SOME of the correspondents on the letters page seem wildly optimistic about Scotland’s future if it secedes from the UK. Indeed, their optimism is so inflated that I doubt whether anyone takes it seriously apart from their fellow separatists.

L.G. Barrett (letters, November 24) assures us that an independent Scotland would have its own Central Bank and would be able to print as much money as it wanted.Wonderful. All our economic problems solved with one wave of the printing press. Yes, yes, and to save paper we can just use the notes in all the Monopoly sets in the country. Brilliant.

Iain Gunn (November 24) adopts a comparative approach. He informs us that the UK, Ireland, France and the USA share the same Standard & Poor AA rating when they borrow money. He maintains that, since they have that rating, then a future Scotland would have it too. What he fails to consider, however, is that credit worthiness is determined by financial criteria like, for example, total value of exports and the scale of the Government’s expenditure deficit.

Strange to say, a country does not get an AA rating simply because it would like one, or is adjacent to another country which has one.

David J. Crawford (November 24) opts for blaming the Union for everything bad that has happened to Scotland. Thus the demise of the coal industry and shipbuilding are blamed on the UK. The fact that coal is a filthy pollutant and that coal-mines have been closed throughout the Western world has not registered with Mr Crawford.

Nor the fact that shipbuilding has gone east as part of the process of globalisation, a process which has left idle shipyards in many Western countries.

His argument is: if it is bad, then the Union must be to blame. Even the dire consequences of some future nuclear war are laid at the UK’s door. How convenient to always have the guilty party identified, even before the offence has been committed.

The case for secession will have to rest on better foundations than these. Naturally the separatists are trying to win over the undecided voters who are not sure whether to remain in the UK or leave it.

The undecided may feel that we are doing quite well out of the Union.

They may have heard that, thanks to the Barnett formula, public spending per head is higher in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK. They may wonder about the £15 billion deficit that the Scottish Government runs up every year and ask themselves what kind of cuts and loss of service that will entail.

They may imagine a border across the middle of this island and be dismayed by the scenes of disruption of travel, passport controls and loss of trade and access on both sides. They may think that a border would be a huge mistake, since Scotland’s exports are weak and 60 per cent of them are bound for the UK.

Enough separatist fantasy and bile. Please show us the factual basis for your claims of prosperity with a border. The exercise will be well worthwhile since you may finally realise there is no such basis.

Les Reid, Edinburgh.

I NEED to take issue with “Will the Palace keep the Queen quiet?”, courtesy of Ian W Thomson and S MacDonald (letters, November 24); the next independence referendum, whenever it is, the question.

A resulting sense of frivolity and abandon, by the electorate, as they vote? The Queen’s alleged fanaticism about being above everyday politics? As for her sly intervention: hardly. She is a constitutional monarch, and has surely gone out of her way, over all these years, to preserve that dignity. Fanaticism? Surely not.

Her words along the lines of “think very carefully about the future”; scarcely the major monarchical aside of Mr Thomson’s world.

Let Mr Thomson and S MacDonald grind their particular axes, of course; I am sure the Queen will be losing no sleep over them.

Brian D Henderson, Glasgow.

JILL Stephenson asserted (letters, November 26) that “closing the border with England is, of course, part of the SNP agenda anyway”. To blatantly propagate such a distortion of the facts demeans the constitutional debate. The SNP has long advocated being independent in a European Union devoid of internal borders.

Colin Campbell, Kilbarchan.

JILL Stephenson claims that according to an Office of National Statistics Survey, “Scots have a higher incidence of corona virus that those elsewhere in the UK.”

A review of the survey – “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey, UK: 20 November 2020” – shows clearly that the situation is not at all as she describes it, and in fact that all the devolved nations are best placed in the UK.

In Scotland, the ONS estimate that 0.64 per cent of the population have the virus. In Wales, the figure is a very similar 0.61 per cent. In Northern Ireland they estimate that the figure is slightly higher at 0.71 per cent.

However in England, ONS found the rate to be 1.22 per cent– or twice the rate in Wales and almost twice the rate here. At regional level there is not a single region in England whose rate is not more than in any of the devolved nations.

There is an old saying about “lies, damned lies and statistics”, but Ms Stephenson’s claim is at such variance with ONS’s findings that it is not only both completely misleading and unhelpful, but very close to the opposite of the truth.

Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton.

JOHN Rankin’s letter (“Scotland does not have any parliamentary opposition”, November 24) echoed much of what I myself have felt over recent months.

If we had a tenacious, well-informed opposition at Holyrood, we would have had a more honest and more efficient SNP administration.

We can but hope that May’s elections grant us that wish.

D. Monaghan, Glasgow.