Swiss example

Re-nationalising the Royal Mail (your report, 20 September) would be old hat. What an independent Scotland should do is to re-model rural services along Swiss lines.

Switzerland has thousands of villages, remote not by distance and water, but by height and access along twisty and climbing rural roads.

It would be hopelessly uneconomic to have multiple courier, parcel and delivery services and, besides, the roads would become too cluttered by traffic.

Yet Swiss villages, even higher than the top of Ben Nevis, have services far superior to many central Scotland villages.

They have twice-daily mail, hourly bus services from 7am to 10pm and posh post offices providing a range of goods and services.

This is achieved by having only a single organisation, the PTT, which runs the post offices, and transports mail, parcels and people on their famous Post Buses (or infamous if you meet one coming down and you are on the way up in your car – fortunately, they have loud horns). So the cost per service is kept low.

But this is against the Conservative policy of competition. If a small country like Scotland is to become rich like small Switzerland it must learn to handle monopolies like the Swiss PTT, or CFF, the best rail system in the world.

They are neither private nor nationalised. You can buy shares in them and many people do. But they are government supervised and the government is supervised by the people through referendums.

Could Scotland work out something similar?

George Shering

West Acres Drive

Newport-on-Tay