AS is pointed out frequently by financial and economic analysts, Scotland needs to increase its population because without that the economic growth we require will be well-nigh impossible.

Unfortunately, as Mhairi Black said in Saturday’s National (Brexit and Labour are a mess ... but good news on students, August 12), the Register General’s Annual Review of Scottish Population suggests that the opposite is likely to happen.

It is clear, therefore, that a change of direction is urgently required if we are not all to become poorer.

Since Westminster’s restrictions on immigration are precisely wrong for Scotland’s needs, we must first escape from the madness of UK Government policies. But that is just the starting point. To achieve economic growth we must also create a business environment that is attractive to entrepreneurs, be they native or immigrant. What such an environment looks like is well understood and has been demonstrated in many successful small countries around the world. It need not be detailed here.

Essentially what we need is not just less regulation but smarter regulation. In itself that is not a major problem. For despite the long record of economic failure in the UK, there is nothing mysterious about how to create an environment in which business can flourish. Nor does it require uncontrolled capitalism “red of tooth and claw”. Indeed, a good example of what can be achieved is on record here in Scotland in the business performance of a public-sector monopoly, Scottish Water.

When it was formed in 2002, its operating costs and levels of service were years behind those of the same industry in England and Wales. Average household water bills were £19 higher than the average in England and Wales.

Since then, operating costs have fallen by around 40 per cent and household bills in Scotland are now £50 lower than the average bill south of the Border. This success has been achieved by light but smart regulation, providing strong incentives that reward both management and workers for meeting tough targets. If we are to afford the kind of society we want, we simply must grow our economy. As the Scottish Water story demonstrates, Scotland is well able to create efficiency and to solve problems when we have the freedom to unleash our enterprise. Let’s get rid of the Unionist begging-bowl mentality and get on the job.
Peter Craigie
Edinburgh

IN Saturday’s issue of The National, Mhairi Black asked what the Labour Party's policy is on Brexit. The answer is plain. Every Labour MP was elected on a manifesto commitment to honour the Leave vote and thus exit the single market and customs union. The Conservatives and the DUP had the same commitment. The vast majority of UK voters (more than 85 per cent) voted for parties supporting Lancaster House Brexit. A clear majority of Scottish voters also did so.

As it happens, I followed the habit of a lifetime and voted SNP in the recent UK election. I did so because I believe that the SNP Government has a mandate to call an independence referendum based on the party's 2016 manifesto which said that an SNP government “should” have the right to call an independence referendum if there was a material change in circumstances such as Brexit. Brexit happened, and a minority SNP government duly moved for a Section 30 order. Democracy should be respected at both UK and Scottish levels, and manifestos on constitutional issues must be adhered to. That means Lancaster Brexit followed some years thereafter by another Scottish referendum.
William Ross
Aberdeenshire

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A pair of shoes won’t put girls off going into politics

I’M not sure that “Dolly Babe” is the ideal name for a girls' shoe, but I don’t think any girls will be diverted from leadership aspirations by seeing that the small print on a few boys’ shoes in the playground says “Leader” (FM steps into shoe sexism row, The National, August 14). So why is this issue deemed of such gravity that the First Minister herself felt the need to intervene?

We need to take a step back and look at the belief system from which Nicola Sturgeon interprets the case. Feminism usually starts with the assumption that males and females are identical in mind, personality, interests and ambitions. They square this belief with the mountain of evidence to the contrary by accusing “society” of imposing patriarchal values that selectively mould men and women. The evident overall differences between the sexes lead to men and women making different life and career choices. Feminists see these divergences as problems to be solved in the name of “equality”, so every image that depicts males and females in roles that they do indeed tend to adopt must be eliminated.

Their vision is a society where no gendered stereotyping exists, and where, therefore, men an women are identical in their choices. This vision will always founder on the rocks of innate biological differences. In the meantime, time and money is wasted on an the task of dissuading men and women from following their own natural life vision. When men and women won’t play ball, and differences remain, the state must begin to intervene with unjust and authoritarian measures to force reality to fit their false theory.
Richard Lucas
Scottish Family Party

GEORGE Kerevan’s excellent summary in The National of our lucky escape – so far – from nuclear obliteration begs the question about what we can do to reduce the threat (A brief history of planet Earth’s near misses with a nuclear holocaust, The National, August 14).

My support and campaigning for Scottish independence has nothing to do with nationalism. I would like to live in a country with moral defence and foreign policies. Nuclear arms have no place in a country that would meet my aspirations. The arguments for Union seem to focus almost exclusively on money. I cannot imagine that I would allow myself to be bribed into hosting nuclear weapons 30 miles from where I live.

Scotland can play a unique role in furthering the cause of nuclear disarmament by banishing these weapons from the Clyde. To do so, we must become a sovereign nation again. Yes, these weapons represent only two per cent of Nato’s arsenal, but they are our responsibility.

On July 7 this year, 122 states voted for the adoption of the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty. Representation from Scottish civic society made a valuable contribution to this. A pubic meeting hosted by Scottish CND on August 23 at 7pm at the Quaker meeting house in Elmbank Crescent, Glasgow will include presentations from our representatives at the UN conference, and an open discussion about how we take this breakthrough forwards.
David H Kelly
Glasgow

MERRYN Glover’s reflections on early post-partition India (Books, The National, August 14) brought back memories of my visits as a young merchant seaman to several major Indian cities in the early 1950s. The Indian subcontinent, once one of the richest in the world, had been reduced to poverty by two centuries of British exploitation to one of poorest areas in the world.

I think my Scottish nationalism was conceived there as I watched the Sahibs and Memsahibs strutting around among poverty-stricken and begging children. There were no inter-community tensions that I can remember and I recall worshippers in a large dockland mosque completely unmolested in this Hindu and Sikh city.
Alan Clayton
Strachur, Argyll

ALEX Salmond is no stranger to criticism. Let his critics, Unionists and nationalists alike, do their worst. He will rise head and shoulders above it. As SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland, he took the nation to within 10 per cent of achieving independence.

Salmond is quite simply the most effective politician Scotland has had since 1707. It is fervently to be hoped he will go on to finish the job.
Billy Scobie
Alexandria