IT has been striking to note Theresa May’s £1.6 billion post-Brexit bribe to support deprived areas around England ("May accused of cynical 'bung'", The Herald, March 5).

Putting aside the fact that this funding does not apply to Scotland or Wales it is intriguing to note that while Mrs May can claim there is no "money tree", it seems that millions of pounds can be conjured up to support those areas that are run-down or "left-behind", just before a final series of Brexit votes.

The so-called Stronger Town Funds package is about seven times less than the EU funding going to these areas. This £1.6 billion package is due to be spread over seven years, equating to around £22 million every year. According to a European Union projection the UK would receive £11 billion in funding over a seven-year period, amounting to £1.5 billion annually. So this package of funding is a drop in the ocean when compared with potentially lost EU funding and the loss of public funding due to austerity.

Read more: SNP accuse Theresa May of ‘Brexit bung’ over share of £1.6bn package

It also seems rather odd that parts of the country that are considered to be some of the most deprived, such as the south-west of England, have been allocated the smallest chunks of money. While £6.03 per person has been allocated to this area, in the West Midlands this amounts to £36.86 per person.

This new funding clearly has absolutely nothing to do with helping the most deprived parts of the country, but is instead aimed at helping Labour-voting areas in a bid to win over opposition MPs.

The post-Brexit funding announced smacks of desperation from a Government reduced to bribing MPs to vote for its damaging Brexit legislation.

Alex Orr,

Flat 3, 2 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh.

A KEEN and dispassionate observer of government as practised in the UK will conclude that Westminster does favour identifiable areas and groups, the cultivation and “nourishment” of these being expected to produce political advantage to the party of power, currently the Conservatives, while others recognised perhaps by party analysts as lost causes, are quietly regarded as of little consequence. The securing of DUP support, the gongs and titles recently conferred, and the just-announced £1 billion to carefully-selected sectors of England, is absolutely clear, transparent “encouragement” for support by the beneficiaries in the coming crucial Parliamentary decisions. Fairness and honesty have been sacrificed on the altar of expediency. Meanwhile the principal party of opposition flounders to discover an acceptable ethos which might pave the route to No 10. The truth is that both major Westminster parties suffer from an integrity bypass.

No eloquent rhetoric by a Government minister will disguise the purpose of the latest act of claimed financial magnanimity by the Conservatives. Any disparity between areas of the country, deprived and well off, could have been attended to within the last nine years .That it was not and what did occur was deliberate policy is the believable fact, while the largesse currently proposed to be enacted over the next six years is no more than yet a further bribe with public money to secure the survival of the present Government.

The expectation of course is that the naivety of the people will let it happen.

J Hamilton,

G/2 1 Jackson Place, Bearsden.

OUR Westminster Government has spent our money bribing the right-wing DUP in order to gain its full support. As it seems more and more likely that such support will not be forthcoming, will we then get our money back since this scurrilous contract has not been fulfilled?

Ian Cooper,

1 Jackson Place, Bearsden.

Read more: May says SNP has 'no mandate' to pursue independence

YOUR correspondent Dr RM Morris (Letters, March 4), makes some very swingeing condemnatory generalisations about the Leave campaign, from which one presumes that the whiter than white Remain campaign had to make do with such crumbs of support offered by HM Government, all the major political parties in Westminster and the devolved legislatures, the Treasury, Bank of England, CBI, TUC, Barack Obama and serried ranks of other sundry worthies who sonorously hectored us.

With regards to illegal funding, I suspect that it was dwarfed by the pamphlet that the HM Government was clever enough to circulate to every household in the land, at a cost of about £9 million, shortly before the referendum campaign proper got under way. I'm also pretty certain that it made some mention that the Government would implement whatever was the outcome of the poll. However, for a considerable number of people, it would appear that such a pledge would only count if the result of the vote had been to remain within the EU.

Christopher W Ide,

25 Riverside Road, Waterfoot, East Renfrewshire.

I VOTED Remain. I didn't think all the upheaval was worth it but I accept the result and see many positives in a good Brexit.

President Emmanuel Macron was right, the Remain campaign was poor, but it wasn't just David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn who set the "win" percentage bar too low and either avoided or didn't think about two issues that could have secured a Remain vote.

Immediately after the referendum the status of EU residents in the UK dominated the headlines, and now the Irish border and backstop is the deal swinger.

I don't recall key Remainers such as Ruth Davidson, Nick Clegg, Anna Soubry or Nicola Sturgeon mentioning them during the campaign or, indeed, Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk or Leo Varadkar.

I suspect lack of intellectual rigour in all cases but also, in Ms Sturgeon's case, a fear of raising the spectre of an independent Scotland border with England, something that Ms Davidson could have made more of.

Allan Sutherland,

1 Willow Row, Stonehaven.