Discord welcome

The delightfully polite and sensible advertisement in The Scotsman (18 March) is a call for calm in the independence debate but seems to miss the point of 
democratic politics. Politicians are disputatious by calling and this matter is a dispute being waged with the highest levels of passion, as it must be.

Independence is not a dinner party disagreement, as suggested in the patronising list of semantic desiderata. It is a fight whose weapons are reason, oratory, knowledge and skill.

May the best side win.

Peter Laidlaw

Bramdean Rise

Edinburgh