TORY nonentity Grant Shapps has said that it is too soon for people to be thinking about going on a foreign holiday. This message was echoed by his bone-idle lying buffoon boss Boris Johnson.

Last week Johnson was saying he was optimistic about the prospect of people going on holiday. On Tuesday the UK Health Secretary, the preposterous Matt Hancock, was threatening to jail people for 10 years if they lie to avoid quarantine coming from abroad.

The Tories have bungled expectations on the way out of lockdown. A recent epidemiology analysis using computer modelling suggests that lifting all restrictions even by April, when 30 million people are vaccinated, could lead to an even greater wave of infections.

READ MORE: Brutal Tory recovery cycle must not put public health at risk

The dishonesty is repugnant. In New Zealand and Australia, the price for coming out of lockdown has been restrictions on foreign travel. The Tories can’t tell people this, because their hard-right base of fanatics won’t accept the science.

While the Tories mangled their message on Covid-19 restrictions, Citizens Advice were warning about proposed cuts to Universal Credit. They have said that these Tory cuts will make the value of Universal Credit even less than it was in 2013.

In other words, the gluttonous, degenerate Tories plan to make those living in squalor and misery pay the price for their economic uselessness.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

HENRY McLeish, ex-Scottish Labour leader and previous First Minister, is regularly reported in The National. The story is usually accompanied with a photo that depicts Henry in a pensive, reflective pose staring knowledgeably into the sky (Holyrood in the background). It makes you think this self-appointed guru is going to say something profound, meaningful and maybe radical and awe-inspiring. But what you get always disappoints. He states the obvious.

READ MORE: 'With SNP at war and Tories floundering, Labour can become Holyrood opposition'

He confirms that “Labour has messed up over the last 10 years” (‘Labour can beat Tories at May poll’, February 11). He welcomes a second referendum and wants an alternative to status quo Unionism but not self- determination. Nothing new or radical here, Mr McLeish. Nothing here to change Labour’s fortunes. Or to inspire the Scottish people to return to the Labour fold!

But please stop teasing the readers, please bin that photo, which promises so much when the subsequent article delivers so little. At least until Henry does deliver a groundbreaking, world-shattering, revolutionary, insightful statement.

I can’t wait!

Robin MacLean
Fort Augustus

IF the Labour party in Scotland became a party that separated from the English Labour party and became a fully pro-Scottish independence party, they could indeed recover votes. They could even in the not-too-distant future form the government of a fully independent Scotland.

Labour owe the people of Scotland a great deal because of their past appalling betrayal of the voters of Scotland who supported them for such a long time. Becoming a Yes party now might help Labour make up just a little bit for stealing our Yes to devolution vote from us in 1979, hiding the McCrone report from us, stealing 6000 sq miles of Scottish sea from us and passing it to England, interfering in the 2014 referendum with Gordon Brown’s fake vow and his standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tory Cameron.

No party is beyond redemption but the Labour party can never ever win power in Scotland until they face up to just how much they have always exploited Scotland and accept that Scotland can never have democracy until we have independence.

P McDonald
via thenational.scot