Border dispute

In his letter of 22 April, Stan Grodynski advocated that the Scottish National Party put up candidates in the forthcoming general election in the north of England.

He thinks that this may increase the SNP’S impact as a party of opposition at Westminster.

It may have been tongue-incheek for him to go on to suggest that the SNP popularity may be such that Hadrian’s Wall may be the border of a future independent Scotland.

I have an alternative to put to Mr Grodynski and his fellows: using his and his party leader’s logic for justification for Indyref2 (or 3, or 4, etc) that a 60 per cent-plus vote against the national decision means that a region is being “dragged kicking and screaming out” of a political union, the boundary of an independent Scotland would have to be drawn much further north.

The vote to remain part of the UK was over 60 per cent in Edinburgh, East Lothian, Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.

This suggests that the Antonine Wall would be much more appropriate.

When such areas as Orkney, Shetland, Stirling, Aberdeenshire, East Renfrew and East Dumbartonshire are taken into account, it would be easier just to set up Glasgow and Dundee as “Indyscotland” in much the same way as East and West Pakistan were separated from India.

Is this off the wall? Remember how Northern Ireland came into being... and the misery that followed.

DAVID K ALLAN The Square, Haddington I have always maintained that the Scotland we recognise on the map only came into existence as a united entity relatively free of internal division and strife after Culloden. That opinion, of course, is open to debate .

What is undisputed amongst those with a knowledge of British history is that Hadrian’s Wall was never “the earlier historic boundary” (Stan Grodynski, Letters, 22 April) between Scotland and England . The wall was/is neither a geographic nor a demographic divide but was more of an estate wall constructed by the Romans along the shortest coast to coast path to demarcate the northern extent of their empire.

Neither Scotland nor England existed at the time of its construction (c 120 AD). Indeed, the Angles would not arrive until centuries later and the invading Scots (or if you like, Irish, of whom I am obviously a descendant) still occupied only a small region in what is now south-west Scotland.

DR A MCCORMICK Kirkland Road, Terregles