Same old refrain

I note that Deputy First Minster Nicola Sturgeon, in dismissing the analysis of the affordability of Scottish pensions post-independence, by the Department of Work and Pensions, states that the report is scaremongering and based on figures taken out of the air (your report, 24 April).

Perhaps she could give us all an explanation as to why this is so, other than her statement that pensioners make up a smaller proportion of the population in Scotland.

One would think that had been taken into account when the Department of Work and Pensions prepared the report.

Ms Sturgeon’s line of “scaremongering” seems to be one written on a piece of paper that she and her fellow travellers 
carry around with them and 
produce whenever something comes to light which they either disagree with or find uncomfortable, along with a few irrelevant facts.

Scotland has reacted as could be expected to many of the statements coming from the UK Government.

We are too often a country happy to “cut off our nose to spite our face” as an immediate reaction.

The facts, though, are going to be about for a long time, long enough between now and the referendum for Scots to give second thought but perhaps not long enough for the independence movement to come up with a factual rebuttal, especially if there isn’t one.

John B Gorrie

Craigmount Gardens

Edinburgh