Letter: Unhealthy union

Surely all that Joan McAlpine reports (Comment, 1 September) merely underlines the case for independence.

The English are not wrong to complain about the Scottish Parliament - the fact is there are simply not enough substantial issues to profitably occupy all our MSPs, with the result that they tend to focus on ever smaller matters, or on policy outwith the parliament's responsibilities.

And I suspect Alex Salmond is rather pleased by this sort of ignorant English outburst in the hope of a backlash in Scotland.

Scratch the average southern Englishman and you find a peasant whose idea of humour is to point at a foreigner of any description and laugh.

By coincidence, a lurid example of this mindset is reported in your chess column (1 September), where England's Nigel Short is quoted as dismissing Norway as "a small poxy chess nation with almost no history of success". Unfortunately, the chess world is now dominated by a Norwegian teenager.

I seem to recollect Short himself suffering the most crushing defeat in a world title match, but as in tennis, football, etc, English conceit remains impregnable, regardless of the facts.

More seriously, our relationship with England can never be healthy for either side under present arrangements.

The type of Scot I find hardest to understand is he who dons the kilt for the Burns Supper and saltire for Twickenham but scorns independence; it would be more logical to give up our ethnic pretensions (and our "national" teams) and embrace cultural and political assimilation.

Alan Oliver

Battock Road

Brightons, Falkirk