IF now is not the time, then when is?

The rUK government is in open warfare. Even amongst themselves, there was the “c” word, “coup”, and how about “o” for “ousting”? There is no party unity: the threatened rebellion from back benchers hasn’t gone away and there is no evidence of the whip being in control. As for fact-checking: Major, Brown, May and earlier PMs went to state schools, and don’t get me started about growing pies. So if Tories can’t fact-check such basics for the PM’s maiden speech at party conference, what hope is there for the following months with this government?

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Which taxes will they lower, funded or unfunded? Which benefits will be cut? There is a worrying idea being touted that certain benefits will be in line with inflation –targeting the in-work and “needy”, such as lone parents and disabled – but benefits for the unemployed will be pegged lower! Talk about “othering” sections of society. But that’s exactly what the PMs’ speech was all about, with a trailer coming earlier from her Home Secretary Sue Braverman. She offered the red meat of migrants and Rwanda to her evening audience, a warm-up act no less. The PM spoke in the same vein to those in the hall, again for the sake of the applause and a short-term feel-good factor – anything to distract from chaos renamed distraction.

Where was the detail from the PM trailing the forthcoming advantages that her government would be bringing? Where were specifics of that “growth”? Where was the succour much required by despairing mortgage holders or the newbies trying to buy for the first time? On Wednesday evening after conference close, the media announced that the interest rate on a typical two-year fixed rate mortgage has breached 6% for the first time in 14 years! And in her throwaway line about the anti-growth coalition, there she cites me. No, PM, I’m not a member of the SNP and I do not prefer protesting to doing. I “do”, along with the rest of the grassroots indy movement.

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So PM, you really should have checked the lyrics to that M People song, because it looks like you’ve already sipped “from the devil’s cup”, which means it’s definitely time for you to “pack your bags and get out”.

It’s Scotland that’s “moving on out”, away from you and your Union.

Now is the time.

Selma Rahman
Edinburgh

ROBERT Burns's sentiment “man’s inhumanity to man” was fully encapsulated in Suella Braverman’s speech to the Tory party conference when she proclaimed it to be her dream that asylum seekers should be deported to Rwanda. This was not a policy being reluctantly pursued, but a dream!

A few years ago on a visit to Poland, my wife and I spent a sobering and sad afternoon at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Amongst other horrors, we learned that much of the work of forcing victims into the gas chambers and the subsequent removal of corpses was carried out by Jews. These Jewish collaborators must have themselves been scared rigid of falling victim to a similar fate.

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The extermination of Jews and other minority groups was horrific, being made no less horrific because Jews were involved in the crime.

Suella Braverman is herself a person of Asian heritage, but the fact that the daughter of immigrants is the person involved in the deportation of asylum-seeking immigrants to Rwanda does not make the deportation of people to an unknown country any less horrific.

I would still class it as a crime against humanity.

Will we ever see the perpetrators taken to task for their actions?

Alex Leggatt
Edinburgh

WEE Ginger Dug may characterise Ms Truss’s conference speech as “a robotic and turgid string of empty buzzwords” (Truss’s keynote speech was woefully off-key, Oct 6), but it would be unwise to dismiss them as meaningless contributions to the now overheated political debate.

The PM is supported by some of the most skilful and manipulative speech-writers in the country, serving what is arguably the oldest and most deeply entrenched bourgeoisie in the Western world. Her key words are designed to appeal to the holders of “wealth” and to crowd out alternative meanings given to them by the rest of us.

  • "Growth"

Truss-speak = increased returns on all capital invested, at whatever cost.

The rest of us = increased productivity rewarding those without capital, as well as those with.

  • "Trade unions"

Truss-speak = trouble-makers disrupting the achievement of “growth”.

The rest of us = workers possessing little or no capital seeking proper remuneration for their only asset, their labour.

  • "Remainers"

Truss-speak = spineless individuals seeking to enslave the UK to a cabal of foreign powers.

The rest of us = people yearning for socio-democratic systems which protect us from wild capitalism imported from the US.

  • "Green campaigners"

Truss-speak = trouble-makers disrupting the achievement of “growth”.

The rest of us = people alarmed by the growing ecological disaster caused by Truss-speak “growth”.

Politics is a war of words.

Anthony Lodge
Anstruther

I’VE just read the article “PM takes aim at First Minister and ‘separatists’ in Tory address” by Xander Elliards, where Liz Truss describes the Union as a “family”. Well, if this Tory government and the previous ones consider this as a family, then why is Scotland being treated as the bastard child? Scotland and its people could not be treated any worse than an unloved and unwanted child in a family.

It’s time for the “child” to flee the nest.

Independence is the solution to the constant Tory lies and abuse handed down to Scotland!

Jim Todd
Cumbernauld