THE long letter yesterday from Robert Ingram is politically dangerously naive and echoes the sort of divisionism the Unionist opposition try to use against us.
He quotes the currency issue. The SNP’s White Paper detailed four entirely viable currency options described for us by four of the world’s most respected economic experts, and the Yes campaign chose one of them as its best option. (This was the option that the governor of the Bank of England conceded that the rUK would have immediately agreed to if Scotland had chosen independence).
Our opponents, with complete control of the media, responded with a huge lie. They would have done so no matter which one we had chosen. They could lie because we gave them the target.
We should have said that there are numerous currency options available to an independent Scotland. We could have referenced several of these for debate. And pointed out that a government elected in an independent Scotland would, in due course, make the decision on our currency.
That is exactly the position we should take on all the issues Robert Ingram references. I don’t know what government an independent Scottish people will elect. Neither does he.
I don’t even know what are the draft outline policies for health, education, care and welfare, pensions, immigration, business investment, air, rail and road transport, housing, agriculture, fishing, trade, defence, workers’ rights, minimum wage and so many others are of the present UK Government – nor the potential Labour one. And neither do they.
There is absolutely no problem in discussing and debating many exciting options an independent Scottish Government will be able to consider in all areas of governance of an independent Scotland. But they should be options. Not fixed positions. And decisions will be made over periods of time as required and as circumstances determine.
The case for Scottish independence is that we are a well-resourced, economically self-supporting nation, of very able and industrious people, well able to run ourselves. And that we’ll run Scotland rather better than anybody else will. That is all.
David McEwan Hill
Sandbank, Argyll
READ MORE: Letters: Voters want to know what independence would be like
IN response to Robert Ingram’s long letter where he asks “ what will independence give us?”, I would reply with the simple answer that it will give us the ability to make our own decisions.
How many countries who struggled for their independence reduced the argument to merely financial figures etc? They wanted their independence because it was normal. The whole point of independence is for Scots to decide on the kind of society they want. Indeed many of the things he mentions could be changed or improved but you can’t do most of them till after independence.
Once independence is gained we certainly don’t want a carbon copy of the last 300 years.
However, I certainly agree the SNP need to focus more on the benefits of Scots deciding their own society rather than having a Westminster model imposed.
Bryan Auchterlonie
Perthshire
WHATEVER could be ascribed as a case for condemning Scotland as a participant among nations in profiting from the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as alluded to in Cat Boyd’s fine article (Scotland’s left-wing image just took a big hit? Good, September 18) is somewhat undermined by fellow National columnist Stuart McHardy on a later page of the same paper.
While Cat is right to congratulate Glasgow University on acknowledging its acquisition of bequests derived from the infamous trade and exploitation of black African human beings, it would be misleading to label this as a wrong done by Scotland.
As Stuart McHardy documents on a subsequent page, Scotland was itself abused, albeit in a different and less stark way, by and from the 1707 Act of Union. Deeds done by private Scottish individuals were not done in the name of Scotland. Then, as now, the deeds done and directed by the Houses of Parliament in Westminster were not of Scotland’s doing, except by default. Scotland’s sovereignty was stolen by the Act of Union.
Cat Boyd rightly highlights the first doctor of medicine graduation by an Afro-American – James McCune Smith – and how it was Glasgow University where this occurred. In this there is at least a little redemption for the cruelties of the slave trade that can justifiably be attributed to Scotland.
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead
READ MORE: So Scotland’s left-wing image just a took a big hit? Good
I AM sure that I cannot be the only one of your readers to notice the glaring error in Stuart McHardy’s history article on Tuesday. George III died in 1820. I hope this is a printing error – I cannot believe that a historian would make such a mistake. I look forward to Back in the Day and would be disappointed to feel that there might be other such inaccuracies which readers might not be aware of.
Hamish MacColl
Address supplied
READ MORE: Anti-Scottish bigotry is rooted in the mentality of the British Establishment
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