Scots not Britons

Andrew HN Gray (Letters, 20 May) is very welcome to regard himself as a UKite or a Great Briton, if he likes, but as Lady Nairne so elegantly put it: "Truith wul staun whan awthing's failin."

However, it was hardly necessary for him to invent a spurious background for me in Brigadoon, or among local Borderers steeped "in inexplicable ignorance" of their proper place in the wider scheme of things.

It does not require a scientific survey to perceive that most Scots are not, at heart, provincial cringers and do not really see themselves as UKites. Many are critical of Scotland's involvement in illegal wars engineered in the Middle East, against oil-rich countries, in line with Anglo-American foreign policy.

There seems to be little support in Scotland for a so-called "defence policy" involving Trident nuclear missiles designed to threaten the civilian populations of unnamed countries which are really no threat to Scotland.

DR DAVID PURVES

Strathalmond Road

Edinburgh

Andrew HN Gray (Letters, 20 May) is wrong to assume that his experience is necessarily shared by all. I was brought up in Fife and in military schools in the Far East (of the world that is, not Scotland) in the 1960s.

In my experience Scots always claimed to be Scots – but then that was, and is, my experience. Once again Mr Gray uses ethnic diversity as an argument against independence.

This argument is clearly irrelevant as I'm sure Mr Gray knows – many members of the SNP are not ethnic Scots.

BILL McLEAN

Rosemill Court

Newmills