Letterwritershavemissed pointI wasmaking

I seem to have evoked a reaction to my recent letter to the Perthshire Advertiser, with both George Godman and Name And Address Supplied responding.

It seems though that, unfortunately, neither has truly grasped the point I was making with regards to the SNP and the question of independence.

There are two aspects to independence, the economic one and the political one. I made it clear in my letter that I am only a prospective SNP voter, and as a lay person and not being an economist, my letter was intended to deal primarily with the political issue.

George takes me to task for not mentioning Finland, Norway or Sweden.

For George’s benefit and that of Name and Address Supplied, the countries I listed were as examples of how in fairly recent times, or within our lifetime, the likes of Eire and Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia) have successfully split politically and are now established nations, each in their own right.

Especially for Name and Address Supplied relating to the former Czechoslovakia, I was not seeking to draw an economic parallel with either of these two now independent nations, merely to illustrate that since that split, neither of the two have regretted it or tried to re-join together.

Economically, of course there is no comparison with the UK, but if economics is the yardstick, notwithstanding the lower starting point economically than ours, it does not seem that either is any the worse off for splitting apart.

This being so, to further respond to Name and Address Supplied, irrespective of what government the Czechs had post World War II, having had the Soviets as masters for a time didn’t stop the Czechs from deciding to split apart 25+ years ago.

For George, Eire was born of a turbulent time in the immediate post World War I aftermath, yes. However, notwithstanding the 2008 global crash which every country experienced, the Irish Republic now is a vibrant , economically stable modern state.

I didn’t list other countries because the independence of those George mentioned are really too far back.

Any teething troubles experienced at the time are no longer within the experience of anyone still living, and who aren’t around now to tell us how it went initially. I can’t help but wonder if George is defeating his own economic argument though? Perhaps excluding Sweden, the three countries he listed are all very approximately the same as us, both geographically, population wise and economically. All are doing ok.

My question asked, given the success of comparable countries, why can’t we be equally so, has not been responded to by either correspondent.

I can but suggest to George and

Name and Address Supplied, that if both don’t like the answers to the questions they have for the SNP, then just continue to vote for us to remain a region happy to sit at another’s table, begging for alms and to have that same other select your government for you, totally and utterly regardless of how we ourselves have voted.

Neither aforementioned correspondents responded to that point in their letters.

Name and Address Supplied also feels that a comparison can’t be drawn between a split of a union only 75 years old, just over a quarter century ago, to one of over 300 years old.

I do not see the relevance of how long the union lasted. A much smaller scale I acknowledge, as an example, the union of a marriage between a husband and wife runs into trouble, if the actions of one of the other makes the spouse unhappy, a divorce can occur, whether that marriage is one, 20 or 50 years old.

What happened previously, is not relevant to the current, timeous situation.

On the economic side of the argument, I get the impression George wants guarantees. How many of these have there been in life? When I left my parent’s home it was to take on for myself the cost of acquiring and running a place of my own, not relying on my parents, and economically only paying a peppercorn rent as youngsters infrequently do living with their parents until it’s time to fly the nest, a natural human instinct. I don’t remember getting any guarantees from anybody back in 1971.

In 1775 the colonists in America had been under first England’s control and then Great Britain’s. This for at the very least circa 125 years, and also at the very least, a whole 50 years longer than Czechoslovakia existed for. That time span didn’t stop the colonists being unhappy and deciding that the blessed union wasn’t so blessed after all, and not for them anymore.

I’m happy enough to believe that Scotland can go on it’s own. Economic figures will change and improve once we can control our own affairs. It is up to the SNP to produce enough data to satisfy undecided or doubting voters that this is the case. If not, the status quo will unfortunately have to remain, democracy in action, but one must hope that someday Scots will get the government the majority actually voted for.

Allister Band

Hermitage Drive

Perth dismay the difficulties John Murdoch had during his test drive of the Renault Zoe ZE 50 GT Line in the edition of February 19.

Clearly Mr Murdoch was not given any information on how to charge the car directly from either the manufacturer or the dealership who supplied the test vehicle.

My wife and I have been driving all-electric cars since 2013 and have covered over 100,000 trouble-free miles in two Nissan Leafs (one of which we still have) and a Hyundai Ioniq.

Most battery electric car owners who have access to a home charger do not charge their cars during the day at expensive electricity rates, preferring to use the night rates which can be a third of the cost per kWh.

In doing so they help to balance the grid by using the excess capacity through the night. Most home chargers are 7kW and typically owners would charge their cars from say a minimum discharge of 30-40 per cent so for a typical 40kWh battery getting to 100 per cent could take four to five hours and not the 9.5 hours quoted in Mr Murdoch’s piece.

The Zoe has an option to be able to use a 50kW CCS rapid charger, and these are widely available both around Perth, Tayside, and the whole of Scotland.

Again if the car is charged on one of these rapid units from 30-40 per cent up to when it typically cuts off (I’m not sure about the Zoe cut off, but the Leaf cuts off at 85 per cent, and the Ioniq at 94 per cent) at say 90 per cent, then that charge should be complete in 35-40 minutes.

Mr Murdoch’s issue with only getting 12 miles in one hour on a 23kW charger would indicate that the car battery was already around the 75-80 per cent state of charge condition when he plugged it into the charger unit.

Douglas Robertson

Perth