They just want to control us

It is good to see Douglas Young is up and about again and speaking on behalf of the SNP (‘Roll on 7 May’, SN 19/3/15) as well as making vastly overrated claims about the 1.6 per cent of the Shetland electorate who are SNP members.

Then he goes on to bemoan the UK’s structural debt, a debt his best pal Nicola Sturgeon would add to in a somewhat befuddled policy to get the country going again. These people must be totally blind as to what is going on around them, we have the fastest growing economy in Europe if not the world, unemployment is down to 5.5 per cent in Scotland, employment is up to record levels.

Just one policy in George Osborne’s budget does more for Scots freedom than the SNP could, or ever would, with a thousand policies.

In his budget last year Chancellor George Osborne gave British men and women with personal pensions the right to use all the pot of money they had saved (tax free) in their private pensions. Previously the lump sum that could be taken was only 25 per cent of their pot. The income would be taxed at marginal rates, 20 per cent for the majority.

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This measure will soon begin to be implemented and means those who benefit could buy an Aston Martin, or a new house, or whatever. As long as they have enough left of course to see them through their retirement, this is real freedom.

George Osborne, and Liberal Democrat pensions minister Steve Webb, have now taken this a step further. Annuities can be re-sold. From April next year, Brits who are already receive income from an annuity can sell that income to a third party, as long as their annuity provider agrees. Until now, Brits have been locked into often lousy deals.

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The money from the sale could then be taken directly or drawn down over years. It would also be taxed at beneficiaries’ marginal rate. That again is real freedom, not the hyperbolic cant about freedom you hear from the SNP and their supporters. Can you see a leftist nationalist party like the SNP doing this? No, they just want to control us with child guardians and virtual ID cards.

Gordon Harmer

Brae