RESTRICTING immigration and control of borders is a mainstay of the current UK Government and Conservative and Unionist Party, driven as it is by the Brexiteers of the European Research Group (ERG) and their obsessive distrust of the EU and pining after the loss of Empire. The replacement “Global Britain” has yet to emerge, and the economy still seems to have a bit still to drop.

Climate change and the lack of water in some locations and the excess in other locations is causing migration. Drought in central India followed by floods in Pakistan – the two countries have been embroiled in several conflicts over water.

Unicef reports that at least 700 million people are at risk of displacement due to severe water shortages up to 2030. Most will simply move to the nearest country that can support them. This will in turn stress these neighbours, and conflicts will result.

Ethiopia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are recent and current areas of conflict over water supplies. The USA is not exempt, with trouble in California, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee taken to the courts, thankfully.

By 2025 half of the world’s population could be living in areas of inadequate water supply, and women and children are most affected in all areas where water supply and infrastructure are lacking. It is women and children who fetch the water and women in particular are doubly affected due to their regular sanitary needs.

Even if only one in 200 (0.5%) of those 700 million people try to migrate to the UK, 3.5 million will attempt to join us here. When survival is at stake, people will make it to safe areas – nothing will stop them.

In order, to prevent these potential major migrations, water is the key and global warming must be controlled. It is therefore in all our interests to reduce the causal factors, namely CO2 and methane emissions.

Alistair Ballantyne
Birkhill, Angus

COMMENTS by Prime Minister Liz Truss that it will take years for the UK to establish a free trade deal with the US are both confusing and alarming.

In 2019, then prime minister Boris Johnson noted that a UK-US post-Brexit trade deal was imminent and the UK was at the “front of the queue”. Three years later, Ms Truss tells us the deal has been shelved for at least the “short to medium term”.

It transpires that there aren’t currently even any negotiations taking place, despite a pledge by Brexiteers that this was one of the major economic benefits of leaving the EU.

What we have witnessed since Brexit is a series of trade deals that mirror what the UK already had as members of the EU, or are even worse. This was most recently demonstrated by the free trade deal with New Zealand, which will see much higher quantities of produce come into the UK tariff-free. It means a lack of a level playing field between British and New Zealand farmers, who can benefit from economies of scale.

This is in stark contrast to the EU’s free trade agreement with New Zealand, which secured the same market access for its exports but with better safeguards for its domestic producers.

While the UK Government is celebrating the fact that leaving the EU gives the UK the benefit of making trade agreements, these do not seem to be forth-coming, and where they are, they frequently put the UK in a worse position than previous EU membership provided.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh

WITH Truss in the US finally admitting that the great trade deal promised as the pay-off for “getting Brexit done” is nowhere in sight, can we put away the false notion that our cost of living crisis is the result of the Russian war with Ukraine?

The libertarians that saw opportunities for personal gain by taking us out of the EU created this situation. It was spiralling downward long before the war in Ukraine impacted on fuel supplies, providing a convenient scapegoat for those who should be first in line to take the blame.

Truss fully embraced Brexit and backed Johnson right until his final moments in office. She and others in her government were complicit with Johnson, and they have no economic solutions to offer other than to further boost the wealth of the wealthy in the hope that they might buy us a way out.

The government in London is evidently unwilling to govern in the interests of the weakest and most vulnerable among the population. Now is the time for Scotland to break free before these people do any further harm to our country.

Ni Holmes
St Andrews

TRUSS and the UK Tories are concentrating on trade deals with countries that will, for the most part, be interested in buying UK weapons. The armaments industry has UK Tories in its back pocket. And Mr JCB is big in India, of course.

Tim Warner
via thenational.scot