Taking the biscuit

The row over the flag on the Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer biscuit packaging being sold in Japan is a reflection on everything that is wrong with Scottish nationalism. It reflects the unrelenting and grim pettiness of those who would go to the lengths of harming their own country’s exports to a new market because of a perceived slight. This is the nationalism of protest marches on the BBC if their leaders are asked difficult questions; the nationalism of wearing football shirts in the House of Commons – presumably this is ‘’fighting for Scotland’’; the nationalism of the cybernats with egg throwing and loudmouthed denigration of those who oppose them politically and peacefully on the streets of Fife. It is shameful.

And, apart from anything else, the Union flag incorporates the Saltire, so other than harming the company involved, it is difficult to see any reason or logic in the complaints of those who object.

ALEXANDER MCKAY New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh

Theresa May’s deputy, Damian Green, writes (20 July) that Scotland cannot be in both the European and the UK Single Markets at the same time because: “we want to make sure that labelling requirements don’t prevent a jam producer in Dundee selling to cafes in Newcastle”. But the jam producer’s difficulty would only exist if EU labelling requirements were less stringent than UK national requirements. How likely is that, given the UK Government’s ’s commitment to deregulation? Of course postbrexit Scotland would have to accept the entry of goods that complied with UK national but not with EU standards.

But a Scottish requirement for goods of Scottish origin to meet more stringent Eu-wide standards would not prevent their sale elsewhere in the UK under identical or less stringent UK national standards. They could be sold in Newcastle and in Thessaloniki, too.

JIM MCLEAN Blinkbonny Terrace, Edinburgh