SCOTTISH politicians had the opportunity to digest the UK Budget before First Minister’s Questions on Thursday.

First we heard from the Conservative leader in Scotland, Russell Findlay, who had the audacity to slam the Labour UK Government’s Budget, considering the economic shambles his Conservative government has left the country in.

Then we heard from Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who, as expected, defended the Labour UK Government, astonishingly defending slashing Winter Fuel Allowance for millions of pensioners.

The First Minister pointed out that Mr Sarwar, in defending the UK Government, was in fact defending the two-child cap on benefits, subsequently keeping children in poverty.

Returning to the Conservative leader in Scotland and his call for the SNP in government to reduce taxes in Scotland, while demanding more is spent on our public services – Mr Findlay, where is the money coming from if Scotland reduces taxation? Scotland rightly has a “progressive taxation” system, asking those who earn more to pay more.

Catriona C Clark

Falkirk

THE National’s choice of a photo to promote today’s Alex Salmond picture special supplement was entirely appropriate – a young Salmond using the backdrop of the SNP Trade Union Group banner to critique the privatisation of British Gas.

It reminds all in the movement of his contribution in promoting and successfully implanting social democracy in SNP policy formulation. However, social democracy in any party anywhere cannot be taken for granted, a bit like the last paint job on the Forth Bridge.

This is particularly the case as the reality of Reeves’s Budget starts to sink in. At the last SNP NEC, I predicted that her Budget statement would be, or at least would be spun to be, better news than was being predicted.

This Budget has some good points as well as many bad points that will become more obvious as the fine detail is unpacked over the next few days. The impact of Brexit is of course important, but its electoral salience will be marginal in 2026.

The Scottish Government has to go further and start to use its – albeit limited – fiscal levers to go beyond some mitigatory measures. What could be a better response to over-excited Labour calls to constrain than to use them?

Seemingly paradoxical, austerity lite will continue to be imposed on Scotland by this Labour Budget, one hand giving while the other continues to take away.

Bill Ramsay

Convener, SNP Trade Union Group

I CAMPAIGNED for almost four decades for what Cllr Andy Doig (Letters, Oct 29) describes as “the historic, hard-won rights of the gay, lesbian and bisexual community”. I can certainly say that those rights in no way depend on “the immutability of sex characteristics”.

That phrase is all too often code for “I refuse to accept that trans people are genuine, and so I don’t need to accord them respect”.

What the rights of LGB people do depend on is people treating each other equitably regardless of our genders and those of our chosen partners, and an end to prejudice and discrimination based on those genders. Many prejudiced tropes have been thrown at LGB people, too many to list them all here. They range from “it’s all imagined/a perversion/just an ideology” to “they are a risk to children”.

We see exactly the same tropes deployed against trans people. That, and the fact the discrimination we face is based in some way on gender – and of course empathy, and a belief that equality should mean equality for all – are among the reasons LGBT people have always made common cause.

My experience has been that the tide of prejudice ebbs and flows, but each time it ebbs, it tends to go further out. The tide has been flowing against trans people recently, but we will turn it again.

As Dr King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Tim Hopkins

Edinburgh

I HOPE The National will indulge me a little further if I take apart some of Andy Doig’s argument, which I take to be that the idea of “a man becoming a woman” is ontologically false. Unfortunately the letter’s main argument, that “individual dignity can only be based on objective truth” is a value judgment with no ontological basis.

As a theologian and a Fortean, Andy likely believes a number of propositions for which there is no concrete proof. However, in the special case of sex, it is verifiably true that human hermaphrodites exist, and that certain species of fish and frogs can literally change from male to female depending on their circumstances. Those facts don’t challenge the validity of cis women or men.

Equally, gay and lesbian debaters of Andy’s acquaintance can speak as passionately as they like about their own hard-won rights but I fail to see any logic in their claim that the recognition of trans women threatens them. On the contrary, demonisation of trans women may well embolden those who hate the whole LGBTQ liberalisation.

Derek Ball

Bearsden

READING Thom Cross’s letter on Thursday on the divided nature of Palestine between Gaza/Hamas and the West Bank/Fatah, it is worth bearing in mind that from the 1970s Hamas was deliberately fostered by Israel as a divide-and-conquer move.

Netanyahu himself has been quite explicit about this, as a way to block any movement toward a viable Palestinian state. October 7 last year was blowback of the kind the US has also experienced in Iraq or Afghanistan. Do our political “leaders” never learn?

Robert Moffat

Penicuik