Readers' Letters: Too many people is a factor in climate change

retained are wrong (Perspective, 27 July).No, those against repealing the two-child benefit cap realise that many men treat their women as baby machines. Why should our taxes rise to pay for other people's children? Why should taxpayers finance 1,486,760 children at £3,455 a year until they reach 16-19 years old? Where will politicians find an additional £5 billion, yes £5bn, every year?

UK taxpayers are already struggling to pay all the green taxes which are hidden from view. One example is our energy bills. The world population is escalating out of control. In 1900 it was 1.65bn, it was 6.1bn in 2000, it is 8.1bn today and will be 9.7bn by 2050. People cause greenhouse gases and pollution so why is Mr McDonald encouraging more people on the planet? Why do the climate brigade and politicians never mention the population explosion and climate change in the same sentence?

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Power play

I am delighted to hear that Stephen Flynn wishes to be part of “a constructive opposition” (“Stephen Flynn says two-child cap vote proves SNP not a spent force at Westminster”, 29 July). That is precisely what the nine SNP MPs should be, along with all the other parties not in government. It would make a change from the standard SNP MO of vexatious grumbling at Westminster.

Mr Flynn goes on to say that the SNP was showing its principles over the two-child cap in a way that Labour was not. Perhaps Mr Flynn should have a word with his party leader, John Swinney, whose principles seem somewhat different. As Sir Keir Starmer will not at present lift the cap for financial reasons, so Mr Swinney is refusing to mitigate the cap in Scotland, something which is perfectly within his powers, for financial reasons. It is all very well for a self-righteous Mr Flynn to castigate Scottish Labour MPs for not supporting his Westminster motion, but he needs to recognise that his own party in Scotland also “has the levers of power now”. We all know that there are areas where the SNP wastes our money and could raise the revenues needed to mitigate the two-child cap in Scotland, but that would deprive it of the kind of grievance on which it thrives.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Same old Trump

Susan Dalgety suggests Donald Trump’s treatment of “nasty” women will be his downfall (Perspective, 27 July).

He has explained his mispronunciation of rival presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ first name by saying he has heard it several different ways. He obviously hasn’t even the respect to find out which way she pronounces it and said “he couldn’t care less”, reflecting his disdain for all his political opponents. Hillary Clinton was “Crooked Hillary”, Biden was “Sleepy Joe”. “Crazy Kamala” is an equally cheap jibe for someone who is far more intelligent and grounded than him.

It’s all a far cry from the consensus politics he offered after his assassination attempt, the type we have in Westminster once in a blue moon, like last week. With the Harris honeymoon putting her on level terms in the polls, Trump is back to his normal behaviour, already telling voters they don’t have to vote as he expects a rigged election.

Unlike Ms Dalgety, I expect Trump to succeed again and for democracy to die in America. Misogynist Trump, joined at the hip to running mate JD Vance, will seek to ban abortion, encourage women back to the home and violently suppress immigration.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Power points

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to make Britain a clean energy superpower with 650.000 jobs seems optimistic, as so far the 12,000 windmills on land and offshore have created just 30,000 jobs, nearly all for a brief period during construction. Our green efforts have, however, made lots of other countries rich, as Britain has been the patsy in the great climate scam, while the industrial giants of the world ignore it all to expand and prosper with fossil fuels, leaving Britain behind.

On another climate front, we have become the home for mad inventors looking to finance hopeless power schemes ranging from floating wave devices, to dropping weights down mineshafts. These people would be better described as subsidy farmers.

And all this nonsense from the country that invented clean and endless nuclear power.

You simply could not make it up.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Perth and Kinross

UK is doomed

So, Rachel Reeves will say she’s shocked to have identified a £20 billion fiscal black hole that will require tax increases and spending cuts to fill. Yet there was ample warning from the OBR and IFS that this was the case well before the election. Anas Sarwar, English Labour’s Scottish supervisor, vehemently rejected the idea that there was a black hole.

There’s a saying – when you’re in a hole, stop digging. Now we’re stuck for the next five years with an English Labour government that’s determined to keep digging.

Here’s the problem that Labour is either too stupid to understand or is wilfully ignoring in order to placate the City and its wealthy donors. For decades, the UK has woefully underinvested in public services and infrastructure, leaving the economy in tatters and people miserable.

Compounding the damage is the fact that England and Wales voted to leave the Single Market, dragging Scotland behind them.

So, the economy is tanking due to lack of investment (and Brexit) but Labour is saying we now can’t afford to invest. How does that make any sense?

The UK’s inexorable decline can only be reversed if the government starts investing in people and the public services they depend upon. This kind of investment not only pays for itself through additional taxes and spending generated via the multiplier effect, it’s also the only way to stimulate real economic growth and improve peoples’ lives.

English Labour will accelerate the UK’s decline. The inevitable collapse of the UK will be welcome news for Scotland, giving it the chance to create a fairer nation.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

Close wallet

The £20 billion ''black hole'' in the UK's finances uncovered by the incoming government is indeed worrying.

May I suggest one solution that would help at a stroke. Apparently £11bn of our money has been earmarked to give “Climate Aid” to a number of countries. That could be deferred, surely, until the UK was in the financial position to give out such vast sums in aid to others.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Whose fault?

Our newly returned Lib Dem MP Jamie Stone has told the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds, that, “Scottish education used to be the envy of the world,” and asking if this was not “a damning comment on the Scottish Government’s delivery of education north of the Border?”

This perceived slip in standards is usually linked to PISA test results. Those would be the same PISA results that England have taken such great pleasure in parading as being so much better than those achieved by Scottish students – despite the difference between the students having narrowed to no longer hold statistical relevance.

And despite England’s results becoming unverifiable. And that England achieved this by slashing their schools’ curriculum, removing mandatory art, music, physical education – among others – which in Scotland are considered necessary for the nourishment of our young people.

During his long political career, Mr Stone can scarcely have failed to notice that the austerity ushered in and facilitated by his party might have made some form of contribution to the issues within Scottish education.

His statement was especially interesting because it coincided with Scotland winning the World Schools’ Debating Championships, building on successes in 1990, 1999, 2007 and 2012. Which seems at least as good a sample size of student success over a longitudinal period of time as the PISA tests.

Perhaps Mr Stone’s desire to recreate the English system up here is based upon a real fear that, if we continue educating people in the Scottish way, we will have a population educated enough to realise they would have been better voting for a literal stone than a Tory lickspittle?

Rebecca Machin, Ardvannie, Highland

Madge Elliot MBE

In the subtitle of the obituary for my mother (27 July), it should read, “Campaigner whose efforts to reopen the Borders Railway saw a locomotive named after her” instead of “...a train named after her”.

It is important for your readers to know that a locomotive on its own does not constitute a train. A locomotive is a motive power vehicle deployed to haul/propel other (railway) vehicles which do not possess motive power.

A Freightliner locomotive, class 66, number 66 528, was named “Madge Elliot MBE – Borders Railway Opening 2015” at a ceremony organised by Network Rail in Edinburgh Waverley on Thursday 4 June 2015.

John Elliot, Hawick, Scottish Borders

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