Oil funds

Alex Salmond’s all-too-­familiar refrain that we will be rich when separate indeed rests as usual on all too many unquantifiable assertions (your report, 22 May).

Our own government’s GERS and balance sheet data continue to show that we have a multi-billion-pound deficit even with all the oil and gas.

An oil fund of significant size anyway remains unachievable, as revenues are ­allocated increasingly to ­infrastructure and old-age care and other essentials.

Our few major industries like whisky and renewable electricity export profits; not much left for us except VAT and employees’ and employers’ taxes – the last being planned to be slashed!

It’s hard not to feel concern about our long-term future. We could manage, of course, for a while by borrowing, but servicing the debt would inevitably become more ­burdensome.

Particularly noteworthy is that even in fields where we should have established a global lead with great earnings potential, we have let it slip – wave and tidal electricity generation developments have been highlighted ­recently: nearly all are owned and/or controlled by non-Scottish interests.

Our education and health services are excellent, developed of course in parallel with the UK as a whole, but need increasing funding to keep up the standards. Where’s the money coming from? Many people will not be too troubled financially by separation, particularly ­better-off pensioners and landowners, even in the long term, but most will need greater reassurance than we continue to get.

Joe Darby

Dingwall

Ross-shire

Following the admission by Denis Healey that the UK Treasury deliberately lied about the value of North Sea oil in the 1970s because of the 
possibility of Scottish independence, I expected the Scottish media to be up in arms crying: “A nation betrayed!”, yet it appears to have been deemed of little importance. Surely the people of Scotland should be able to trust our elected representatives and the civil servants employed in our name. If they lied in the 1970s can we have full confidence in their statements today?

If the Union is of any worth then it must be based on honesty and fairness to all its constituent nations. In a democracy, the electorate deserves to be given the truth by our elected politicians. Anything less is unacceptable and merits the utmost condemnation.

William Bennett 

Paris Avenue 

Denny