Rating exposes risks in Union

THE loss of AAA status represents a body blow to the economic prospects of the UK and undermines any confidence the public may have had in the high austerity-high borrowing economic policies of this dreadful coalition government.

In Scotland the loss of AAA status for the UK creates a different message. In one swoop it nails the assertion that Scotland is safe and secure by hanging on to the UK’s economic coat tails. The independent Scotland we seek should strive to gain AAA status in our sense of fairness and justice to each other and around the world, how we create security for the most vulnerable in our society and, as Donald Dewar put it, how “we hold ourselves as a nation”. These qualities do not stop us from being economically successful and the trend now appears to be that we would have a more successful and secure economy by leaving the UK behind.

Douglas Chapman, Dunfermline