP certainly need to make a lot more of that fact and make it more often.

The Port Glasgow ferries are on a smaller scale but sadly will continue to be political millstones around the neck of the Scottish Government for some time to come.

Brian Lawson

Paisley