Council Tax freeze will save us money, but at what cost to services?

I am still trying to get my head around the concept of so-called green freeports. They are being marketed as incentives to inward investment but on the face of it they look strangely like government-sponsored tax-avoidance schemes.

The Scottish Government recently agreed to extend freeport tax relief for a further five years. The extension until 2034 will apply to Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport, the Forth Green Freeport and prospective investment zones in the Glasgow city region and the north-east of Scotland.

As is usual with this type of announcement, it is accompanied by completely unsubstantiated claims of a very large number of new jobs which will be created as if by magic.

It could be argued that if we are to maintain public services at a certain level, the tax which is not being paid by these various commercial enterprises, many foreign owned, to be based in these freeports, has to eventually be paid by someone else.

My home is less than a mile from the River Cart, which in its distant past hosted shipbuilding and a number of commercial quays. It is just over a mile from Glasgow Airport. The river Clyde is about three miles away.

Perhaps, in a very selfish moment, I should contact my MSP and demand that my home should be included in a green freeport and that the legislation should be altered to ensure I pay no Council Tax, no income tax, no VAT – in fact no tax at all for the next 10 years! I promise this would help me stimulate the local economy no end. I do not remember an SNP conference giving its blessing to green freeports. A search of the SNP’s extensive policy database on its website comes back with the stark message – no results.

Brian Lawson
Paisley

I ENDORSE Anthony Carroll’s concerns that this so-called “Independent Green Voice” party is setting out to confuse many voters (Curtice: Why SNP may want to challenge decision over ‘IGV’, Mar 21).

At the last Holyrood election in 2021, I was surprised when the leaflet I received listed a party I’d never heard of. A friend, who is ardent for both independence and environmental issues, was about to send off her postal ballot paper and felt confused that both name and brand purported to reflect how she wanted to vote – yet the named person did not seem to be the one she expected.

Being a Green Party member, I was able to verify that she had nearly been misled. But I was so angered that such a situation could have arisen that I wrote a complaint to the Electoral Commission. Disappointingly, the reply I received (though I did appreciate getting one) was helplessly non-committal! John Curtice is quite right to raise concerns about this flagrant attempt at falsification.

Catriona de Voil
Arbroath

I VERY much welcome David Pratt’s excellent appeal not to divert the main purposes of protest marches by other campaigns on banners and leaflets (Mar 21). I am even longer a veteran of peace and justice protests than David, having marched against nuclear weapons at Aldermaston in the 1950s. Canon John Collins, one of the founders of CND, used to remind us of the purpose of our protest and appeal to us not to use the march to promote other causes, however worthy. Unfortunately this good advice was ignored, as people climbed on their own bandwagons as has so often been the case since.

The sole exception I have seen in recent years was as the only European who went on the walk from Selma to Montgomery in 2015 on the 50th anniversary of the courageous one undertaken by Dr Martin Luther King and others, black and white.

We carried only two placards – “Black Lives Matter” and “Restore our Voting Rights” (recently given back to southern states by the Supreme Court). I have rarely walked in such a positive and united group of around 70, all focusing on civil rights in America.

There was a song during the 1960s civil rights campaign called Keep Your Eyes On The Prize. Let us hope that all who march and protest about Gaza (as I do) will not be diverted by division and the digression into other causes diluting the vital voices for the suffering people of Gaza.

Iain Whyte (Rev Dr)
North Queensferry

THE “Order of the Thistle” is, I am led to believe, the highest honour in Scotland, apparently dating back to at least the 15th century, and recognises “Scottish men and women who have held public office or who have contributed in a particular way to national life”.

Personally, I had never heard of it until I read that King Charles had just appointed his brother, Prince Edward, to the order to mark Edward’s 60th birthday. On further reading I discovered that Charles had been appointed by his late mother, Queen Elizabeth, as had Princess Anne, and Prince William, and that, following the death of his late mother, King Charles had also appointed his wife, Queen Camilla.

Charles, at the same time as appointing Prince Edward, also appointed to the order Professor Sue Black, Baroness Helena Kennedy and Sir Geoff Palmer, all esteemed figures in Scottish life whom I’m sure would be generally considered worthy of this esteemed honour. But I would wonder what percentage of the Scottish population would consider all of these members of the royal family to be worthy of the “highest honour in Scotland”.

And, if they were to be considered worthy, on what grounds, other than being born, getting married, or living to a reasonable age, all of which I have actually achieved myself, without any royal recognition whatsoever.

Les Mackay
Dundee