Letter: Independence lite just a step on the way

IF Jim Sillars (Letters, 18 May) has managed to "nudge" the SNP away from devolution max and towards independence then his recent contribution will be worth all the confusion it has caused.

In reality, all UK services will remain shared the day after Scotland becomes a sovereign state and it will take years to extract the "Scottish acorn from the UK oak".

Given the complexity of UK government IT systems, there will be limited scope for specific Scottish changes to reflect different policy directions. This was demonstrated with the costs reported by the Inland Revenue to accommodate a new tax band set by Holyrood.

Implementing Scottish administrative solutions to manage our bureaucracy will take time but this is an opportunity not a threat. For example, the cherished DVLA in 2011-12 will make a 100?million loss on 550m of expenditure, with all the jobs in Swansea.

Independence "lite" or "fat" are simply different points on the same timeline, hopefully Alex Salmond will reveal the timetable before the referendum.

Calum Miller

Polwarth Terrace

Prestonpans

IN 1967 Winnie Ewing memorably said, "Stop the world. Scotland wants to get on". The SNP position has never been isolationist but after the recent election result the "separatist" caricature is now being replaced by an equally inaccurate "independence lite" misrepresentation.

I assume this is intended to cause confusion and perhaps division in the SNP camp. Or maybe it's merely a silly misunderstanding by some independence sceptics who have started to believe their own clumsy distortions of SNP objectives.

Anybody who listens carefully to what the SNP says will note that the party's position has not changed at all.

Alex Salmond has merely articulated the practicalities of independence in an interdependent world. He speaks of an open and sensible attitude to areas in which it might be possible or advisable to seek co-operation with our neighbours. This will be done from a position of independence - ie the independent ability of an independent Scottish Government to put such proposals to our neighbours and the independent ability to make judgment and to say "yes" or "no" to any proposals put to an independent Scottish government by others.

The reaction to his remarks has been illuminating. They just don't get it. Alex Salmond makes a generous suggestion that a future independent Scottish government might be happy, at Scottish expense, to share and co-operate in the defence of these islands - much along the lines of the joint Nordic defence arrangements which protect the four independent Scandinavian countries and Iceland and Greenland. He is met with a barrage of intolerant nonsense which will not have gone unnoticed by thoughtful Scots.

In football parlance, the SNP has nutmegged the unionists again. We are witnessing just another in a long and continuous line of own goals. What very few commentators have picked up is the fact that the SNP's enormous victory was significantly assisted by Labour and unionist elements in the media dutifully reporting and making huge headlines out of the absolute nonsense that was put in front of a far from daft Scottish electorate as unionist policies.

And they've just done it again. The "separatist" fox is being shot - by those who invented it in the first place.

David Hill

Dalinlongart

Sandbank

ArgyllTHERE seems to have been a bit of a stushie anent "independence lite", fundamentalists in a huroosh. I am a fundamentalist, about as fundamental as it is possible to be, yet I do understand the idea of "interdependence lite".

Personally I would wish to see no greater interface between Scotland and our Southern neighbours than would be the norm between any members of the European Union; facts have to be faced though.

The unpalatable fact is that a significant number of Scots, not the true unionists, are feartie wi nae smeddum, nae vir an aiblins nae harns. It is these folk who have to be shown that Scotland does not rely on manna from London. The sad cries of help ma boab. Wha wull luik aifter uz gin they fine fowk in Lunnon winna, have to be addressed.

R Mill Irving

Station Road

Gifford

East Lothian

DAVID Cameron has said that there will be a referendum to allow people north of the Border to decide if they wish Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom.

He should explain to the people of the UK why they are not being given the same opportunity to decide if they wish their country to remain part of the European Union.

William W Scott

St Baldred's Road

North Berwick