Letter: Scottish diaspora

BARONESS Taylor involves a viciously arbitrary type of racism characteristic of school bullies and football crowd bigots: birthplace racism. The practice of believing that birthplace, the location of one arbitrary event at one moment, has any shred whatsoever to do with country belonging and identity.

Our diaspora numbers 20 million, the home population is five million. It follows that at least 80 per cent of all Scots were not born in Scotland. Every bullying bigot who says being Scottish is determined by birthplace defines the vast majority of the Scottish people out of existence, and that is genocide.

That Scots born in exile and longing to return but yet to muster the economic means, who the SNP could show more interest in, would not have votes, while folks born in Scotland who do not identify as Scottish and have left would have votes, is absurd.

Maurice Frank, South Queensferry