Inspired idea

I welcome the possibility 
that 16- and 17-year-olds may be 
allowed to vote on an independent Scotland. How we are going to inspire our young to vote when they have been so thoroughly let down by politics is one of today’s great challenges.

As it’s the elderly who are most opposed to independence, young Scots may find their 
future being decided by those who won’t have to live for long with their choice. Independence for Scotland is about democracy and the possibilities it brings, a modern democratic socialist 
republic, free from the brutalities of neo-liberalism and Nato belligerence.

We need to inspire our young, not offer them more of the same wrapped up in nationalist nonsense. I’m struggling to think of a country that has gained independence and then wanted to “go back”.

Paul Jordan

Scottish Socialist Party

McNeill Street

Edinburgh

It was more in sorrow than in anger that I read Alexander McKay’s latest criticism of me (Letters, 23 August).

He firstly accuses me of an 
attack on the forum of legal experts which met to look at 
the constitutional implications of the independence debate. I made no comment on them, but on Lord Wallace’s announcement of their supposed findings before they had even met.

Mr McKay then somehow accuses me of interchanging the SNP and the Scottish people.

I never made any reference to the SNP in my letter and merely questioned what had happened to the real Jim Wallace, the 
man who in the Claim of Right asserted that it is “the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs”.

As Advocate General for Scotland and now no longer plain Jim, but Lord, Wallace, he believes that the issue of sovereignty, and dictating the terms of the referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future, lies firmly with Westminster.

Alex Orr

Leamington Terrace

Edinburgh