Tuvalu thriving after UK split

Published on 29/07/2012 00:00

MARIA Fyfe (Letters, 22 July), in common with too many 
others, mixes the benefits of independence with the spuriously unknown effects of something called devo-max. Ms Fyfe adopts the unionists’ No campaign tactic of obfuscation by intimating that the two offer similar solutions. Whereas, if truth be told, just like oil and water, independence and devolution of any kind just do not mix. Basically, what Ms Fyfe is saying is Scots cannot afford to be an independent nation state once again!

This pseudo-economic argument reminds me of the time in 1978 when the same pro-unionist anti-independence politicos tried to stop Tuvalu in the South Pacific from becoming independent of the UK.

The good people of Tuvalu ignored the No campaigners, and today all 12,000 Tuvaluans are an independent parliamentary democracy with the Queen as head of state. 
It is a subsistence farming and fishing-based economy with a GDP of $15,000,000 and a 
zero rate of poverty, with not a drop of oil to be seen. Not one Tuvaluan would ever go back to cultural, economic or political servitude under British rule, valuing their independence too much.

John J G McGill, Kilmarnock