This week's Advertiser letters page includes views on The Sunday Times Rich List which shows "enterprise does pay" and a pledge from the Scottish Conservatives that they would invest £100 million into fixing potholes.

To have your say on any local topic, just email your views to editorial@helensburghadvertiser.co.uk with 'Letter' in the subject line of your message.

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The last of the three public drop-in consultation sessions in the Victoria Halls has now concluded. On behalf of the Community Council, I would like to thank townsfolk who gave us their views on the subject, either by filling in our survey forms or completing our internet survey. The public response was extremely good and we are very grateful for your input.

The Community Council survey report is being prepared and will be publicly available once it is complete.

Norman Muir

Helensburgh Community Council Convener

It has been recently announced that a Scottish Conservative Government would invest £100 million into fixing potholes over the course of the next Parliament.

We all rely on our roads but they are now plagued with potholes and damaging cars. Beyond our concerns for public safety, this systematic under-investment is slowing our economy and costing local councils a fortune in compensation for car owners.

We recognise the importance of a well-maintained road infrastructure and we are willing to invest in it.

That’s why the Scottish Conservatives would invest £100 million over the next Parliament into a pothole fund to help councils address the problem.

The SNP has consistently neglected Scotland’s roads and the results are obvious for all to see. Fixing our roads will mean safer, faster travel across Scotland.

Cllr Alastair Redman

News of £36m funding to support walking and cycling announced by Transport Minister Humza Yousaf is to be welcomed, albeit part of an £80m funding pot already allocated.

Far too often, we experience how sharing roads among pedestrians, cyclists and motorists leads to unwanted collisions that could have been prevented had the road conditions and visibility been better. Therefore, we support separating pedestrians, cyclists and motorists through an expansion of the network of walking and cycling paths across Scotland.

We would like to stress, however, that measures like these will not singlehandedly lead to safer roads. The road mentality in Scotland still favours the motorist over more vulnerable road users, which presents a huge barrier to more people taking up active lifestyles. More needs to be done to change our road culture fundamentally for people in Scotland to feel safer regardless of their means of transportation, ultimately empowering them to lead healthier and more active lifestyles. Perhaps it is time we started to beat the ‘Presumed Liability’ drum once again?

Brenda Mitchell

Scots have done well in The Sunday Times Rich List published on Sunday. The fortunes of the top ten are up £1.5bn from last year, a 10.2% increase. This is good news for Scotland with new money overtaking inherited old money for the first time. Enterprise does pay.

However, there is an unintended consequence. Overnight, there was a large increase in kids in Scotland living in “poverty”.

Scotland has statutory targets to cut child poverty by 2030 after passage of The Child Poverty Bill in 2017. These targets will never be met. Our MSPs need to buy Statistics for Dummies.

From the Bill: “Relative poverty - A child falls within this section in a financial year if the child lives in a household whose equivalised net income for the year is less than 60% of median equivalised net household income for the year.”

“Equivalisation” is a technique invented by economists to manipulate data to suit their models. It is not a mathematical term.

In any population, there must always be households with less than 60% of median household income. The size of this “poverty” group is a measure of inequality in household income. It is not a measure of “poverty”.

The wages of “poverty” did not go up by 10.2% in 2017. It follows that Scotland was a more unequal country last year than in 2016. More kids will be given inappropriate labels by government statute and denied their right to an equal education and childhood.

John Black

The Scottish Jacobite Party