We should all rue the day Gordon Brown became Chancellor

Mr Brown was in my opinion a major player in creating the banking crisis in the UK the result of which we the taxpayers are still paying for.

Why did this banking crisis not affect Santander Bank, for example? Simple, they didn’t allow themselves to believe “Mr Prudence's" light-touch banking was a good idea, because they knew there were Fred Goodwin-types who would take advantage and create mayhem.

Make no mistake, it was Saint Gordon who did this, resulting in misery for many and the Royal Bank of Scotland having to be nationalised with us, the taxpayers, picking up the tab. People’s hard-earned pensions were reduced or lost.

Mr Goodwin I believe is still receiving a pension of £ 10K per week and Saint Gordon is still allowed to pontificate on the world stage about concerns for child poverty.

I just wonder how much better could things have been for everyone if Saint Gordon hadn’t been Chancellor?

IB Archibald, Edinburgh.

So is Britain wealthy or not?

IS there not a conundrum in the differing beliefs about the overall financial position of the UK? On the one hand, in calling for an increase in inheritance tax, Norman Lockhart (Letters, July 19) repeats the often-heard bald statement that we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world. On the other hand, we read that our economy is in tatters with minimal growth, there is no magic money tree to fund spending needs and our national debt has grown to over £3 trillion with no explanation of how that debt can ever be repaid.

How can these opposite views be reconciled? Is the claim to being one of the wealthiest countries an unjustifiable myth nowadays or are we basically financially sound and on the sunny uplands of economic recovery? Does anyone know?

If we are in fact not one of the wealthiest countries, our politicians of whatever shade appear to be maintaining that myth to avoid facing up to the reality of our situation. Are they gambling pragmatically that because we are in so much debt our lenders cannot afford to bankrupt us, and as long as we continue to pay the huge annual loan interest, their priority is to stagger on to avoid financial Armageddon on their watch?

Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.

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READ MORE: It's madness to throw good money after bad at Ferguson Marine

The Ferguson ferries farce

THE ferries saga continues apace, only it is now morphing from farce into parody. First we had John Petticrew, the interim chief executive of Ferguson Marine, complaining that the yard was up against unfair competition from foreign yards because they benefited from government investment ("Ferguson Marine will bid for new contract to win seven small ferries", The Herald, July 19). But hang on, this comes only a few days after the Scottish Government announced a further £14.2 million being ploughed into his own yard.

In making this announcement Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes referenced the Glen Rosa and Glen Sannox ferries. She said: “I don’t think it is the skills that have been to blame for any of the challenges that these vessels have faced.” Presumably that would include the repeated delays. But she also said that the loan is designed to improve productivity at the yard. Any businessman will tell you that poor productivity leads to delays, so her analysis is at best questionable.

Mr Petticrew then pitches in by adding that the yard “needs to concentrate on getting the workforce to the standards we need to get future work”. In other words the workforce are apparently not only failing in productivity but also in work standards. Once again how does this latest revelation align with Ms Forbes’s insistence that the workforce are blameless for the problems with the current procurement?

Undeterred by this fairly damning indictment of the yard’s performance the unions blandly assert that previous failures were entirely the fault of others and that the yard should therefore be awarded further contracts without the necessary safeguard of competition.

Direct-award contracts are the exception to the rule for a reason. No competition means you can inflate your price whereas competition concentrates minds as well as costs. The UK Internal Market also requires open competition. So expect a legal challenge from other UK shipyards if the direct award route is pursued, especially if the yard is being subsidised.

When state aid rules were introduced across the EU the European Commission pointed out that when you engage in subsidising failing companies for political or strategic reasons you are invariably throwing good money after bad. It pulls down productivity levels nationwide. This in turn affects GDP and overall living standards. In short, people end up worse off. Meanwhile your industrial strategy motors into an economic cul-de-sac. Here in the UK we call this process déjà vu.

Robert Menzies, Falkirk.

• AS one interested in the performance of Ferguson Marine over many years, you were kind enough to publish a letter from me on July 24, 2019, in which I drew attention to the tranche of £15 million in 2018 and of the further £30m in June to that yard. This transaction was not made public for seven months, thereby giving the impression that FMEL had no financial problems.

Then, as now, it seems that the yard is a financial "busted flush" with more than £300m being spent on two vessels that are eight years late.

There followed letters from noted academics all giving various reasons why it was financial folly to continue to pump money into this project.

The closed ranks of the Government in Holyrood still does not even attempt to wish to throw light on the matter. I recall the Transport Secretary promising, some three years ago, that there "would be a full inquiry, not at this time, rather when the ships have sailed."

Those responsible for doing due diligence in determining the possible cost of nationalisation certainly forgot to mention that the existing plant was so out of date that an injection of £30m would require to be spent within a couple of years. More likely, the mantra was "think of the jobs that have been saved". I suggest that the job losses have not been averted, only postponed.

How I wish to see and hear a public inquiry along the lines of that of the Post Office debacle with the expertise of the likes of those notable KCs who most politely savaged the reputations of those in charge.

Robin Johnston, Newton Mearns.

Schools policy makes no sense

SIR Keir Starmer proposes to increase the resources available for state education. In order to assist in that objective he intends to remove what he calls the tax break in favour of private schools (“From the reaction in some quarters to putting VAT on school fees you’d think it was a revolutionary move”, The Herald, July 19).

It is disappointing that the intellectual, moral and practical deficiencies in that policy are not more immediately and widely recognised and challenged.

Mr Starmer's policy is intellectually deficient because there is no private school tax break in existence which can be removed. It is European law which may still apply in the UK under the Retention of saved EU law at end of implementation period provisions of 2018 and is specifically provided in section 31 and schedule 9 of the UK VAT Act 1994, that government does not tax essential services including education. That is the law of the land which applies to everybody and is not a tax break for private school fees and what Mr Starmer proposes is a new and possibly illegal tax imposition which would require a probably indefensible exception to a long-standing, fundamental legal principle.

Secondly, if there is one group in the country who should not be charged extra to assist with the costs of state education it is those families who already pay their dues for state education through the taxation system but who, in addition, by paying for private education, absolve the state system from the cost of teaching their children. It would be equally rational and just to tax them on the food (also VAT- free for the rest of the population) which they purchase.

Labour plans to remove private schools' exemption from VAT (Image: Getty)

Thirdly, the practical deficiency in the policy is that its costs and benefits are both random and incalculable. Which is greater, the benefit to the state system from the extra money raised from the unknown number of parents who will continue to use the private system or the cost of teaching the unknown number of pupils who will be transferred from private schools to state schools? It is a gamble even before you try to calculate the potential unintended consequences.

How does one calculate the financial and other costs of the disruption to the children's education, to teachers’ careers and the forward planning of both private and state schools? And who is to say whether the extra money raised from the additional Vat imposition would ever go anywhere near the state school system once it was in the hands of the government?

Michael Sheridan, Glasgow.