YOUR report of the British Gas owner’s “staggering” profit boost of nearly 900% for six months (July 27), and following the same from other energy companies like EDF and Scottish Power, at a time when energy bills are so high is not only outrageous but deeply damaging to the wellbeing of the whole economy.

Perhaps we shouldn’t blame them, because aren’t they just capitalists doing what they do; chancing their luck under government inaction and ripping off customers as much as they can to feed our money to their shareholders.

The government is supposed to look after the interests of the whole community, yet by allowing unfettered profit-taking these companies are not just effectively “stealing” from consumers faced by a broken energy market that is allowing them to, but also diverting consumer spend from every other market sector – businesses from large to struggling small – and driving them to the very brink of bankruptcy.

In a healthy economy shouldn’t the government be aware of this and look to the interests of the economy as a whole, and not just the major concerns our millionaire government ministers likely have sufficient links with to benefit personally, and likely form a large tranche of donations to their Conservative Party coffers?

This government has failed to protect consumers and taxpayers. Even the public money used to suppress energy prices is not only effectively part of the record profits now being reported, but energy costs are still twice what they were last year, and with standing charges doubled (unlikely to be reduced back) that penalise low energy users and those on low and fixed incomes such as pensions and benefits.

The differential between a litre of diesel and unleaded is now just 1p. Yet for a protracted period it was over 20p higher for diesel. Why, and what changed to bring it down? Can we get back the increased fuel differential price we’ve been ripped-off by that our Tory government did nothing to protect us from?

For example, a visit to the supermarket has a promotion for Lurpak butter. It is on offer at £5, down from its previous price of £7.50. What am I missing here? When has any supermarket ever offered a 33% discount for such a product? Don’t we need to question why this product and others across the board were allowed to be so price-hiked in the first place? Again, why has this Tory government not protected us from such supermarket greed?

Thirteen years of Tory government, the austerity that’s left our public infrastructure damaged by under-investment and the Brexit they inflicted on us have taken us forward to the past. Like the 1970s, once again our public sector is ravaged by strikes, our living standards have been reduced, and not only are we again the sick man of Europe like the 1970s, but also the worst performing economy in the G7.

Wealth is burgeoning, but only for the wealthy. The average citizen is being ravaged by inordinately high prices, deliberately increased mortgage rates and rents that drive homeowners and occupiers to the brink of homelessness – which only serves to divert disposable income away from the rest of the economy and threaten businesses’ survival.

This is the Tory prospectus. Labour will be no different. We can’t afford to give Starmer power before he tells us what he’d do about it.

Only a vote for independence at the forthcoming election holds out any real prospect for change and improvement.

Scots are nae sae daft. It’s just common sense.
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

IF you set out a vision sufficiently out into the future (2045), without any intermediate goals or targets, which can be monitored, and without any new policies or legislation, what is the point? That question can be put in relation to the Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture published by the Scottish Government very recently. Much of the realisation of the Vision depends on innovation – so it’s anyone’s guess how far it’s practicable and achievable.

The word “sustainable” crops up throughout the document, including in its title. Shellfish and seaweed production are included in the Vision, but the “biggy” is fish farming. As someone wrote in The National recently about another issue, “the ends never justify the means”... Fish farming openly has the backing of government because it provides jobs (the “ends”). What about the “means”; how sustainable is fish farming?

Well, it’s certainly not a natural activity as far as the fish are concerned. Salmon, for example, should be roaming the oceans taking their chances with weather, sea conditions and predators, including humans. Apparently, it’s sustainable to cage them up, making them a target for disease, predators and parasites, such as sea lice. When the latter are present, the fish are bathed in chemicals (which are often dumped into sea after use), alternatively the fish are put into a machine to physically remove parasites. There’s nothing natural about handling fish to vaccinate them, or putting them into baths or machines, and it’s not surprising that a significant level of mortality results from this procedure. If you don’t fancy that, then other fish are caught and used as “cleaner” fish, which are disposed of after they’ve done their job.

The National:

According to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, the use of certain antibiotic active ingredients (mg/kg) increased by more than 80% between 2017-20 in Scottish salmon farms. In 2020, a single fish farm in Argyll used more than three tonnes, or 83% of all reported use of the antibiotic Aquatet in that year.

Industrial fish farming is such an unnatural process for the animal concerned that to describe it as “sustainable” is perverse.

Mr Scott, the chief executive of Salmon Scotland, has: “Everyone in Scotland can be proud that we produce such a high-quality nutritious product with rigorous environmental standards.”

Well, I’m not proud, but I do have a challenge for Mr Scott – if he’s so confident about the status of his industry, agree to have displayed in supermarkets a full-disclosure film of the production of salmon from egg to slaughter with all the human interventions involved. I won’t hold my breath.
Roddie Macpherson
Avoch

I HAVE long accepted that The National is, as it claims, “The newspaper that supports an independent Scotland”. Perhaps therefore The National or one of its readers could explain the purpose of opening its pages to comment from Labour MSP Mercedes Villalba with the strapline “We need a party of Labour to change the game, not just play it”.

Mercedes bemoans the travails of the Labour Party and argues that the way forward is to vote Labour to effect change in Labour. She says “each of us has a responsibility to ensure the longevity and viability of a party of labour”.

Well, I have to say to Mercedes that I do not feel any responsibility at all in ensuring the viability of the Labour Party, a political party whose aims and current formation are inimical to those objectives that we hold dear in transforming society on behalf of working people; not least on the issue of independence.

I must also remind Mercedes that many of us over our lifetimes have heard that old refrain that Labour will be different this time. The principal reason why I and many others, I suggest, don’t support the Labour Party is because they are a clearly declared Unionist party, part of the failed Westminster system. We need independence.

Mercedes does not even mention independence once in her comment. She recognises in her own words “we cannot manage the current broken system”, yet it does not appear in any part of her analysis that the way forward is independence. It made me wonder why The National would give extensive print room to a dedicated Unionist.
John Milligan
Motherwell

WHILE it is laudable to produce booklets such as the “Citizenship in an Independent Scotland “for future legislators, the average man or woman in the street will most likely find it “heavy going” to read.

A document of short facts about what an independent Scotland could be is more likely to be read by Joe Public – perhaps a list of measures already benefitting the Scottish people and what we could lose if we meekly submit our aims to an increasingly uncaring Westminster government, regardless of which shade of colour voted in.

Stop producing these tomes of wordy documents and get out something eye-catching that Mr or Mrs Average will read, either in print or via social media.
Graham Smith
Arbroath

WITH Labour and the Tories attacking the Scottish Government for spending resources on constitutional matters, it seems like another case of double standards.

The Welsh Labour Government is currently spending money on the “Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales” – the clue is in the name. The commission’s ongoing work will include assessing Welsh independence.

Meanwhile, the Tories in Westminster continue to meddle in devolved matters, and want to spend money directly in devolved areas.

The SNP (and others) need to be quicker and bolder in calling out the hypocrisy and double standards that come from the London parties.
Kyle Arnot
Glasgow

UK Labour’s leader Starmer gets a bounce in poll ratings, since Sunak drops climate net-zero pledges, according to pollsters BMG for the I newspaper. Labour now lead the Conservatives by 14 points, with Labour predicted to win 400 seats in Westminster at the next General Election.

How long will it take for Labour to row back on their commitment to the climate pledges, now that they are way out in front? Rachel Reeves, who would become the chancellor, has already given us an insight into what to expect, with her alleged comments concerning “no unfunded promises”.

The UK’s next Labour government “in waiting” do not want any promises made they cannot keep, which is always a sensible strategy – and under commit and over deliver maxim. However, it does not provide the electorate with any clues to which policy they would promote or defocus. Meaning they can say lots and yet explain nothing, with speeches bereft of detail or clarity.

A case in point is the two-child benefit cap, which according to House of Commons Library affects one in three in Scotland yet only one in six in England and Wales. It can be seen that there is only half of the need in England and Wales, so that’s an easy one to defocus, as it doesn’t have as bad an impact there.

Several times the PM-in-waiting has been asked to provide answers to this question, but diverts on to lifting people away from needing that benefit by growing the economy – another non-answer.

I suspect this strategy of no detail on specific policies will continue right up and through the Labour manifesto launch for the next General Election. The only takeaway from this is that Labour will pursue the same austerity and budget reductions as under the current Conservative government.

Labour and Conservatives offer austerity for all, but the few.
Alistair Ballantyne
Angus