Is the SNP’s ‘magic money tree’ going to pay for a four-day working week?

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Unions, think tanks and businesses are calling for the First Minister of Scotland to follow Spain's lead on a four-day work week (Getty Images)

Here in Scotland, we are fortunate to be awash with money. With our public funds brimming over, during an unprecedented crisis. That, at any rate, is the impression anyone would get from the proposal by interested parties for the Scottish government to provide a subsidy to enable them to introduce a four-day working week with no loss of pay.

This proposal was, unsurprisingly, passed at the SNP conference and is being supported by the Scottish Trades Union Congress, as well as the Circle Scotland CIC and the Autonomy and New Economics Foundation think tank.

It is claimed that the initiative could create up to 60,000 new jobs. And, no doubt, it would also create plenty of opportunities for overtime working with pay at overtime rates. 

The country with the highest deficit in Europe and low levels of productivity can somehow, from somewhere, find the money to subsidise this initiative? Is this all part of the SNP’s new MMT strategy, known to its proponents as Modern Monetary Theory and to the sane and numerate among us as the Magic Money Tree? 

Jill Stephenson

Edinburgh

Battle of Waterloo

As a lifelong film fan, and a big personal fan of, Christopher Plummer, I have been reading many tributes – The Independent first of course – to him across various media outlets. 

The list of memorable performances is impressive, to put it mildly. However, I have noticed one role – brilliantly performed – notable by its complete absence: the Duke of Wellington in the huge 1970 epicWaterloo.

Surely, this omission cannot have occurred because of Brexit (reminding everyone the French lost must be de rigueur) and I am certain that Arthur Wellesley was not a slave owner, so it is all rather mysterious.

A whole page repeating an old review of this classic period war movie would be just splendid. Thanks. 

Robert Boston

Kent

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Thank you for Saturday's three pages dedicated to explaining the unpleasant phenomenon that is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

After years of monosodium glutamate leaving an unpleasant aftertaste, it seems MSG has been superseded by the even more unpalatable MTG; and (unfortunately) for the foreseeable future.

Alistair Vincent

Barnet

Britain’s borders

So "Keir Starmer and Labour are being unrealistic about sealing Britain’s borders", says John Rentoul. Is that so?

UK public, turn over your papers: Q1. Compare and contrast (a). Labour’s plan (b). Tory free-for-all. Your time starts now.

Eddie Dougall

Suffolk

Fresh policies

It is true that we are sleepwalking into a world that is rife with economic ruin, isolationism, protectionism and new and potentially more dangerous variants of the virus. Places of worship, museums, art galleries, concerts, festivals, cinemas; places where people meet, exchange knowledge and blossom socially, culturally and spiritually have been devastatingly hit by the virus. Dwindling financial resources place in jeopardy the livelihoods of thousands of employees. Time to formulate policies to rejuvenate the vibrancy and diversity of individuals and communities at large. 

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London

Powerless America

Joe Biden is wrong. America is the World’s Chumps, not the “World Champs”.

The USA is not back as the world number one, the world superpower, the world's most important and most significant nation. 

Biden is wrong to think the world, Russia and China et al, should do as they are told by the US.

America is no longer looked up to as the world number one, but at the bottom of the world table in regards to coronavirus.

Jane Wallace

Sydney