Sorting out the fiscal framework

SIR, – The fiscal framework is a knotty problem that needs genuine goodwill and constructive thinking to be resolved successfully and fairly.

The critical effect of the oil price volatility on a smaller economy has again been demonstrated clearly. This cannot be conveniently ignored. The benefits of the Union, with a much larger more diverse economy, clearly provide a better balance and overall stability and safety in an uncertain world. Professor Gavin McCrone could see this quite clearly in 2014, when he very effectively weighed up the economics of Scottish independence.

If you also take proper account of the foreign company ownership, where profits get transferred overseas, then Scotland’s real wealth (GNP) is even further behind the far too rosy GDP picture always painted by the SNP and its tame economic political allies.

The totally negative and persistent grievance narrative is wearing very thin. I am genuinely hopeful that a resurgence and uplift in the Scottish psyche will reflect more rationally and logically on the modern state of the Union at a time of dramatic change and evolution.

A lot less Braveheart and a bit more enlightened, intelligent thought might help find a fair solution to the fiscal framework for all. Life might then continue in a positive but realistic way.

David Philip, Knockhall Way, Newburgh. Wick against the twinning of the town with Klaksvik, due to the Faroese traditional annual whale slaughter. I have seen no sign of a similar campaign against the huge windfarms to be constructed in the Moray Firth and the subsea MeyGen project in the Pentland Firth.

I see no justification for the Faroese tradition, but at least those whales meet a fairly quick, though bloody, death, unlike the whales dying slowly and painfully on beaches. By the time whales start beaching on the Caithness coast, it will be too late. Then there are the dolphins and porpoises for which this area is justifiably famous. The physical effects of disturbance to their habitat are now too well documented to be ignored.

Sadly, when it comes to a choice between animal conservation on one hand and wind energy plus promised income on the other, the animals lose every time. One day, our descendants will look back at us and wonder how we could have replaced so much wildlife with useless and destructive machines. Brenda Herrick, Harbour Road, Castletown, Thurso.