Is government engineering social and economic slump to boost independence?

There can be little doubt that the constant threat of a second independence referendum is having a depressing effect on the Scottish economy.

Our relative under performance compared to the rest of the UK can have no other cause; all other economic factors are largely equal. Scotland now has a declining economy, a declining standard of education and some of the worst health statistics in the UK. All this in spite of a much higher public spend per head of population, courtesy of the Barnett formula. The blame lies with the policies, not the funding.

After ten years of this, giving the SNP the benefit of the doubt, the fact that their attention has been focused on independence rather than improving life now for the citizens of Scotland is beginning to wear thin. Could it be the case that a lower standard of living and poorer public services are their deliberate means to push Scots into voting for independence?

As long as they can deflect all responsibility for this state of affairs to Westminster, deteriorating conditions may work in their favour. Far fetched as this seems, the fatally flawed policies on education, the police and the NHS appear to suggest that creating an atmosphere of disgruntlement and grievance could be their perceived route to independence.

In the 2014 referendum the only regions which voted Yes were the most deprived in Scotland – Glasgow, North Lanarkshire and Dundee. Every other region voted No. Is it possible that the SNP think that by spreading disadvantage they can increase their vote? How else do we explain a ten-year record of failure and their stubborn unwillingness to alter course regardless of outcome?

It is little short of tragic for the young people of Scotland who are trying to obtain a good education or trying to obtain secure employment that the current Scottish Government is either focusing on independence at the expense of everything else, or even worse, deliberately engineering economic and social decline to build the independence vote.

Which is it, feckless incompetence or Machiavellian manipulation? Either way, it is doing Scotland no good at all.

CAROLE FORD Terregles Avenue, Glasgow