ENGLISH Labour keep telling us who they are. Rachel Reeves’s latest message to the electorate is that big business and finance will be well looked after under an English Labour regime. She reassured them at a recent meeting in the City of London, which included the heads of Lloyds Banking Group and Santander UK, that their grubby “fingerprints” are all over the Labour manifesto. How reassuring.

She’s so deluded that she thinks taking advice from these economic parasites is the best way to “grow” the economy. What economic value do the big banks contribute to the economy? Very little, in fact.

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The big UK banks use just 15% of their balance sheet to lend to non-financial firms – the productive economy – and only one-third of this goes to small and medium-sized businesses, with even that figure falling. The bulk of their lending is for financial transactions for the purchase of non-productive fixed assets such as land and property. This leads to asset price inflation and the well-known phenomenon of housing bubbles. Prices are bid up and then the bubble inevitably bursts. No real value or productive capacity has been added to the economy. The rich grow richer, the shrinking middle class is squeezed and the poor grow poorer.

That’s the essence of financial capitalism. Like a leech, it sucks the lifeblood from the real economy. That’s why there’s no growth, Ms Reeves. And that’s why an English Labour government doesn’t offer any change from the Tories’ disastrous policies.

Here’s an alternative. Scotland could establish a network of regional banks like those in Germany whose remit is to lend to small and medium-sized businesses that are the real engines of economic growth and prosperity. But to do that, we first need to end the failing Union.

Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh

I WAS shocked to learn, via new research from the End Child Poverty Coalition, that in East Dunbartonshire there are 2211 children living in poverty, which equals 12.7% of all children. Across the UK this figure is 29%.

It is concerning to me that UK children are growing up in homes where they go without meals, appropriate clothing or heating.

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This research not only details where children are growing up in poverty, but which families are most likely to be experiencing this. The report finds that between 2021/22, across the UK:

• 71% of children who were in poverty after housing costs, and 67% of those who were in poverty before housing costs, were in a family where at least one adult was working

• 44% of children in lone-parent families are in poverty after housing costs. This is compared with just 25% of children in couple-parent families

• The poverty rate for children in families with three or more children was 42%, compared with 23% and 22% among children in families with one or two children, respectively

• Children living in a family where someone is disabled had a poverty rate of 36% after housing costs, compared with 25% for children living in families where no-one is disabled

• There are persistent ethnic inequalities in child poverty across the UK. 47% of children in Asian or Asian British households, and 53% of those in Black households, were in poverty after housing costs. This is compared with just 25% of those where the head of household was white.

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I understand that in order to address the increasing numbers of children in poverty, the End Child Poverty Coalition are calling for an end to the two-child limit to benefit payments, as part of their All Kids Count campaign. If the government were to do scrap this policy, which prevents larger families from claiming child-related benefits for their third or subsequent child, 250,000 children would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

In the meantime, the Scottish Government should invest further in the Scottish Child Payment, both to increase its value and to provide additional payments for families affected by the UK two-child limit until it is abolished.

Heather Anderson
via email

TO Sanny Martin, Peter A Bell, Brian Lawson et al. Guys, I don’t begrudge you your space in the letters columns, but what I can do without is the constant negativity!

I have been plaguing the local rag up here with Labour hypocrisy stories, trying to influence people into voting with their heads and not their hearts. Might I ask, have you considered doing the same in your areas?

Show more positivity, guys, there is a Scottish election in two years’ time and by that time, Labour will have shot themselves in the foot so many times it’ll look like a tennis racket!

At that time, support for Labour will likely have plummeted, and if it has then that will be the time to call a plebiscite election.

Sometimes you have to fight many rearguard battles to get into shape for the war ahead. You will inspire people with positivity but wear them down with negativity – so think on, guys.

Steve Cunningham
Aberdeen

USING my many years of coaching international football at the highest level – NOT! – I have three pieces of advice for Steve Clarke and our remaining matches at the Euros.

1) Play Shankland from the start

2) Tell Robertson, Tierney, Ralston etc to dramatically increase the number of cross balls into the box

3) Tell all our players to try more shots from outside the box – you never know, we might get a lucky deflection!!

Let’s hope some confidence returns for today!

C Tait
Largs