False accounting

The main reason that the Nationalists give for wishing to separate Scotland from the rest of the UK is that we would all be wealthier. Much of their literature states we contribute 9.8 per cent of all UK taxes but only receive back 9.3 per cent of the spend.

They omit to explain that these are percentages of fundamentally different figures. The only valid way to look at the situation is to quote the figures in pound notes.

So it is not surprising that the SNP government is keeping very quiet about its own figures for 2012-13. These show that Scotland received a staggering 23 per cent more from the rest of the UK than we contributed.

In pound notes we generated £53.1 billion but we received back £65.2bn. This difference of more than £12bn is worth more than three times the North Sea Oil 
revenues on which the Nationalists base their promises of our Utopian future.

If we add to this deficit the costs of separation, the trebling of the public sector, the damaged and diminished private sector, then our economic future after separation looks desperately bleak.

Scaremongering, bluff, bluster? Mr Salmond, these are your own figures!

(Dr) Richard Marsh

Strathdon

Aberdeenshire