Readers Letters: Here's why voters in Scotland don't give Labour a win

But Labour's ongoing PTSD after magnificently joining with the Conservatives and Lib Dems to win the 2014 referendum, and subsequently swallowing the SNP's accusations of siding with “Britnats”, has left them petrified of offending a mythical horde of voters who don't vote for them anyway, not because of 2014 but because of their historic complacency, the current Westminster fiasco, and the fact that you can't get a fag paper between Labour and SNP policies so they might as well vote for the real thing.

Labour scandalously voted for Nicola Sturgeon's gender bill and now MSPs are not even bothering to vote on the SNP's budget.

My prediction is, if the votes stack up, SNP and Labour will form a “coalition of the willing” to “stabilise the country” and keep out the “right wing racists”.

I fervently hope I am wrong and Mr Barbour is right.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Just buttons

Exactly eight years ago The Scotsman printed my letter about how the SNP’s big tax giveaway to the less well off was miniscule – then about 40p a week, so not even moving the dial on weekly take-home-pay when rounded to the nearest pound. So I welcome The Scotsman’s editorial pointing out this wheeze, and in other pages writers cover the meanness of this much-heralded “tax cut” (14 January).

Over the years the media all told has generally let the SNP make the claims that the majority of taxpayers in Scotland pay less than in the rest of the UK, but this headline they keep trying to promote is silly – as The Scotsman says, it’s buttons.

Strictly in fact, this budget on its own only increases the “cut” to about half of 75p or much less, as the lower paid already mostly had the previous “cut”, so again, it’s not even 50p a week more from this budget. Very small “buttons”!

It is sad and damning that the SNP have been boasting about this for eight years, even across the UK and sometimes Europe, because it's nearly nothing. They think it's one of their best achievements – just look at the flyers coming through our doors, the claim that Scots pay less tax often in the top three. But it's just a childish ruse. They don't seem concerned about what Scots who have sussed their scam think about them and that they are so bereft of achievements that this hits so high up on their charts.

Jonathan Davidson, Stow, Scottish Borders

It’s a non-crime

In late December, the decision was made that Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs) will go in England. It was announced by Lord Herbert of South Downs, who said that “NCHIs will go as a concept” – and not before time. It is interesting, therefore, to know that the police in Scotland have recorded more than 7,000 of these “non-crimes”.

It seems odd that “non-crimes” should be recorded in the first place if they aren't crimes. Along with “hate speech”, we face a very un-British approach to expressing ourselves which has applied ever since EU-friendly Tony Blair was in power. I am sure that that is a pure coincidence. We don't do things like that in this country, after all, do we?

Well, apparently we do and I have heard nothing to say that Scots will benefit from the disappearance of these “non-crime crimes”.

So, how about it, SNP? Are Scots to keep on suffering these non-crime penalties when our fellow citizens in England aren't?

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

Stinging costs

It would appear that those promoting new offshore wind farms have forgotten the lessons of the Seagreen development, which effectively wastes 77 per cent of the power it generates as there is no onshore Grid capacity to handle it. All this comes at an exacerbated cost to the taxpayer of £1 billion per year in compensation payments to the wind farmers for non-use.

The future wind farm scenario grows darker still, not only from a projected 400 per cent increase in the costs of Grid use, but also for the cost of new gas-fired and nuclear power stations required to be built to keep the lights on for 50 percent of the time when the wind does not blow. Further issues arise if globally warming seas generate less offshore wind. The arithmetic simply does not stack up – effectively the electricity consumer is being hugely overcharged by the failures of politicians to count the engineering costs.

Estimates suggest the UK electricity consumer now pays at least four times the cost for power as their European equivalent. This is hugely damaging economically. Without remedial action, losses are likely to be counted in the trillions over the foreseeable future. Urgent investment in new power stations and infrastructure must be expedited, as recent figures from the National Electricity Systems Operator (NESO) show.

The planned installation of the multiple computer banks required to drive new Artificial Intelligence technologies is estimated to possibly double existing UK power needs. If this demand cannot be satisfied by prioritising the building of new conventional onshore power stations – supported by storage systems like Corrie Glas connected to a rebuilt National Grid – the UK’s economic decline will stretch indefinitely into the future.

Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh

Wind spin

I am delighted at the news of the Berwick Bank windfarm development (your report, 15 January). Every little helps.

However, I am dismayed at the PR spin that they could “power every home in Scotland twice over” annually. That is misleading in the extreme. There is no way of storing generated AC (Alternating Current) power. So, when the winds are blowing in the wrong direction, or not at all, the 307 turbines could not generate enough to light a 100-watt lamp. They do not provide a 365/24/7 supply. Perhaps at best a small and unreliable fraction of our daily needs.

For every wind turbine, there has to be a fossil fuel or nuclear back-up.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

U-turns please

Can you feel a u-turn coming on? I do hope so, because the UK Government has two to make right now. These will be on top of the ones they have made so far (I know, it's easy to lose count), but these are essential.

First, they have to be forced to cancel the quite insane agreement to give away our Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. They are our sovereign territory and they guarantee the security of our shipping and that of the free world in what the Chinese are attempting to make a “mare nostrum”.

Not only is there no need to hand them over, but the Government haven't had the courtesy to ask the inhabitants – who have a strong desire, like us, to remain British – for their opinion. This runs entirely contrary to established practice. The Mauritians are showing themselves to be quite vindictive towards Chagossians who live on their island and point out that Mauritius has never owned the Chagos Islands, whatever their claims that the islands should be “returned” to them.

Second, the Chinese cut the water off at the British embassy in Beijing in an attempt to bully us into letting them build a super-embassy (opposed by the US, other allies and many Labour MPs) which will be three feet from important cables passing confidential information across the capital. The embassy would also include large, underground rooms, whose purpose has not been made clear, very close to the same cables. China is not our friend. Quite the reverse.

It is time that this project was also knocked on the head.

Andrew H N Gray, Edinburgh

Rise of bullies

I have worked in lots of places.In every environment I have seen bullying. We all know about bullying at school and, although less talked about, workplace bullying. It seems to be a default in some people.

I have followed events in Gaza, and recently Greenland. And guess what I saw – something I didn’t expect: bullying. Not the childish kind, but the same pattern. The same belief that what you want is everything.

You wouldn’t think a leader, elected by a mostly trusting electorate, would be a bully. When we vote, if we do, we expect and hope that our leaders will be strong and stand up to bullies. We don’t imagine they will become the bullies.

Sometimes it’s not that simple, or so they say. I think it all comes down, as Aretha Franklin put it loud and clear, to one thing: R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Strip away the politics, the speeches and the posturing, and that’s what’s missing whenever bullying appears –whether it’s in a classroom, a workplace or on the world stage.

If you’ve listened, watched or read about the meeting of Denmark, Greenland and the US, you’d have seen a complete lack of respect in the White House socials post immediately preceding the meeting. It was derogatory and disrespectful, and they knew it.

My Mum always said, “Don’t come down to their level.” It was good advice then, and it’s good advice now. And Denmark and Greenland didn’t. Burns, as always, said it best:

The thundering bully may rage,

And swagger and swear like a heathen;

But collar him fast, I’ll engage,

You’ll find that his courage is naething.

Judy Campbell, Portree, Isle of Skye

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