Balls’s tall stories

UK Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls (Perspective, 4 October) suggests that Scottish Independence would make us all poorer.

But we’ll all be richer if Scotland gets rid of nuclear weapons and England, unable to find anywhere else to put them, decides it no longer needs them either.

Scotland also will be free of the post-imperial need to go to war in distant parts of the world and the rest of the UK may also benefit from this freedom.

As part of our duty to the world as a whole we would expect to take part in occasional United Nations peacekeeping operations, probably at much less cost both in cash and in lives than has been the case with recent wars.

As for the pound sterling – that belongs to Scotland now as well as to the rest of the UK. Post-independence, if the UK does not want to share it with us, might it adopt a new currency? There could be a competition to find a suitable name for it.

David Stevenson

Blacket Place

Edinburgh