Do the SNP or Labour really care about the poor?

In Monday's Herald, Roz Foyer explained why the STUC has withdrawn support for the proposed National Care Service ("Why we have walked away from the Care Service Bill", The Herald, October 21). "This bill won’t help to resolve the core issues of poverty wages, insecure contracts, chronic understaffing and lack of career pathways that continue to plague the sector. Worse still, it perpetuates the profiteering that has turned social care into a cash cow for hedge funds whilst service users pay sickeningly high fees and workers receive shockingly low wages," she wrote.

Both Ms Foyer and the spokespersons for the disability groups argue that the Government isn't listening to, or is ignoring their demands. The Government's response is, in effect, to say that it understands the concerns, is working towards better services in the future and providing a bit more money in the short term.

We are told that both the UK and Scottish governments' financial room for manoeuvre is extremely limited but, as we anticipate the Budget, the lack of priority given to the poorest and most disadvantaged tells me all I need to know about the future: as in the past, so in the future, the rich will continue to thrive at the expense of the poor. Only, I don't think that's good for our society or our economy.

David Bruce, Troon.

Read more letters

• What's the point in holding inaccessible Commonwealth Games?​
• Has Keir Starmer had the most catastrophic start ever?

Why not target tax dodgers?

AS we await Labour's first Budget, can we take some hope from the Labour leader in Scotland, who said "there will be no austerity under a Labour government"? Well, we have already had the abolition of the winter fuel payment for millions of pensioners. Who will be Labour’s next victims? Will it be benefit claimants and those unable to work for health reasons or will they just go after lower earners with an increase to National Insurance?

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if we heard the Chancellor announce a clamp-down on those dodging paying tax, which I am sure amounts to much more than benefit fraud?

Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.

• MARGARET Thatcher and Nigel Lawson freed the lowest-paid people from income tax.

Are Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves going to tax the working poor 40 years after Margaret Thatcher lifted that burden away?

Will the scions of Keir Hardie tax state pensioners into the bargain?

Tim Cox, Bern, Switzerland.

Tell the banks the game is over

CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves is to be admired for trying to cut government expenditure, but her task is pointless.

The National Debt of £2.8 trillion - borrowed from the banking system - earns the banks interest payments of £102 billion a year. That is to say, one hundred and two thousand million every year, paid to banks who have simply created most of that £2.8 trillion owed to them by computer keystroke. Magic money.

And as an indebted Britain has no real money to pay that interest, it is simply rolled up, as a further loan from the banks, thus increasing our debt to them and, yes, attracting even more interest. Compound this time.

So Britain is locked in a web of financial death, woven by the banks.

The Chancellor should surely just tell the banks that they have had a good time at our expense, but the game is over, and then we can stop paying interest on their magic money, and government should start issuing its own money - but interest-free of course - thus saving £102bn every year.

It is ludicrous that the private banking system creates the public money supply from thin air, and charges interest on it. By breaking that ludicrous situation, our Chancellor would be pivotal in a movement that creates financial history.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinross.

Oh, grow up, Ian Murray

SO much for "grown-up politics" ("‘Grown-up politics’ has brought 2026 Commonwealth Games to Scotland", The Herald, October 23). While welcoming the confirmation that thanks to the joint efforts of Westminster and Holyrood Glasgow will host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, Ian Murray could not resist yet another pathetic attack on the Scottish administration’s "woeful record in government". What should have been a celebration of a very rare example of partnership working between the two governments was spoiled by his inability to put aside his pre-programmed hostility to the SNP. So much for the promise of better relations between Westminster and Holyrood.

Eric Melvin, Edinburgh.

Yousaf? Really?

THERE’S usually something in The Herald that raises a smile as I read through the various news reports and articles, but I laughed out loud when I read that Humza Yousaf is a finalist in the Debater of the Year category of your Scottish Politician io the Year Awards ("Shortlist revealed for the 26th Politician of the Year Awards", The Herald, October 23). And this was after "long and detailed deliberations" by the judges!

Linda McPherson, Edinburgh.

• I THINK it would be extremely appropriate to award the Lifetime Achievement award posthumously to Alex Salmond at your awards ceremony. He was a giant in Scottish politics. Sadly a large number of your nominees are anything but.

Michael Watson, Rutherglen.

The wit of Alex Salmond

VICTOR Clements' letter with his hagiography of Gordon Brown (October 18) attracted much comment from other correspondents. I Archibald (Letters, October 19) recalls as I do that Gordon Brown indeed did not contact Alex Salmond to congratulate him on his his appointment of being democratically elected as First Minister.

Instead of acting like his humourless counterpart in Westminster, when the Conservative leader, Annabel Goldie asked in jocular manner if he had heard from the Prime Minister, Alex Salmond replied wittily without missing a beat: "He never writes, he never phones" to much hilarity in the parliament.

Irene Munro, Conon Bridge.

Scottish Secretary Ian Murray (Image: PA)

Will we follow Australia?

I AM sure Ian W Thomson (Letters, October 23) is right, sadly, about the diminution in support for things British in Australia due to its levels of immigration over the years. With annual net immigration into the UK, excluding those thousands arriving by small boats across the Channel, reaching nearly 700,000, I wonder how long it will take for the same effect to take root here in the UK?

Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.

Israel is built on terrorism
"DOWNING Street, May 12, 1947: The King has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the Colonial Police Medal for Gallantry to Peter Murphy, British Constable of the Palestine Police Force."

On January 12, 1947, a Zionist Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, stole an RAF truck, loaded it with explosives and drove it into the forecourt of Haifa police station. It is considered as the first terrorist car bomb in history. Two British policemen and two Arab policemen were killed in the explosion and about another 100 wounded. Peter Murphy had joined the Palestine Police after serving as a sergeant in 41 Royal Marine Commando in the Second World War where he fought Nazism with bravery and distinction. He saved many lives that day in Haifa by evacuating the occupants of the threatened buildings without a thought for his own safety.

The synthetic, ethnoreligious state of Israel is built on terrorism and on stolen land. For Israel today to regard itself as a victim is absurd and insulting to the tens of thousands of Palestinians it has massacred over the last 75 years. If a state can be considered as psychotic, then Israel fully qualifies as such. It deploys the very strategies and tactics of murder and destruction that Peter Murphy and millions more fought against in the liberation of Europe.

There is only one resolution to this genocidal madness. Palestine should be a constitutionally secular democratic state guaranteed by the United Nations. This would require the United States to give up its unconditional and illogical support for Israel. A secular Palestinian state that accommodated all religions and none is the only way to end this evil butchery for all time.

Don Ferguson, Kirkintilloch.