GERS shows us how badly the UK is run by Westminster

Never mind comparing Scotland’s fiscal position with Scandinavia, just look at Ireland. Their interest bill for the €223bn national debt will be €2.9bn in 2023, which equals £2.49bn in UK pounds, therefore Scotland is charged almost £6bn more due to UK’s financial incompetence. Also, Ireland’s defence bill is only £1bn, rising to £1.5bn in 2028. An independent Scotland could make a similar choice.

The latest GERS shows that UK Government revenues from oil and gas fell from £8bn to £4bn in the last year, whereas Norway earned almost £30bn in taxes alone plus sizeable contributions from its Sovereign Wealth fund and profits from the state-owned Equinor company.

Over the past 40 years Scotland has produced as much oil and gas as Norway yet its economy/GDP is more than double that of Scotland’s. GERS is no advert for remaining in a dysfunctional Union.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh.

• THE publication of the latest GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue for Scotland) figures has triggered a now-traditional feeding frenzy. A black hole in Scotland’s finances is heralded by unionist politicians as validating the continuation of the Union.

The killer phrase for me from the GERS report is: “The report is designed to allow users to understand and analyse Scotland's fiscal position under different scenarios within the current constitutional framework.”

GERS is therefore a measure of the public finances under the current Union, hardly the greatest endorsement for how the economy has been managed on the UK’s watch. Indeed, major economic levers required to stimulate economic growth are still currently reserved to Westminster.

GERS is a set of figures based on a measure of guesswork that indicate very little, except highlighting the negatives of the current Union. It has little bearing on the finances of an independent Scotland.

The point of independence is not to do everything in the same way as it has been done within the current constitutional framework, but to move away from this one-size-fits-all fiscal straitjacket to a tailored approach that prioritises stimulating economic growth.

Alex Orr, Edinburgh.

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How could indy possibly help?

THE annual GERS figures are now published. They show that, in 2023-24, Scotland had a deficit of 10.5 per cent of GDP, compared with the UK as a whole’s 4.5 percent. The UK may not be in the best shape, but Scotland - with a diminishing spend on health - is far worse. Anyone who thinks that Scots would be better off outside the UK is living in cloud cuckoo land.

The good news is that this is the second part of a double whammy. The election result of July 4 demonstrated how little appetite there is for constitutional upheaval. The GERS figures show that leaving the UK would be sheer madness.

I don’t doubt that separatists will try to blame Westminster/the English for Scotland’s poor performance, and will claim that a separate Scotland would do better than a devolved Scotland.

So I ask them: how? How would Scotland realistically be as well off outside the UK as it is within it? Please, no answers with woolly thinking about "resources" that are not owned by the state, or claims about our "talent". If Scots were as talented as all that, they wouldn’t have kept electing the failed SNP and allowed that party to destroy our public services.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

SNP and CalMac all at sea

I SHARE Brian Wilson's incredulity about the re-appointment of three members of the totally discredited CalMac board by our equally clueless SNP Government ("How could the government reappoint CalMac chiefs?", The Herald, August 15). It's long been alleged that Holyrood doesn't care about those living on the extremities of Scotland and this has been proved yet again by the reappointment of a chair who works from home in Denmark and two non-executive directors who apparently haven't visited a CalMac port.

The SNP Government has spurned yet another opportunity to bring locals on board and perhaps begin to rebuild its tarnished reputation in its approach to public services. The islanders have been left high and dry and voiceless by this decision. It seems that the SNP Government and the CalMac board remain all at sea, which is more than can be said for the ferries.

Bob MacDougall, Kippen.

• BRIAN Wilson is absolutely correct to call out Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop for her incomprehensible reappointments to the CalMac board. Have they not done enough damage already to the island communities their ferries are meant to serve?

If she can be persuaded to come to her senses and reconsider these appointments, I suggest she gets round the table with people who understand what is required. As a first step she could do no better than ask humbly for a meeting with two of your recent correspondents, Roy Pedersen and Peter Wright (Letters, August 14), who clearly have a depth of knowledge relevant to the whole matter far exceeding that of the reconstituted board of CalMac who, apart from anything else and from all accounts, appear to have had little or no appetite for island-hopping on their own ferries.

Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.

Fiona Hyslop has reappointed CalMac's chairman, Erik Østergaard (Image: PA)

Undermining devolution

THERE is welcome news from the SNP Government that it will do all it can to bring back the Pension Age Winter Heating Payment just one year from now (“Ministers claim they had no choice but to means-test pensioners’ winter cash”, The Herald, August 15).

Due to Barnett Consequentials, Shirley-Anne Sommerville had no choice but to scrap the winter fuel payment for the elderly in Scotland. The Rachel Reeves decision was announced with no previous consultation. As Kate Forbes remarked they are undermining devolution.

In a typical winter, the Highlands will witness a disparity of 15C compared to South-east England. Fifteen per cent of our one million pensioners live in relative poverty and they face harsher winters and higher fuel costs. Age Scotland has said 900,000 will lose out. Some of those on Pension Credit do not claim.

There seems to be a deafening silence from Scottish Labour, whose hopes for a Scottish election victory in 2026 are disappearing like snow aff a dyke.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing.

Get ready for huge tax hikes

RACHEL Reeves and Keir Starmer add further to their “alleged” black hole in the public finances by authorising a “no strings attached” 15 per cent pay deal to the rail unions. However their economic illiteracy is highlighted by the comments from the UK Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh, who advised that the “Conservatives were happy to see the taxpayer pay the price as strikes dragged on and on”. Who on earth does she think will pay the price of an unfunded, no strings attached 15% pay rise with inflation at just over 2%?

The answer will come on October 30 when Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveils her first Budget which will contain eye-watering tax rises to highlight the deception that was the Labour Party manifesto.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh.

Labour hatred of autonomy

THE imposition of VAT on private school fees which has already led to the closure of two Scottish private schools is not actually driven by envy but by something worse ("UK Education Secretary denies VAT rise causing private school closures", heraldscotland, August 15).

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is not, despite the rhetoric, a party of the working class, but a party of the public sector and especially of the Establishment. It is not envy that drives the well-paid and frequently well-connected MPs, not a few whom are "red princes" - the children of former leading MPs and leading Labour movement activists - but hatred of autonomy.

In Labour’s view of the world everything must be within the state, nothing outside it and certainly nothing against it. That parents should be entitled to make choices of what is best for their own children independent of the state is anathema to Keir Starmer and his comrades.

This is not just a struggle between parents who want the best for their children and a government wanting to raise more tax. It is actually a struggle between freedom and a totalitarian mindset.

Otto Inglis, Crossgate.