Readers' Letters: Here's how Labour can improve popularity

I'd add two further pieces of advice for Mr Sarwar and Keir Starmer; align business and Council Tax with tax numbers and raise the tax threshold to £20-25,000. Our tax numbers are at least as fairly arrived at as the present and very outdated way of calculating the rates and Council tax bands. And, no matter how loudly the Treasury would howl about the loss of income raising the tax threshold would lose, to use Labour’s mantra, doing so would “put money into working people's pockets”. Not only the pockets of working people but everyone's pockets.

These initiatives would ensure we all have more money to spend, so businesses would begin to thrive, High Streets would benefit, demands for pay rises might decrease. And why not? They couldn't damage the reputation of the Labour Party any more than the Party has already.

Lovina Roe, Perth

Break away

An interesting article by Brian Wilson (Perspective 14 February) on the need for a more autonomous Scottish Labour Party. The principle might be applied to others, ie, the Tories. Is it coincidence that when they were genuinely popular here, it was a separate party?

William Ballantine, Bo'ness, West Lothian

Discontent

D Mitchell bemoans the unstoppable path of Reform UK to No. 10 (Letters, 14 February). They fail to mention the concurrent possibility of the Greens also becoming Her Majesty's Opposition. Even a year ago, the odds you'd have got from bookies for this would have meant never needing to work again if it came true.

Yet for those with eyes to see, the warnings have long been there. The complete extermination from Westminster of Labour in Scotland in the 2015 general election after winning the majority of MPs and the vote since 1959. The Ulster Unionists' similar fate ten years earlier. That’s 56 and 84 years of respective dominance wiped out in one go.

Yet if anything the political classes' hubris towards a clearly angry electorate grew markedly worse. The unsavoury attempts by sleight of hand to nullify the Brexit vote. The blind eyes to bare-faced thuggery orchestrated by hobby revolutionaries every weekend nationwide. At every turn the ordinary citizen told to pay more in return for less – from local councils with rates and services (and rubbing salt in it by cancelling the elections to end their mismanagement) to “shrinkflation” in the shops. Hand-wring over the populist gruesome twosome all you want. But until our “betters” admit this isn't the rise of the far left and far right – this is the rise of the “left out” and “completely right” – neither will vanish anytime soon.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Teachers’ perks

J Lewis is correct that teachers’ holidays should be considered in their pay negotiations (Letters, 14 February), though I am quite happy to accept that some of their entitlement may well be necessary for the next term’s course preparation, or reasonable to offset the disruption and violence now reported as prevalent throughout schools. Also, “in-service training” days should all be taken from that holiday entitlement rather than taken in term-time, which I believe is still partly the case.

Moreover, may I repeat my point which you kindly published on 15 December (generating no response, unsurprisingly!) that the teachers’ generous pension scheme requires an annual taxpayer contribution of 26 per cent of their basic salaries – far more than private sector companies can afford, and invariably ignored (as are the equivalent unfair and unsustainable sums in the NHS and Civil Service schemes) in the headline claims and agreed settlements.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

Stand together

In response to The Scotsman’s report, “Antisemitic hate soars to record levels in Scotland” (13 February), it is important to restate a simple truth: targeting any group is wrong, especially when individuals are being blamed for the policies of a government they do not control and may not support.

I can see two reasons for these abuses. One is frustration at what is happening in the Middle East, where anger at government actions is too easily turned on people who have no control over them. The other is the desire, in some quarters, to create chaos wherever opportunities appear.

Hiding behind barriers, however tempting and reassuring, is a mistake. We are a multicultural society and frictions will always exist; how we handle them is what tells.

Scotland has welcomed people from all faiths and none, from all countries, and it has made us who we are. United.

Judith Campbell, Portree, Highland

True gold

Matt Weston's joy at winning gold in the Men's Skeleton at the Winter Olympics was wonderful to watch. It was what the Olympics is about, to know you are the best in the world.

What a contrast to the Curling Mixed Doubles. In 2022 Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds came third in the round robin and because of the way the event is arranged they did not get a medal. This year they came first in the round robin with only one loss.Yet again they got no medal.

How can the gold medal winners be the best in the world when they were beaten by four of the nine teams in the competition? Drama and entertainment has overtaken probity. There are four years to take a hard look at this.

In my book Jennifer Dodds and Bruce Mouat got gold and I congratulate them on their amazing achievement.

Celia Hobbs, Penicuik, Midlothian

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