Home truths

I HAVE recently returned from a holiday in Scotland, which was most enjoyable. However, it was marred by the somewhat tiresome "nationalism".

There's a very parochial attitude in some. Little things show it too, such as the car plates with SCO and a St Andrew's cross on them - are they legal? And what is this nonsense about a "Scottish Government"?

One of the main preoccupations seems to be "Scottish oil" and anger at it being "stolen". What would our parochial Scots have us do then, give all the proceeds from the oil only to those living in Scotland - including those English who dare to live there - and all those Scots living in England? This would mean that they would each become unexpectedly richer and so, presumably, have had no need to draw on the UK Treasury for the disproportionate share of UK taxpayers' money they have received for decades.

In addition, I would ask, which money would it have been that developed the oilfields - just Scottish money? - or might some of it come from other British taxpayers and international companies?

I wonder where the majority of his British grown food comes from? The wheat and barley fields of the UK are, largely, in England. Should we have a surcharge on flour and malt for the sole benefit of the English?

Less of the North Sea oilfields lie in Scottish waters than most Scots imagine, provided you draw the line, where the "border" meets the sea, at the same angle into the sea - not at right angles. What of the English North Sea gas fields? We live in a global world now not, as so many Scots seem to imagine, in cosy little "nations", answerable only to themselves.

AG QUINN

Burgh Road, Norwich