Constitutional change at a price

Sir, - Once again we see your correspondent Alex Orr fulminating about the situation of the

Catalan independence movement in Spain and demanding that the Spanish Government falls into line with his opinions on what constitutes social betterment in a country in which he does not reside.

Quite apart from the fact that the Spanish Government will pay no attention whatever to his opinion, and that of the SNP on matters reserved for its own primacy, it is yet another example of Mr Orr’s apparent thoughtless disregard for the potential downsides inherent in the fragmentation of sovereign states.

We have already seen the chaos and bloodshed in Syria, Iraq and Egypt after western efforts to ‘democratise’ these countries.

There is already a further movement under way, resisted by both Turkey and Iraq, to grant independence to the Kurdish population that straddles both countries.

In this increasingly unstable world it is a thoroughly bad idea to continue the promotion of instability by recommending very significant constitutional change instead of more simply addressing and improving issues of grievance within a minority of the population whose ethnic background may be markedly dissimilar from the majority population in the country of residence.

Derek Farmer. Knightsward Farm, Anstruther.