Scotland Matters Letters

Nicola Sturgeon has promised financial packages to various countries affected by climate change. One of those countries is Pakistan, which has just allocated £8.74 billion to its space programme. The SNP government has just announced cuts to services amounting to £1.2bn although they insist on squirrelling away £20m for a meaningless independence referendum. This raises the question of where Sturgeon in her headline-grabbing quest to personally save the planet is finding the money to fulfil her pledge made at COP 27. Scotland deserves and needs a better government with a First Minister who is not on a full-time ego trip at the expense of the taxpayer. Ian Balloch, Grangemouth. Falkirk.

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Like most of Scotland, I really am suffering from “dim-nat” fatigue but Nicola Sturgeon’s CO2 mitigation measures such as the nationalisation of ScotRail, the dismantling of the ferry service to the islands and the removal of ambulances from our roads will see to it that thousands of tonnes of CO2 are not released into the atmosphere. If there were some way the amount of hot air Ian Blackford exhales at PMQs could be used to heat Westminster it would further bolster the SNP’s already stellar green credentials. David Bone, Girvan.

In an interview with Kay Burley on Sky News, Nicola Sturgeon talked enthusiastically about Scotland’s `leadership role’ in climate matters. She claims that it was Scotland that put the issue of reparations for climate damage on the agenda at Cop26, when she offered £ 2 million to help to deal with damage inflicted by industrialisation. Now in Sharm ffi Sheikh, but not a participant in official proceedings, Miss Sturgeon offers a further £ 5 million of our money. A week ago, John Swinney, Miss Sturgeon’s finance minister, announced cuts of £615million to healthcare, education and justice. I suppose that, in the scheme of things, £ 7 million is not that much. Just as it is not much in terms of the kind of sums being considered for climate reparations. It is merely the gesture of an ‘attention seeker’. Liz Truss got many things wrong, but not her judgment of Miss Sturgeon. An unkind thought occurs to me: how many millions will we have to pay before Miss Sturgeon achieves her wish of being invited as leader of an official delegation to a Cop meeting?? Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

It appears that the First Minister favours the payment of climate change reparations to developing countries. My advice is to be cautious; theworkofJamesWattand the steam engine, William Murdoch and coal gas, and James “Paraffin” Young and shale oil, could all mean that Scotland might well be charged a very big premium price because the efforts of these much-celebrated pioneering Scots mightily enhanced CO2 production from fossil fuels. Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen.

I was listening to a discussion on the Jeremy Vine show about nurses’ pay and their threat to strike. The nurse on the show said that a band five nurse is paid £27k and has a university loan of £60k If these numbers are right why is it nurses need to go to university – why not train on the job like it used to be? Allan Sutherland, Willow Row, Stonehaven.

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