Shaky ground

Edward McGowan’s letter (17 March) claiming to be a patriotic Scot who will vote No in a referendum on independence based on George Orwell’s essays, reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s remarks on false patriotism that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”.

He is on shaky ground by quoting Orwell, who was mainly opposed to the totalitarianism of large aggressive countries such as Russia and Germany under Stalin and Hitler and to jingoist nationalism, of which we will see plenty in the next few months over the Queen’s Jubilee and the London Olympic Games, rather than small nations seeking peaceful self-determination.

Orwell was also pretty scathing about the inequalities of the British state and as an English person who moved to Scotland a few years ago, although not a member, I am far more comfortable with the SNP’s vision of social democracy in an independent Scotland than Ed Miliband’s Labour policies or the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition’s rush to privatise the NHS and abandon national pay agreements for public service workers, which seems to me to undermine any residual claim that we remain a United Kingdom.

Mary Thomas

Watson Crescent

Edinburgh