Keir Starmer’s warning of hard times ahead comes as no surprise

Ordinary folks are the last consideration. Now the supposed party of the workers is patronising workers, patting them on the head, telling them to be meek and accept the punishment being meted out so that the can rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

How outrageous is this?

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Isn’t it time to rein in the obscene wealth of the few in this Union to pay for the public services that have long been deliberately run down, and are essential for those who actually produce the wealth to continue producing it?

All the public want is a reasonable shake of the dice. All we’re getting is an ever-widening wealth gap, a descent into more hardship. The Tories ran the country favouring the wealthy, the corporates and the bankers. Labour are doing precisely the same.

We’ll be sitting in barely heated homes this winter counting the pennies while Starmer and his band of brigands are in the House of Commons eating first-class food, imbibing fine wines in amply heated comfortable surroundings, all subsidised by the shivering majority they conned to get elected.

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The hallowed halls of Westminster will be ringing with the laughter from these self-serving parasites slapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves for putting one over we susceptible minions.

I fervently hope that all those Scots who voted for them realise that what is befalling us from these Liebour con merchants was avoidable. That we are suffering because they failed to properly consider the prospectuses laid before them. Also, the inaction of all those who were too lazy to vote has delivered another five years of devastating Tory-mantra government.

All those people should apologise to us now, then campaign to recall those Liebour MPs for deliberately lying to us.

And then vote for indy in the resultant by-elections so that our political masochism from Westminster rule can end forever, and prosperity can become the economic standard in Scotland, for all Scots.

Jim Taylor
Scotland

IT is disappointing that in his haste to blame all of Scotland’s current ills on the SNP (the party he represented when leading Paisley Council) Brian Lawson (Letters, Aug 26) simplistically implies that “a much larger number of drug rehabilitation places” is the solution to the drugs problem.

Of course more such places, which I understand the SNP Scottish Government is in the process of facilitating, will help, but more rehabilitation places alone will not solve a problem decades in the making. Like Tories spouting similar claims, Brian Lawson makes no mention of the substantial funds that would need to be found to significantly increase the number of rehabilitation places beyond those planned at a time when there is a continuing shortage of beds in the NHS and a general lack of Scottish Government funds available through over a decade of UK Government-imposed austerity.

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Likewise, Labour Party supporter Douglas McBean (in the same edition) – although accepting that there are a number of factors causing drug deaths in Scotland, such as poverty, unemployment and poor health – did not propose where the money should be taken from to enable the SNP Scottish Government to do hugely better in these areas.

While neither Brian nor Douglas offered any solution to ending the flow of more fatal contaminated and synthetic drugs entering Scotland via England’s “county lines gangs”, the fact that Brian and Douglas appear to have opposite views on decriminalisation of personal drug use only serves to demonstrate that reducing the numbers of drug deaths, devastating for each family involved, is a complex problem to resolve, not just in Scotland but throughout the UK and beyond.

Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian

AT an evening concert in Paisley Town Hall, I found myself seated to the rear and above the audience. We were there gathered to listen to two of the finest musicians on the face of the Earth: Shetland fiddler Aly Bain and accordionist Phil Cunningham. As I gazed down upon my fellow concert-goers I couldn’t help but notice from behind the sea of grey hair and bald heids.

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I grew up during the Scottish folk revival of the sixties, when young people populated every audience and turns such as The Corries, Matt McGinn, Alex Campbell and Billy Connolly were to the fore.

Now, I weel ken that there are younger gifted bands and individuals these days such as Skipinnish and Face the West, which fill stadiums, carry forward the tradition and who attract an equally young audience, but a wee word for the auld stagers. We’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Ron Culley
via email