Labour’s approach to being in a hole is to just keep on digging

There was ample warning from the Office for Budget Responsibility and Institute for Fiscal Studies that this was the case well before the election. Anas Sarwar, English Labour’s Scottish supervisor, vehemently rejected that there was a black hole.

There’s a saying that when you’re in a hole you should stop digging. Now we’re stuck for the next five years with an English Labour government that’s determined to keep digging.

Here’s the problem that Labour are either too stupid to understand or are wilfully ignoring in order to placate the City and their wealthy donors. For decades, the UK has woefully under-invested in public services and infrastructure, leaving the economy in tatters and people miserable.

Compounding the damage is the fact that England and Wales voted to leave the single market, dragging Scotland with them. So, the economy is tanking due to lack of investment (and Brexit) but Labour are saying we now can’t afford to invest. How does that make any sense?

It doesn’t help that we have a lame mainstream media that are happy to regurgitate the talking points that politicians feed them, rather than do their job to scrutinise and challenge what these people are saying.

The UK’s inexorable decline can only be reversed if the Government starts investing in people and the public services they depend upon. This kind of investment not only pays for itself through additional taxes and spending generated via the multiplier effect, it’s also the only way to stimulate real economic growth and improve peoples’ lives.

English Labour will accelerate the UK’s decline. The inevitable collapse of the UK will be welcome news for Scotland, giving it the chance to create a fairer nation.

Leah Gunn Barrett

Edinburgh

I HAVE a suggestion for Chancellor Reeves about how to fill the “black hole” in the UK finances. Introduce a law that all money earned in the UK is fully taxed in the UK, whether it is banked in the UK, the Cayman Islands or anywhere else in the world, and authorise HMRC to claim any unpaid tax up to five years in arrears, as happens to the rest of us. Problem solved.

P Davidson

Falkirk

WELL done to MSP Kevin Stewart for pulling up the BBC for its dodgy headlines implying the SNP were “joining” Labour in opposition to the two-child benefits cap.

It is clear after Labour voted through the retention of the cap that this is now their policy choice to let children fall into poverty.

It was a deliberate act by Labour to keep this attack on child poverty, just as it was a deliberate choice for the BBC to frame its headline in the way it did.

More and more people are abandoning the BBC and refusing to pay the TV licence, especially in Scotland. Day after day, week after week the BBC – especially BBC Scotland – denigrates Scotland, the SNP and Scottish independence.

That’s why I would encourage everyone to keep hammering away at their keyboards and clog the BBC with complaints about its clear political bias, but to also follow through by refusing to pay the TV licence. After all, why should we pay for the BBC to lie to us?

Cllr Kenny MacLaren

Paisley

I AM boycotting the Olympic Games, no watching them on TV, no listening to them on radio. No reading about them in the fake news in newspapers. No discussing results with others.

Why? Because the Olympic authorities and the world governments are allowing young Israeli athletes who have taken part in genocide to come to Paris to take part in the Games as if there is nothing unusual in preceding their participation with first killing innocent civilians.

It would have been illegal if they had not taken part in murder, as the Israeli law requires EVERY young person to participate in the army. So the participants, the spectators and the television viewers are all complicit in genocide. We are constantly told that the Olympics are NOT political, that is total garbage. It is political to precede your trip to the Games by exterminating/wiping out/destroying a whole population.

Just look at how participation in this year’s games compares with Eric Liddlell’s refusal to take part in a race on a Sunday. He would never have done what this year’s athletes have done.

All medals won this year will be compromised. They will be worthless, they will be dirty. Everybody having anything to do with this year’s Olympics is guilty of sportwashing. It is time the Government was told our taxes will NOT be used for weapons of war.

Margaret Forbes

Blanefield

REGULAR correspondent Mr Grodynski states that “John Swinney has indeed provided a safe pair of hands to steady the SNP ship”. Did Mr Grodynski perhaps not notice that Mr Swinney captained the SNP ship through a disastrous election campaign which resulted in almost all of the passengers being lost at sea, with only nine survivors left clinging to the wreckage?

No doubt some of the blame should also be apportioned to the two previous captains who jumped ship at very short notice, having steered the seemingly rudderless ship in entirely the wrong direction.

Stephen Flynn, one of the nine survivors, seems to be the favourite to take command of the remaining SNP ship in Edinburgh. We must all hope it can safely reach its destination in May 2026 and avoid sinking without trace after being torpedoed by HMS Sarwar. Sadly, at times it seems it is being slowly scuttled by members of its own crew and their policy choices.

Iain Wilson

Stirling