A FORTNIGHT ago figures were published on the public finances.

Despite economic growth in excess of 3 per cent, tax revenues are not keeping up with public spending. The annual public deficit is widening again, and, as a result, the national debt is rising even more rapidly than before. The aggregate debt stood at £323bn in 2002, £617bn in 2008, £1000bn when Labour lost the 2010 General Election, and £1400 billions today (HM Treasury data). And these figures exclude the hundreds of billions of liabilities taken on in support of the banks, the private finance initiative, and state and public pensions. Nor do they include household debt, which is one of the highest in the world.

The magnitude of these figures is truly shocking. We are heading for another financial blow-up.

Having ring-fenced spending on the NHS, education and foreign aid, the Coalition has limited its ability to deal with our burgeoning public debts. Congenitally in thrall to the left-wing nonsense that public spending is "a good thing", and "more resources" should be showered on everything, the Government is caught in a trap partly of its own making. It cannot raise taxes, because voters in large numbers think that they should have something for nothing. Furthermore, there are not enough rich people who can be squeezed to yield sufficiently more revenue: they will shift their earnings and themselves out of the reach of the taxman. Consequently, the redistributionist spending on the income equality agenda, hardly challenged by the Right, but remorselessly peddled for years by the Left for votes (and no more so than by the SNP here), is driving the public finances over the cliff.

It only needs a trigger to explode the international financial system again. Money printing in the United States continues, if less than before. Perhaps the Chinese credit bubble will burst, taking a large part of the country's banking industry and its trillions of dollars of liabilities with it. Or maybe the West's sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine, and President Putin's response thereto ("Markets sink as tension rises over the Ukraine", The Herald, August 7) will tip the fragile eurozone in general, and Germany's capital goods industry in particular, into depression.

But the spark is very likely to flare up here in our own backyard. A Yes vote in the referendum will cause a flight of capital from the banking system, a drop in the value of sterling, and financial chaos here. The political implosion of the UK, the world's sixth economic power, would send a tsunami through the international economy and financial markets. This is the real danger of a victory for the irresponsible Alex Salmond and the SNP on September 18: it has the potential to destroy our livelihoods. Frankly, I am scared to death.

Richard Mowbray,

14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.

SADLY, it is beginning to look as if the constant scaremongering and negativity of the so-called Better Together campaign is achieving its purpose. Instead of making the positive case for an independent Scotland, those speaking for the Yes campaign have allowed themselves to be put on the defensive, constantly appearing to be begging for favours like keeping the pound and getting a currency union.

They are also being bombarded with complex questions about the future which even the questioners know cannot be answered, some of them depending on detailed negotiations which the UK Govern­ment has wilfully refused to agree to in advance.

But merely responding to and countering the negative case is not nearly enough. Where is the vision for a future independent Scotland? Where is the positive case, proving that Scotland is already fully capable of being a prosperous and successful independent nation? There is already ample proof of this, but the facts are not getting across to the Scottish people.

Scotland has an enviable range of natural resources, and fully-developed agricultural, manufactur­ing, financial and tourism industries with even better future prospects if given the right support and incentives. And we already have a democratically-elected parliament and government in place to take full control of a self-governing nation and make the decisions that are right for Scotland. All we need is direct control of the specific economic and taxation powers to develop all these valuable assets, which many successful independent countries of similar size would love to have.

So in the next few weeks it is vital that the Yes campaign projects this positive vision of what an independent Scotland could achieve. It must concentrate on these positive arguments and seek to stir the pride and bolster the confidence of the Scottish people.

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court,

Glasgow.