New tax breaks Labour’s promise to farmers

Farms have been the backbone of rural communities and have ensured food security for generations. By imposing additional financial burdens on family farms, this tax risks jeopardising their long-term viability. The impact of this policy will be felt in job losses, reduced local investment and an increased strain on already tight profit margins. Ultimately, these pressures will lead to a reduction in local food production, driving up food prices and threatening national food security.

Protecting the future of British farming is essential not just for rural areas, but for the entire country. I call on Labour to reconsider this damaging policy and work towards solutions that sustain farming communities, safeguard jobs and keep food affordable for all.

Councillor Alastair Redman

Independent, Kintyre and the Islands ward

THE National’s (very busy) Xander Elliards tells us in his Budget report that “borrowing increases by £32.3 billion a year” and that “these increases will fund additional spending to the tune of around £70bn annually”.

And these increases in spending would “provide a temporary boost to economic growth.”

Massive spending to create growth is the mantra of this new Labour Party.

Pro-growth policies were ushered in on the very day Spanish regions were being crippled by incredible rain driven by climate change.

READ MORE: 'Best left in hands of UK': What Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said about Scotland

The reality is that market-driven, government-funded unlimited growth and sustainable environmental practice can’t go together.

There is talk of a “market ecology” in which business can adopt a green agenda while pushing the growth dynamics of Labour policy. What is Labour’s answer to that core contradiction of delivering growth while preventing climate change?

Spain and its tragic catastrophe offers a vivid picture of what we and our grandchildren will have to live with.

Can capitalism live with a de-growth agenda?

There’s little in the Budget to offer hope in the face of frequent severe climate change/global warming-induced human tragedies. We wait like Godot for nothing. That is the real tragedy.

Thom Cross

Carluke

SINCE its inception, The National has carried a wide range of contributors who have argued, eloquently and very knowledgeably, about the paths to independence. The SNP have quite blatantly ignored anything other than “their” own ideas... and we all know where that has led us – nowhere! We have been bogged down in a spate of tangents that are presented as vital ... and don’t relate directly to acquiring independence .

We Scots are still derided, bypassed and quite frankly ignored by all and sundry who wield any kind of say-so in what happens in our nation.

Our wishes are ignored (Brexit) our legal initiatives mocked and denied (see recent Acts) – and that’s just Westminster! The SNP seem to be deaf to the constant commentary from a wide range of independence-supporting organisations and individuals that the main reason for supporting the party is the pursuit of independence.

Can the party hear or are we just the fodder that votes, marches and waves the Saltire and keeps it in place?

Ignore us at your peril, SNP. We did not put you there to have a comfy life in the public eye and create soundbites to mollify the growing groundswell of anger that is apparent in a lot of the letters in The National. We want action.

The plethora of excellent suggestions that have been offered by a wealth of talented contributors seems to go to the appropriate area, the “round file”, when proffered to the party. Legitimate pathways to move things forward are ignored. I don’t believe for a minute that the SNP government members don’t read the only paper that supports independence so why oh why is there no uptake on these!

Branches follow instructions but I was under the impression that the people are the party, not the other way around. We need a party that has the focus and drive to realise the wishes of its supporters. We know you can sit in Holyrood, form committees and look good on paper, but you need to get on with pursuing and enabling the central reason for the formation of the party – independence!

Your time could be running out!

SE Ahern

East Kilbride

LET me first of all reiterate the fact that Britain is not a nation in any sense of the word. It is a political union of four separate countries.

Wales was conned centuries ago into accepting the right to rule of a “Prince of Wales” and subsumed into England to the extent that it didn’t take long for the fig leaf of being born in Wales to be pruned from the tree.

Ireland was invaded, seeded with aristocracy, thurled to the delights of London and, when the Irish finally made it very clear that they would rather die than stay, set free – with, of course, the caveat that in response to the threat of violence by men in bowler hats, carrying umbrellas, it was partitioned.

Scotland, where the vast majority were not broke, was sold off by men who had been stupid enough to trust the English king to protect them and had become, relatively speaking, broke, by investing in a get-even-richer-quick scheme that was doomed to failure.

Thus we have a “Union” of two sovereign countries, one “principality” and one “province”! The history and cultures of these participants differ in more ways than space and time permitting description, besides which, it is all there to be discovered. Look for yourselves if it interests you.

Charlie Moore once said: “It is as if they are trying to negate being Scottish, Welsh or English.”

They have been trying for centuries to negate being anything other than English because they are absolutely certain that the word “British” is just a bizarre way of spelling English!

The real tragedy is the number of “Scots”, “Welsh” and “Irish” who actively assist this effort. This baffles me.

Water Scott wrote: “Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!” – a prime example of a Unionist experiencing a brief flash of insight.

I was schooled in the days when the BBC, with the enthusiastic assistance of Scottish education authorities, was continuing Reith’s (a supposed Scotsman) concerted effort to homogenise the languages of the countries of these islands and, as had long been the case with Gaelic, stamp out the guid Scots leid. This was the motive for hitting myself, along with thousands of others, for having the temerity to speak our Mither Tongue. Miraculously, it didn’t work. I am only writing this in English because it is both the lingua franca of the diverse regional tongues of my country and the written forms of Scots have been so effectively suppressed that efforts to reproduce them often look as if they have been invented fairly recently.

No Charlie, it is not as if they are trying, they have always been trying and it is an indication of our resilience that they have not yet triumphed!

Suas Alba.

That’s Gaelic for gaun yirsel, Scotlan’!

Les Hunter

Lanark

IF there are two words that have totally done ma heid in recently, in the run-up to Reeves’s Budget, it’s “working people”.

I know that Labour are putting the emphasis on not taxing working people but taxing employers etc to try to sound like proper old traditional Labour, but there is very much a downside on making purely working people veritable saints.

We have had 14 years of an extremely harsh and callous Tory government, in my view blatantly favouring the already well-minted and being the cause of widespread abject poverty throughout Scotland and the UK. So surely, but surely, it’s definitely time for those most detrimentally affected by that lot to finally be the favoured ones. Labour’s withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners and subjecting it to means-testing and the refusal to scrap the two-child benefit cap ain’t exactly favouring the previously unfavoured ones!

(Image: PA)

However, there is also another factor widely ignored by the press, media and loads of politicians. How the hell will folk of working age not in work for a multitude of reasons feel about this total emphasis on working people bar none! The physically disabled, physically ill, mentally disabled and mentally ill who can’t work because of that, for starters! I bet they feel a mere inch tall following all this rhetoric, which they definitely shouldn’t, but I can understand them feeling that.

Not just that, but what about those that have had a hellish start in life? Those brought up in care, those brought up in chaotic families due to parents’ drug and/or alcohol abuse, or sexual abuse and just general neglect? Not just that, but those brought up in very loving families but unfortunately – through no fault of their well-meaning parents – just weren’t taught the life skills to survive our dog-eat-dog society.

Everybody is different. For every multi-millionaire who brags about dragging themselves out of poverty to go on to amass riches beyond their dreams, there will be millions that, unfortunately, didn’t quite make it.

In other words, for loads of reasons, not everybody can make it to the angelic status of being described as a “working person”!

In Scotland, surely aw these folk are Jock Tamson’s bairns! I cannae remember a scenario where Jock Tamson put his bairns that worked on a much higher pedestal than those that didnae. Maybe that is Starmer, Reeves and Sarwar’s values but it definitely ain’t oor very ain Jock Tamson’s ones!

Fur me, it has tae be Jock Tamson fur world leader. He would sort the bastards oot, nae probs!

Ivor Telfer

Dalgety Bay, Fife

WHILE I have some understanding of the rationale behind the argument for reparations, the whole issue is taken out of context.

For millennia, the concept of slavery was the way the world operated. Throughout recorded history, the use of captive slaves was very much the norm. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings and even our own feudal warlords and landowners all did it. What were the Clearances but another version of slavery? And while more recently many countries – not just the British – engaged in the slave trade, it is invariably forgotten that the slaves were created by usually their own people, selling them on to the traders.

In the main, the ones who benefitted most from the recent African and Indian slavery were those same feudal and business leaders carrying on the practice of self-interest and greed. So who will end up paying for any reparations? It certainly won’t be the ancient families and feudal overlords but us, the common people and taxpayers. Should we in the UK claim on behalf of our predecessors from the Romans, Vikings and the landed gentry?

The world has largely moved on from these ancient practices, everyone has been negatively affected as a consequence, some more than others. We recognise the wrongs of slavery but in practice, it wasn’t us who carried it out.

Nick Cole

Meigle, Perthshire

LAST Thursday, the home of UK independent journalist Asa Winstanley was raided at 5.40 am by ten counterterrorism police officers who seized his electronic devices claiming Winstanley’s social media posts violated the UK Terrorism Act 2006. Under the Act, if you say that Palestinians have a right to resist the illegal Israeli occupation and genocide, this could be construed as inciting terrorism. Winstanley had just published a piece on how Israel murdered hundreds of its own citizens after 7 October under the Hannibal Directive.

This is the latest attempt by UK police to intimidate and silence journalists who dare to point out the depravity of Israel’s systematic genocide.

For the last 3 weeks, the Israeli regime has blocked food, water, and medicine from entering north Gaza where it’s stepped up its massacres. Quad copters are targeting anyone who attempts to move and over the year of this genocide, Israel has prevented 250,000 aid trucks from entering Gaza. Israel’s goal is to kill everyone and then annex the land. To that end, Israel and its enabler, the US, are planning a biometric concentration camp pilot in northern Gaza to be extended to the rest of the strip.

Of the journalists on the ground reporting daily atrocities, Israel has murdered at least 128. The handful remaining will almost certainly be executed to prevent them from bearing witness to Israel’s depravity.

The international journalism community, quick to condemn China or Russia for perceived injustices, has been eerily silent when it comes to the 21st century’s most horrific genocide and have failed to defend the murder of their counterparts in Gaza. That’s because the lamestream media is controlled by corporate and Zionist interests, as is the UK government.

The British Empire has oceans of innocent blood on its hands. The pathetic remnants of that venal colonial empire is immersing itself in even more.

Leah Gunn Barrett

Edinburgh

THERE is one medication/drug that virtually nobody welcomes in the first few moments of swallowing it, but as the mind and body literally incorporate it into the system gradually its salutary effects become life-giving and liberating, transforming suffering and despair into hope and wellbeing.

This can sometimes act immediately or take a few weeks or months, occasionally longer. That “drug/medication” is the “whole truth” dispensed by human history, innate wisdom and occasionally by a strand of medical wisdom that originates in the Hippocratic tradition and has survived, only just, into post-modern medical practice and public health. This ancient stream of truth has survived alongside the great advances in medical science and gives or withholds its endorsement as necessary to “progress”.

On the other hand lies and their more pernicious cousin “half truth” are momentarily soothing and comforting but lead to the most debilitating and tragic consequences downstream in all domains of human affairs.No more so than in the world of injudicious pharmaceutical prescribing and other medical “interventions”. Think USA opioid crisis,thalidomide,valium addiction, the widespread over prescribing of psychiatric drugs in general, and many, many other ineffective and dangerous products in all areas of life which fly in the face of the first and most vital medical responsibility ie “ Primum non Nocere”, First Do No Harm!.

If Wes Streeting and his behind the scenes self interested advisors think that the future health of this nation is going to be in any way served by widespread and indiscriminate use of the GLP 1 agonist “ fat vaccinations”, except in the most extreme cases, then he and his government are dangerously deluded.There is a vast groundswell of physicians, psychologists.sociologists,endocrinologist and people of intuitive commonsense at all.levels of society who shudder when they hear his plans to offer these potentially dangerous and expensive substances to the “ unemployed obese “ to get them into work.

The “ awful alternative” that he and his government need to get a high dose of urgently is ofcourse the “ Whole Truth”, namely that many years of government tolerated toxic nutrition coupled with the debilitating effects of our neoliberal economic nightmare with all the stress and existential angst that characterise it are the real drivers of this metabolic obesity crisis and untill we address these symptoms of political failure no half truths or anodynes can do anything but make matters worse.

There are many ,many alternatives for the poor folk who carry this heavy burden as a result of atrocious public health derelictions and those vested interests that lie ever ready to feed on their pain but they need to embrace the truth of Hippocrates that will set them free “ Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”

Dr Andrew Docherty MRCP

Selkirk