Letters / A society is judged by how it treats its weakest
Trickle-down economics, that mantra of the right wing we thought had retired with Margaret Thatcher, is back on the agenda once more.
Our new Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have decided to use their position of unelected privilege to unleash a policy so unfair they would never have the guts to put it before the electorate.
Desperate times call for desperate measures obviously, but this takes the biscuit, the barrel, the larder and, possibly even the factory and gives it to the rich for safe keeping.
We should really smell a rat when the first five letters of the policy spells trick. And it is one. We know trickle-down economics does not work and we have evidence right here in Shetland.
The island of Whalsay has the highest per area rate of millionaires in the UK. Good on them, they work hard for that reward in a dangerous industry. However, the island also has people who need to use a foodbank to get by.
No one is suggesting that the millionaires should be directly supporting the people with the greatest need. No one except Liz Truss that is.
I read a good analogy the other day which likened Trussenomics to coming across a homeless person and instead of giving them a tenner you go and post it through a rich person’s letterbox and expect it to get to the homeless person eventually. Madness.
Of course, we in Scotland are not taken in by this. Seventy-five per cent of us vote for parties that advocate progressive taxation, and I would advocate at least half of the other 25 per cent would be red faced about this latest grab from the poor to the rich.
England is taking a huge lurch to the right and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Nothing except saying enough is enough and going it alone. We are big enough, rich enough and smart enough to know that a society is judged by how it treats its weakest. Something that Truss and her cronies have obviously forgotten (or more accurately, don’t care about).
Iain Malcolmson
South Nesting
