Letters: Nicola Sturgeon must know there is no case for independence

There is no economic case for Scottish independence. Every effort to produce one runs into the sands of hard facts and evidence, which show clearly that Scotland benefits from pooling and sharing within the UK to the tune of around £15 billion annually and would be so much poorer after separation. And the EU will not ride to the rescue of a country with such a large deficit, without its own currency, no central bank and few foreign reserves.

There is no historical case. Scotland is not a colony and is not suppressed in any way as part of the UK. Scots and Scotland have benefited greatly, and continue to do so, from being part of team GB.

There is no cultural case. The lives and attitudes of city dwellers in Aberdeen or Glasgow are little different from the same sample in Birmingham, Bristol or Cardiff. Rural life in England is much the same as rural life Scotland or Wales.

There is no legal case. The UK is a unitary state formed by the willing agreement of all parties in the Act of Union and its legal status has never been challenged.

There is no geographical case. We are 65 million people crammed on to a small island. The very idea of splitting it up into different countries in a world where size and influence matters could serve as the very definition of foolishness.

And importantly, there is no democratic case. We had our referendum. The outcome was decisive and should put the question to bed for at least a generation.

Instead of continually distracting the faithful with referendums that never happen, Ms Sturgeon should be considering why, after 90 years in existence, her party has dismally failed to create even the semblance of an evidence-led case for independence. Let me give her a clue: there is no such case, it does not exist, it never has.

Alex Gallagher, Labour councillor, Largs.

KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD

WHAT a tease that Nicola Sturgeon is. She told us in May that a vote for the SNP was a vote to support her management of the Covid crisis. Now she tells us that voting SNP meant supporting her next push for Indyref2, for which she claims a mandate. She has promised her troops a referendum before the end of 2023, and she will soon set out the legislative timetable for her referendum.

Yet Ms Sturgeon also tells us that the course of the pandemic remains "highly unpredictable". Further, the Holyrood legislative timetable has no mention of a referendum bill. That is before Ms Sturgeon encounters a no-doubt-polite refusal from the UK Government to sanction a second referendum. She admits that she hasn’t decided on the date for the introduction of the referendum bill, but she will take that decision in the next few weeks, to enable a referendum to be held before the end of 2023.

We have been here before, year after year since 2016, and in each year the can has been kicked a bit further down the road. I don’t think any of us needs to keep our diary clear for a referendum in 2023. That noise you hear is the can being kicked down the road again.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

WHY WE NEED A YES VOTE

I MUST concur with Ken Mackay (Letters, January 24). If ever we needed convincing of the need for self-determination, the need to run our own affairs, the evidence is all there. The illegal prorogation of Parliament, parties while the country was in lockdown, dodgy decoration donations, Tory MPs breaking lobbying rules, the list could go on and begs the questio:, why would we want to be part of this scandal and corruption?

Over the last month or so the media has reported that there is still plenty of support for Boris Johnson south of the Border, highlighting Mr Mackay's point about separating from voters around London. It is predicted here in Scotland that the Conservatives will be wiped out at the next Westminster election, revealing the clear gap between voters in Scotland and those in England. Scotland seriously can’t afford another Westminster Government she did not vote for, she can’t afford any more legislation from Westminster regarding reserved matters and she certainly can’t afford Mr Johnson for a day longer than necessary. I finish as Mr Mackay finished his letter, independence is about being in charge of our own affairs, that is all.

Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.

* I WAS in a queue of about four people waiting for a sausage roll in Glasgow at the weekend. Turned out I was in the middle of the "emergency" All Under One Banner march. Didn't even realise.

David Bone, Girvan.

SEEKING TO SINK THE LEADER

I SUSPECT that by this time next week Boris Johnson will have gone and the Downing Street wallpaper will be changed again. There will be little talk of the enormous problems he tackled successfully, the health problems including intensive care and lately with his family; just intense speculation on a successor – followed by a frantic searching for dirt (sorry "information") on that successor; possibly going back to schooldays and a cigarette smoked behind the bicycle sheds. I suspect that there will follow a similar trashing of the leader of the Labour Party by the extreme left in order to re-instate their man.

Is this what we have sunk to as a nation, no longer seeking people of action (warts and all) but media-attractive popular personalities? No longer talking about a desire to serve, but an unhealthy grasping at power for power's sake? No longer outlining what we hope to achieve in the next 12 months but how much we will spend; usually multiplied over three or five years because it looks better and hides any temptation to link spend to success? No longer putting forward solutions to problems but articulately outlining that something is a challenge and expecting praise for identifying it?

Heaven help us if we ever have to go to war – if we do find a leader with the courage to make the difficult big decisions – we, through the media, will drag him or her down with distracting information or demand openness that will render a successful outcome impossible.

James Watson, Dunbar.

THE GLOBAL AGGRESSOR

IT looks as if Ukraine is heading for meltdown, leading to the general public fearing Russia and its territorial aspirations, as that is what we are repeatedly told to do.

Last year, just like every other preceding year, one country alone was responsible for more than 50 per cent of all the money spent on Planet Earth on weapons of war; meanwhile the standard of living of its own citizens is in decline. Since its creation, that itself by war, other than for five years, that rapacious country has been continuously involved overtly or covertly in armed conflict in some distant part of the globe: it currently has in the order of 200,000 servicemen stationed abroad, many actively involved in fighting and killing in at least six countries, on occasion against the wishes of their elected governments. Annually it gives military aid of $3.8 billion to one foreign government which is used to further the apartheid policy of its recipient against its indigenous population. The country I describe spies electronically on the general public of its allies to circumvent unhelpful legislation that prevents their own governments from doing so without specific legal permission. Its historic clandestine involvement in the politics of Ukraine is likely to cause a war which could spread to other European states. So we have every right to be afraid of this country, the only thing being that I’m not describing Russia, but the United States.

The facts are that in 2020 US military spending was $778 billion, Russia $62bn and the UK $60bn. There is nowhere in the world where there is strife that the US military industrial complex doesn’t have a finger in the pie, and to keep the profits rolling in people must die.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

SLAVE TRADE-OFF

I DO wonder what the history meddlers of Edinburgh and elsewhere (Letters, January 24) would make of the following: “In 870 AD after a four-month Viking siege of the stronghold that was Dumbarton Rock a flotilla of 200 boats took prisoners (Britons, Picts, Scots and Northumbrians) to Dublin where they were sold as slaves” (see Mary Braithwaite’s excellent book, Ancient Luing).

Dan Edgar, Rothesay.

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