Figure work

Brian Monteith ignores the truth behind Scotland’ s estimated deficit as part of am alfunctioning union( Perspective ,31 August ).

Of the £1,941 higher spend per head ,£600 represents interest charged on the UK’S increasing national debt run up by successive Westminster governments, with no evidence that a proper share of the £2 trillion was spent in Scotland as oil and gas revenues contributed a surplus for most of the period between 1980 and 2013.

In addition, a further £436 a head was charged for UK defence when Ireland spends less than a third of that sum annually.

Decisions taken at Westminster skew the Gers figures and are outside the control of any Scottish government.

These include pre-e lection tax cut bribes and cutting Petroleum Revenues Tax( PR T) in 2015 from 50 per cent to 35 per cent, and in 2016 it was further reduced to 0 per cent. The supplementary charge was also cut from 62 per cent to 50 per cent to 10 per cent during the same time.

This helped to swell UK oil company profit sat a time when Nor way continued to earn over £10 billion each year.

Scotland has vast natural resources, a highly educated population, with a healthy balance of trade surplus and is in the top 25 global economies in terms of GDP.

Even before Covid, the UK

was the worst-performing economy in Europe, in OECD and in the G7.

Scotland’s chance to become a wealthier nation sits with independence and not with staying tied to the selfdestructing UK economy, and a Brexit that we didn’t vote for.

FRASER GRANT Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh

A short response to Hamish Mckenzie’s brief epistle (Letters, 28 August). Calculated on a population basis, Indy Scotland might indeed be entitled to 8 per cent of all UK assets which( as suggested )“may turn out to exceed” Scotland’s share of debt.

Such logic also entitles RUK to 92 per cent of assets north of the Border. Government buildings, transport infrastructure, schools, hospitals etc are not assets which can be liquidised easily; unless, of course, Mr Fraser proposes they be privatised and sold off in the name of the people of Scotland?

MARTIN O’GORMAN Littlejohn Road, Edinburgh