Future well-being

Andrew Rosie is absolutely right to point out that an independent Scotland could more than pay its own way (Letters, 2 April).

Scotland’s £1.5 trillion oil and gas reserves would give us 
formidable economic foundations as an independent nation.

However, Scotland’s inherent economic advantages, from oil and gas to renewable energy, from higher education to tourism, are only half the story. The bloated, profligate financial straitjacket of Westminster should not be forgotten.

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An independent Scotland’s balance sheet will be further bolstered by the savings and efficiencies that will accrue from ending Scottish funding for the £100 billion renewal of Trident nuclear weapons, the House of Lords, Scotland Office and other anachronisms of Whitehall.

The question of public finances in the independence debate is not just about whether Scotland is uniquely incapable among the nations of the world of running her own affairs.

It should also be about whether Scotland can afford continued Westminster rule given the perverse spending priorities of successive ­bureaucratic and militaristic UK governments.

David Kelly

Highfields

Dunblane

Eddie Barnes (Perspective, 
3 April) wants us to vote with our heads rather than our 
hearts in the independence referendum. As Robert Burns wrote, “The hairt’s aye, the pairt aye, that maks us richt or wrang!” (“The heart is always the part that makes us right or wrong.”)

For myself, my head and my heart agree that independence is best for Scotland.

As Eddie Barnes suggests, the outcome will be for much 
longer than five years and 
longer than the prominence of any government or individual which or whom we may like or dislike at the moment.

David Stevenson

Blacket Place

Edinburgh