Name the losers

Apropos of Andrew Whitaker and Blair Jenkins’ articles (Perspective, 11 July), the common assertion is that separation will be able to create a fairer, more equal country.

We will have a commitment to the welfare state and high quality public services. We can adjust incentives for business and inward investment. We can have a policy for decent homes for all our people. Laudable aims in or out of the Union – which in fact does not do us so badly, particularly with improved devolution. But remember Kipling’s six honest serving men – what and why and when and how and where and who.

“How” looms largest relative to the rest of the generalised objectives. Generating the funding with our current deficit even with all the oil revenues means it is no longer good enough to assert that getting out from Westminster’s yoke, using our “great economic strengths”, will do it all without pain.

There would have to be a 
redistribution of existing 
resources – clear identification of the losers has to be part of the narrative.

Joe Darby

Dingwall

Ross-shire