Sir, £246 million. That’s what an extra penny on Scottish Tax rates would bring in next year. That power is provided by the Scotland Act, which we agreed three years ago. I’ve calculated those millions from the Scottish Scrutiny briefing published last year, assuming the two higher tax bands go up in proportion.
May’s Westminster election is our opportunity for public discussion about new income tax rates using Holyrood’s new powers. But in that hard-fought contest a lot of MPs are aware that their jobs are threatened. Other candidates will be hoping for a landslide in their favour. That tussle is unlikely to promote the use of our new tax-raising powers. So, I believe we should discuss higher taxes here, in The Courier.
Which is why I’m recommending that the Scottish Government notifies our tax-people to prepare for a small rise in income taxes for the 2016-17 year. They should give that notice this autumn, and as our new law requires.
An extra £246 million would go a long way towards the extra costs of nursery and childcare and our schools and colleges. We need to maintain our lead over the improving schools in the remainder of the UK.
Up until now, Scotland has had a tax-cutting government. Our Holyrood government has frozen council taxes for many years. I’ve checked how much our tax now compares with Bradford Council’s where I used to live years ago and their council tax rates are now 17% higher than here, and on a like-for-like basis. That’s quite a big difference. Scotland’s freeze is definitely a tax-cut.
I’ve also allowed for our water and sewage charges coming on our tax bills whilst a separate company charges for those services in Yorkshire. Of course, Bradford is a great deal poorer than we are here, so their higher council taxes must hurt them more.
Tax increases are usually an unpopular policy, even in the best of times. Which is why I’m volunteering to argue here for a one-penny increase in Scottish income taxes, rather even more cuts caused by Holyrood’s freeze on council taxes. Well, would you pay that extra penny?
Andrew Dundas. 34 Ross Avenue, Perth.
Let the people decide
Sir, With regards to Peter Burke’s letter, Listen more and be less ‘bewildered’, (February 14), perhaps he should listen more to what the needs of Carnoustie really are. The proposed developments both have merits but the main aims should be to provide the town with a much needed business park and to ensure that businesses are attracted to this area to fill these units.
The needs at either site for additional housing are a completely separate issue which will impact on the very infrastructure of the town in terms of schooling, health care, etc never mind any possible improvement to the commercial possibilities on the High Street.
To say that 89% of voters in a recent survey were in favour of the Pitskelly development is misleading because this poll consisted of only 130 people out of a population of nearly 13,000, hardly representative.
So present the facts in full and let the people of Carnoustie decide what is best for their future and, above all else, listen to their needs.
Peter Black. 1 Panbride Street, Carnoustie.
Fracking a useful distraction
Sir, The National Trust for Scotland, the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland, the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, the Munro Society, Ramblers Scotland and the Scottish Wild Land Group who signed the letter (February 10), con-demning the Scottish Government’s abuse of the planning system to promote wind development are spot on. But they are not the only NGOs deeply concerned at the lasting damage the SNP’s overriding target for unlimited wind energy is wreaking on the Scottish environment.
Both the John Muir Trust and RSPB feel the same way but could not sign the letter because each is engaged in exemplary legal proceedings against Scottish Ministers for their careless approval of colossal onshore and offshore windfarms.
Beyond them are hundreds of environmental or landscape groups which have formed over the last few years to fight predatory applications for giant turbines in their local areas. Then there are the local authorities, and hundreds of community councils the length and breadth of rural Scotland who for years now have vainly rejected specific windfarm applications and begged for moratoria on new applications.
What has happened? Zilch. The turbine juggernaut has just rolled on, flattening everything in its path. Scottish Ministers have variously “listened”. They have tried denial, prevarication, procrastination, before pretending their hands are tied. As the recently announced moratorium on fracking showed, this is not the case.
Behind all this lies the most cynical calculation by SNP strategists. They reckon promoting the myth of Scotland as a green utopia will garner more votes than it will cost them.
I am sure there is not a senior official or minister concerned with wind policy in the Scottish Government who has not realised that wind energy is expensive, destructive, inefficient and loathed and who is not dismayed to see these negatives increasing, not diminishing, with every turbine that is approved or built.
There is no chance the SNP will admit it was wrong on wind, so demonising fracking is a useful distraction. Ultimately it will be able to save face by crying foul when Westminster cuts wind subsidy and stymies the Scottish renewables industry as the Conservatives have promised to do if they win the next election, and as any UK Government must do if it is to keep the lights on.
Or is it naive to believe that a nationalist movement can succeed without resorting to political gangsterism and trashing the very land and values it stands for?
Linda Holt. Dreel House, Pittenweem.
Dronley Wood and the PoWs
Sir, I enjoyed your recent coverage of the Dundee & Newtyle Railway and I am greatly looking forward to David Martin’s evening talk at Discovery Point. The topic reminds me of stories I heard from my late uncle, Bruce Stewart, about Italian prisoners of war working in Dronley Wood during the Second World War from around 1940-41.
There was a narrow-gauge railway for extracting the timber, around 18-inch/2ft gauge, which took them into the heart of the forest each day and they would, so he told, head off in the mornings singing Italian operatic arias, just like the beach scene in ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’, returning at night having made little impact on the trees.
The Italians worked away for several years with little effect but towards the end of the war they were replaced by Germans, and, with teutonic efficiency, much of Dronley Wood rapidly vanished!
Grandfather managed to persuade the authorities to leave the strip of Scots Pine behind Dronley House and this has now matured into one of the best parts of the wood.
I can vaguely remember rusting forestry machinery and possibly the remains of the railway when I was playing in the wood in the 1950s and would be most interested to hear any other memories of this lost railway, or of the prisoners of war.
It is amazing to reflect that the Dundee & Newtyle Railway was publicly proposed in 1825, not quite a year after the wooden sailing frigate HMS Unicorn was launched. Technology was on the march!
Roderick Stewart. Dronley.
The freedom to be ignorant?
Sir, Mr Gordon is concerned that students of St Andrews University were fined for displaying the legend F*** the Poor so causing erosion of our freedom of expression (Letters, February 16).
To defend the use of the F-word, the first and last pejorative of the illiterate, is not so much a cry for freedom of any sort, more a vulgar cry in defence of illiteracy, oddly coming from supposedly educated students.
In this context, the freedom being defended is the freedom to be ignorant.
Andrew Lawson. MacLaren Gardens, Dundee.