Too wee, too poor, too stupid?

Sir, – Robert IG Scott (“Showing their true colours”, Letters, July 11) raises the old unionist argument, that Scotland is totally dependent on the UK, and couldn’t survive as an independent nation. Too wee, too poor and too stupid.

Too wee: Scotland is a middle-sized nation in world terms, 115th out of 234, about the same size as Ireland, and twice the size of Denmark, Netherlands and Switzerland, three prosperous independent European states.

Too poor: Norway is a bit bigger than Scotland, with a more challenging climate and terrain, much poorer than Scotland not long ago, yet now one of the world’s wealthiest nations. How come?

It discovered oil, in the same seas, roughly the same quantities and at the same time as Scotland but, being independent, could manage its own wealth to benefit its own people.

Scotland’s oil wealth was routed through Westminster, where it funded foreign wars and UK vanity projects, and disappeared into the offshore bank accounts of the rich and powerful.

Too stupid: well, despite having three of the top 100 universities in the world, and a highly educated population, I concede we are stupid to put up with being controlled by another country, almost always by a governing party for which the people of Scotland rarely vote, who treat us with contempt.

Fortunately the Scottish people are seeing, in the clarity of coronavirus and the coming Brexit disaster, a corrupt and incompetent Westminster Government with no concern for Scotland, and we are now, in increasing numbers, accepting the only sensible way ahead for Scotland is as an independent nation.

Les Mackay. 5 Carmichael Gardens, Dundee.