Impending irony

Your regular Nationalist contributor, Stan Grodynski, has excelled himself in producing a somewhat snide, patronising and frankly ageist letter (20 April) to your paper. Why would we have more in common with the rest of the UK than Continental Europe? Well, possibly because we have for over 300 years had a successful Union, developed close family ties and friendships, worked together and when, occasion demanded, fought and died together. I appreciate that there is a common theory within the SNP that this is a demographic issue and as the old Unionist Scots die off victory is in their grasp. They may be right, but as people get older they tend to concentrate more on their own economic situation and what is clear from the Government’s own GERS numbers (always derided by the Nationalists as fake news), the latest LSE and IFS figures is that an independent Scotland would inherit a very serious structural deficit. The reality is that Scotland does not have a significant enough tax base to support its current spending needs and certainly not its future ambitions. We will get the usual mantra that once an independent Scotland has control over the economic levers, we will progress. In reality, that is tax, public spending or government borrowing and I do wonder whether the SNP will be entirely honest with the Scottish people about the sacrifices that will have to be made for their goal of independence. It would be a terrible irony if independence were to come about and younger Scots who had voted for it were not able to find the well-paid jobs they had expected and were to become our greatest export.

PAUL F GALLOWAY House O’hill Gardens, Edinburgh