Devilish turn

DR MARY Brown (“Hateful tactics”, Letters, 13 February) hopes that “both sides in the [independence] debate will use rational arguments rather than exploiting the “irrational” and suggests that much of the heat on the matter is explicable by “social identity theory, originally suggested by Henri Tajfel, a French-Jewish academic”.

It is ironic that the latter’s name is the Yiddish for “devil” (equivalent of the German Teufel). Might I suggest that this is a case of “the devil is in the detail”.

Martin D Stern

Hanover Gardens

Salford, Greater Manchester