Sir, – It seems only a few short years ago, against a background of sectarian bigotry online and at football matches, that then-Celtic manager Neil Lennon was being sent bullets in the post and there were demands that “something must be done” about this kind of behaviour.
Indeed, something was done; the SNP introduced the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012.
This was a message that sectarian bile and bigotry were not acceptable in modern-day Scotland.
It is to their eternal shame that the Green Party have been the enablers of this bill’s passage to repeal, in the main driven by the British Nationalist parties’ desire to give the SNP a political kicking.
The message that should have been sent out by every party in Scotland on this issue was that being a bigot was as socially acceptable as being a drink-driver.
Instead the green light has been shown to those who wish to drag Scotland back into the gutter to do their worst with impunity.
There are many areas of legislation which could rightly be used to attack the SNP.
This was not one of them.
James Cassidy.
Rannoch,
Boswall Drive,
Edinburgh.
Council ignoring our damp issue
Sir, – The Courier recently reported that Perth and Kinross Council are not taking responsibility for repairs to their houses with cracks and damp issues (“Tenants claim they were told to fix mould problem themselves”, January 11).
My house has recently become badly affected by damp, with some areas, such as our bedroom and kitchen, turning black with mould.
A lady from the council came to see us, took photographs, and expressed surprise at the extent of the damp. A few days later a council workman made some repairs to our roof.
However, the damp has since spread, to the point that when a housing officer visited us in January, she said: “I would not live here and you should not be living here.”
I have received a letter from my doctor stating that owing to our living conditions we should be rehoused and the relevant medical forms have been completed. We were told our situation would be given priority.
Now we have received a letter from Pullar House stating that our situation is not a priority and is not a medical issue.
How can a woman sitting in an office make this decision without seeing our situation? It forces my wife and I to sleep in the sitting room to escape the sickening smell of damp, and the health dangers.
Perth & Kinross Council never was like this.
Thomas Brown.
3 Church Place,
Bankfoot.
Universal Credit leaves us poor
Sir, – Universal Credit has left us in poverty. My wife has a 20-hours-a-week contract job, and occasionally gets extra.
I am on a 20 hours contract, self-employed with a disability.
We were doing fine with the Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, but since we had to go on to Universal Credit, it has left us with more than £168 a month less.
We have also been cheated out of three weeks’ backdated money we rightfully should get.
When we had to apply for Universal Credit our first payment was on January 18 2018 to February 18 2018, with a grand total of £550 a month to live on.
What happened to the three weeks prior –working for three weeks without Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit?
I am self-employed and they don’t realise that my profits go back into my small business and not the household finances.
Also, they have said that within the year, if I do not make a set amount of earnings a year – for example, £25,000 to £30,000 a year – I will be forced to quit my self-employment and claim unemployment.
Theresa May’s Government sure looks after the rich and big business.
Euan Donegal.
31 Gleneagles Road,
Dundee.
Bad to ban the bridge tolls
Sir, – There are, of course, two ways of looking at the abolition of tolls on the Forth and Tay road bridges
Instead of a glorious, democratic achievement aided by your newspaper, it looked to many of us like a tawdry pre-election bribe.
The thousands of pounds saved over the years by daily users, as I was at the time, was a voluntary tax and equates to many millions of pounds that the exchequer has had to make up by other means.
The demolition of the state-of-the-art toll booths at South Queensferry no sooner than they were built was an act of political vandalism.
Hector Maclean.
Balnaboth,
Kirriemuir.
Oxfam wrong on neoliberalism
Sir, – In late January each year, just in time for Davos, the anti-poverty charity Oxfam issues a report denouncing the neoliberalism ideology and globalisation.
Yet the years since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution have seen the percentage of mankind existing on fewer than $2 a day falling from 40 to 8 per cent – the greatest reduction in poverty in history.
Oxfam’s perversity is breathtaking. There’s no acknowledgement on its part that so many billions of people have been lifted up from abject poverty.
Their world view also blithely ignores China, the world’s most dramatic example of economic progress and poverty reduction.
These successes have been achieved by a move towards a system of capitalism within China, while at the same time opening itself up to international trade.
Oxfam’s absurd posture is due to the fact that Oxfam – and the Christian churches – object to inequality.
The great sin, in their eyes, is that 40 of the world’s billionaires have the same amount of wealth as the combined income of the poorest half of mankind.
It’s an ideology that, in the eyes of Oxfam and the churches, makes the group of billionaires the enemy rather than the friend of the world’s poor – the poor who have benefited so much from economic policies Oxfam and the like oppose.
Rev Dr John Cameron.
10 Howard Place,
St Andrews.
