Time for detail

So, I’m reading from Finance Secretary Kate Forbes (Perspective, 13 April) just how well-off we are as the world’s 14th wealthiest nation on a GDP per capita basis and how a release from “borrowing power (currently) restricted” alongside “ambitious policies to transform Scotland’s economy” will set us on the road to an independent Nirvana, or at least an Irish version of it.

Ms Forbes reads selectively from the recent Hunter/ Oxford Economics report,.

She is obstinately blind to the financial dynamics of a debt-overloaded independent Scotland with a fledgling currency, little by way of currency reserves and dependent on overseas capital inflows to balance the books.

But Ms Forbes just peddles out the same old mantras of “levers of power” and “bountiful resources and talent”, while Ms Sturgeon and Mr Salmond call for “one more push” to “get over the line”’, reminiscent, really, of the ruinous damage wrought by the British Army’s Great War generals in France.

It hurts me to hear the SNP repeatedly avoid the detail of what a declaration of independence at this time in our history truly stands to cost each of us.

It hurts me to see how we, the punters, are being sacrificed to the Nats’ blind ambition.

Oh, and Ireland’s unique EU success rests heavily on having gamed Brussels over the provision of aggressive tax breaks for global multinationals. The EU won’t get fooled like that again.

KEN ROBERTSON Blackford Bank, Edinburgh