Nicola Sturgeon tells us that the forthcoming election will be the first in which people are electing a government to exercise Scotland's new tax and welfare powers (My pitch to the Scottish people, Essay of the week, April 17). It is vital that our future government have a strategy for the banks. Originally, only the sovereign had the power to issue money. Over time banks arose to store people's spare money. Soon, these banks began usurping the power of the sovereign by lending this spare cash at interest to the public. Later, the banks were joined by building societies in this ''at interest'' money creation scam (first detailed in Thomas Robertson's book Human Ecology in 1948).

Soon, the proportion of money created by them far exceeded that created by the sovereign (or his treasury).To illustrate what this debt-based financial system actually means in numerical and practical terms we need but consider the Bank of England's March 1997 statistical release. This gave the total extant UK money stock to be approximately £680bn (ie the total of all the money in existence in the economy – coins, notes, banks building society deposits). The total of money created by the Treasury on behalf of the UK Government was a mere £25bn (notes and coins) – which represents but 3 per cent of the total UK money stock. So, where did the other £655bn (the other 97%) of all the money in the UK come from? It had been created entirely by banks and building societies – ex nihilo.

We are now on the final furlong in the complete usurpation of the creation and management of money by the banks via the total digitalisation of the financial system. In the blink of an eye, plastic cards will be the sole means of paying for goods and services, and when that day dawns, the entire financial system will be in the hands of – guess who? Those few private banks. Then, if you suspect mistakes have been made in your financial affairs, your only recourse will be to those self same banks.

Doug Clark

Currie

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon portrays the SNP’s 2016 manifesto as being one of reform and transformation, and finishes with a flourish promising to always put Scotland first . Of course any who have been paying attention over the course of the last nine years will have seen how the SNP have fallen short of a series of their own targets, from class sizes to raising attainment of those from areas of deprivation, from A&E waiting times to environmental performance. The reason why so much change is required, is that two terms of the Scottish Parliament have seen the SNP struggle to deliver on their rhetoric.

As for implying the people of Scotland are in the driving seat on the issue of a second referendum, the First Minister blatantly ignores the recently expressed will of the those people in the 2014 referendum, saying she will restart that whole divisive debate in the summer. The message is clear, the SNP are determined to engineer the circumstances for another independence referendum, and this will be prioritised above all else, no matter what the First Minister might appear to promise.

Keith Howell

West Linton