Labour needs to focus on policy, not personality

In my opinion we need policy-based politics. In political interviews and speeches, we just aren’t hearing anything about party policy; this is an issue with Labour, in particular. I’m not interested in image and the superficial.

I couldn’t care less if the party leaders are angels and every day they help old ladies (and men) across a busy road, or whatever type of puff we’re meant to focus on. It should be about policies.

Please don’t allow British politics to recede into vacant nonsense.

Louis Shawcross

Down

With the UK economy growing by a derisory 0.1 per cent between January and March and still very much the “sick man” of Europe, it is intriguing to note the fate that has befallen Ireland.

That country has recently announced that it is seeking to invest its bumper windfall receipts into a sovereign wealth fund which could be used to shore up public finances in the future, instead of using it for day-to-day spending.

On the back of rocketing corporate tax receipts, the Irish government generated a surplus of over £7bn last year, despite spending on energy support packages and other measures. The government expects this to swell further, with budget surpluses totalling over £57bn over the next four years, which could be used to tackle long-term pressures such as increasing pension demands.

While, without the full levers of independence, the ability to save such levels of funding is a dream for us in Scotland, some one-off monies such as the £700m recently generated from the ScotWind offshore wind leasing round sale could be put aside. Following independence there is of course the potential to use oil and gas revenues to set up a sovereign wealth fund, mirroring Norway whose oil fund now stands at over £1.1 trillion.

The Irish example of a small and agile economy in the European Union, which has over the years broadened its focus away from a stagnating UK economy, may dare I say it prove an example to those of us north of the border – if we are brave enough to take it.

Alex Orr

Edinburgh

Millennium Millies, Essex Man, Mondeo Man. It’s like some desperate archaeological expedition through time without an end in sight!

What about “Do the Day Job Man” or “ Will You Sort Brexit Properly Woman” or most topically “Eurovision Fans Team”?

Less profiles, more leadership and aspiration please.

Sick and tired of this bloody mess bloke

East Riding

Your story about a baby whose DNA has been modified by adding DNA from a third person to prevent the infant suffering a life-threatening disease has had the predictable result.

Already, earnest souls are gathering on our media to discuss the “ethics” and “risks” of such terrible practices, and predicting that they will be the end of life, the universe and everything. However, those of us of a certain age remember this is not the first time such debates have happened. There were identical debates when IVF was first used, predicting babies born this way could be monsters, and would either never be able to have children themselves or would have seriously disabled ones.

Not only did the first “test tube baby” in Britain have children, but so have many others, and IVF is now an accepted fertility treatment. The same predictions of doom accompanied the first experimental heart transplants, which are again now a perfectly routine medical procedure, as are many other types of organ transplant. The history of medicine is full of such fruitless debates, ever since doctors first started treating patients. Vaccinations have recently received the same “treatment” (and not for the first time).

But the world keeps turning, what is strange today will be normal tomorrow, though I am sure we will soon hear the doom-mongers in action again. What next, I wonder? Artificial intelligence, anybody?

Ian McNicholas

Ebbw Vale