We should be grateful to the Tories for rescuing the country

Some of Mr Mackay’s remarks, and I am not going to dignify any of them by a rerun here, are such a distortion of real worth as to be classed as disingenuous at best and downright insulting at worst. If Mr Mackay is so bitterly anti-Tory, he should ponder some of the real facts and motivations relating to their 13 years in power.

In 2010 our country was in danger of becoming an economic basket case and the Conservatives restored growth in the economy and rebuilt public finances. They followed the country’s bidding and achieved Brexit, they introduced the National Living Wage, brought down unemployment to a record low, created more jobs than ever before, ploughed record funding into schools and education, provided the biggest cash boost to the NHS in history, saved millions of jobs though the furlough scheme during the pandemic, became the first country in the world to vaccinate against Covid-19, became one of the first countries in the world to set a net zero target for 2050 and was the first country in the world to come to the aid of Ukraine following the Russian invasion of their country.

In addition, they are the party of abundant diversity, with many senior posts in the Cabinet being occupied by members from ethic minority backgrounds, including the top job of prime minister.

I would like to mention two further King Lear quotes: “Nothing can come from nothing”, let the Labour Party take note; and “you are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face ”, and if Mr Mackay thinks the latter is aimed at him then I say “if the cap fits, wear it”.

Finally, the Tories may be down, but they are not out.

Christopher H Jones, Giffnock.

How can anyone vote for them?

A FEW weeks ago, your columnist Mark Smith tried to justify his possibly voting Tory in the next election (“The Scots like me who’ll be forced to vote Conservative”, The Herald, September 18). At the time this seemed a bizarre intention for anyone with a trace of concern for their fellow citizens, but surely the events of the last weeks must have shaken even his faith in the benign intent of the Tory party.

We have seen the vile Suella Braverman spouting her hypocritical and inhumane policies with respect to those unfortunate individuals who are driven to leave their homelands in the face of persecution or even death (“Braverman warns UK is facing migration ‘hurricane’”, The Herald, October 4, and Letters, October 5). Then we had the unedifying spectacle of Rishi Sunak “rowing back”, or more accurately, reneging on, commitments to fight climate change.

How much more of this is needed before those contemplating voting for this awful cabal come to their senses?

Dr RM Morris, Ellon.

Read more: Braverman has channelled Powell and taken the UK to a new low

The stink of eulogy

RISHI Sunak's speech ("UK Government hell-bent on no longer being Scotland’s ‘other government’", The Herald, October 5) was not so much hot air as bad air. It had a whiff about it.

Maybe it was the stench from the sewage-adulterated waterways that filled the already-odd English summer with the pungent odour of decades of greed and decay.

Maybe it was the rot of years of inhuman rhetoric and incompetent management of the migrant issue.

Maybe it was just the smell of rot you get when doors have been closed to the light and the fresh breezes of common sense and common decency for far too long.

Maybe it was eau-de-bile rising at images of Nigel Farage schmoozing Priti Patel; dancing while the country goes to hell as Boris Johnson partied through Covid.

But no amount of announcing policies he won’t be around to mess up can hide the desperate stink of subconscious eulogy delivered by Rishi Sunak on behalf of the Conservative Party at the 2023 Tory conference.

Amanda Baker, Edinburgh.

Why Sunak was terrifying

I WATCHED the speech by Rishi Sunak at his party conference and was very impressed by the news management skill which I was observing. By dropping numerous hints in a carefully-orchestrated way for some days previously, he managed to get most of the media to focus their (and our) attention on the abandonment of HS2 (as planned) and its replacement by a complex set of alternatives. However, without knowing the detail of that complex programme, or knowing how competently it will be carried out, ordinary citizens cannot make a meaningful contribution to any discussion of the merits of that switchover.

To my mind, however, the really worrying aspect of what he said was contained in a short passage within which he emphasised his determination to promote growth (seemingly indiscriminate growth) within the British economy. I feel that I can comment on that because it is of a general nature and the relevant data are readily available to all. I conclude that a steadily-growing economy is just not compatible with progress towards net zero.

I suspect that the trouble is that most people do not realise the complexity of the climate change system which we are currently observing. It is not a single system with a single "non-return point". It is a very complicated system with multitude of subsystems, some of which have their own non-return points. The alarming aspect of that is that we have already passed many of these non-return points. As a consequence, although we may be able to mitigate the consequences to some extent, we will not be able to re-establish the precise conditions which pertained previously.

An example: we cannot possibly put methane deposits back into permafrost or cold ocean floors now that some of these deposits have been released. So we are not facing some threat in future years. We are facing it now and we have to act now, and urgently.

Ironically, the problem which some commentators would have us push aside for the present is causally linked to that other problem about which the media are currently screaming: migration. To ignore that causal connection is to threaten mass murder of humanity. Let us not equivocate. To hold an anti-green position in these circumstances is to hold a pro-humanity extermination position. Where is the evidence that contradicts that? Note: a confident attitude and a patronising smile do not qualify as evidence.

Hugh Noble, Appin.

Read more: The SNP is now irrelevant: all that matters is getting the Tories out

It seems nothing changes

I HAVE been writing my “Mr Angry” letters to you for a quarter of a century and have kept copies of them all (I know, I know). I was looking through my back catalogue for previous comments I had made on NHS dentistry prior to commenting on the current parlous state of affairs in the tooth business, when it gradually struck me that the themes of the greater part of my letters were just as relevant today as they were then and all I would need to do would be to change the date if I wanted to re-submit them. Things never seem to change. Why?

In today’s edition you report a court case where someone was fined £400 for calling another a “cheating Paki” ("Cricket scorer who racially abused umpire fined £400 by court", The Herald, October 5); had he instead called him a “cheating b*****d” it may have eventually ended up in court but only if fisticuffs had been involved. It seems to me that relatively minor matters seem to be focused on and dealt with when major topics like the theft of tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money due to fraud and corruption in recent government contracts are allowed to simply slide into obscurity.

The money-pit that is the curtailed HS2 project and PPE scandals via the priority lane will disappear from the media and not a dicky mbird will ever be heard of where all the money went. But heaven forbid if one calls a he a he not a she when genetic he wants to be referred to as they. See you in court.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.