Canadian family treated shamefully

SIR, – The Zielsdorf family, from Canada, have been living in Laggan and invested £300,000 in the local store and cafe.

They are to be deported because Mr Zielsdorf's application for a business visa has been rejected.

The treatment that they have received is shameful including confiscating their driving licences and treating them like criminals.

The family have been supporting themselves and have been a real asset to the local community.

The Home Office obviously does not care about this family or the drastic effect that their deportation will have on a small, fragile, Highland community.

Helen Robertson, Bellfield Drive, North Kessock Sturgeon herself has declared the upcoming general election to be a two-horse race. Lesley Berry, Market Place, Inverurie other parts of the UK. The collapse in oil prices is undoubtedly a factor as Mr Johnston points out, but we were assured by the Yes campaign just three years ago that oil was “just a bonus" and Scotland could do well without it.

Most bizarrely, Mr Johnston appears to be blaming Westminster for giving us more than our share in the Scottish budget.

This should help to stimulate the economy as well as giving us good public services.

Instead, our councils face SNP austerity, and our schools and hospitals are under-performing, just like the economy. It's hard to see why Westminster is to blame for that. Keith Shortreed, Cottown of Gight, Methlick high because we get such high funding from them.

Further, Westminster forces us to spend what funding we get. And so we have our very large (attributable) annual fiscal deficit.

Mr Johnston kind of omitted to say that therefore Westminster would do us a favour by cutting down on our block grant (at least he must have meant that).

But what public spending would we then have to curtail?

The 2013 Scotland's Balance Sheet again gives us a clue.

Pensions paid on our behalf, health and education are the largest yearly funding consumers, but would Holyrood start here?

Infrastructure works surely would be targeted instead. Or our new income tax ownership could increase tax rates, thus helping to control the fiscal deficit.

Unfortunately, our attributable deficit is so big that far more drastic measures loom following independence (but this is the surest way to put a stop to Mr Johnston's concern about Westminster's largesse). Joe Darby, Cullicudden,

near Dingwall