Foreign concept

Published on 23/11/2012 00:00

I have the utmost difficulty following Andrew Gray when he refers to family in England becoming “foreigners” after 
independence (Letters, 20 
November).

The world has changed a lot in recent decades. My sons live in Poland and South Korea, and I have a daughter living in Ireland who has returned last year from a period travelling right round South America.

Earlier this year I visited 
another daughter on an exchange semester in Finland. My trip to Brittany in the summer wasn’t difficult.

I’m not an enthusiastic traveller. I harbour reservations about the fossil fuels squandered in international travel, and I would also be pleased if my family lived closer. But I can’t think of them as “foreigners” and I’m not sure that the term has any meaning for people under the age of 75.

My friends living in Ireland and France aren’t “foreigners”. My friends in England won’t be either, with or without 
independence.

I have found it as easy to visit other countries as to visit 
London.

Everyone knows crossing borders in western Europe is simple, and you need a passport for 
internal UK flights anyway.

Independence is about aspiration, ideals, democracy and 
taking responsibility. Using a term from the days of black and white film won’t help people to feel “better together”.

Malcolm Kerr

Brodick

Isle of Arran

When such a shrewd and 
respected commentator as Allan Massie (Perspective 21 November) agrees that “the number of top positions… in culture and heritage which go to people with no Scottish background and… little or no knowledge of Scotland” is a “delicate and 
difficult area”, then swiftly body-swerves the issue, we know that there is not just “an elephant in the room” but a small herd.

(He knows, of course, that no sensible person would advocate dishing out jobs to Scots who are “manifestly less well-qualified” than non-Scots). Perhaps, given the furious denial by many Scots that any anomaly exists, it is time to give the elephants a rest and adopt a different metaphor. The term, “the love that dare not speak its name” – homosexuality being well and truly liberated – is now available.

David Roche

Alder Grove

Scone, Perthshire