King-size costs

WHILE Maggie Stewart’s sensible riposte (Letters, 12 April) to niggling about our First Minister’s expenses abroad would not go down well in the No camp, 
her final paragraph innocently
favouring transparency in the context is a veritable can of worms for them.

Many readers will feel there has been, relatively, quite a lot of clarity in the cost of the ministerial visit: one letter writer quoted an overall £3,000, another suggested a precise £649 a night!

Allowing that the target here may have been the man rather than the money, contrast how much speculation has been generated here with how little interest is generally shown in the detail of costs to Scotland of state visits from London.

For example, who knows if royal visits north are invoiced strictly on a retinue head-count per night basis, or if they are obfuscated under a general hush-term such as “state expenses”?

These real costs to which we certainly contribute are tabled at Westminster, but, as the No camp is well aware, an independent Scotland that chooses to preserve the monarchy may also choose to fund only time spent up here.

And when it becomes transparent what each high-security visit to places like Holyrood and the “winter palace” of Balmoral actually cost, canny Scots may decide there are better things to fund.

In this, as in other things, independence gives Scotland choice.

John Melrose

Whitehaugh Park

Peebles