UK has stripped Scots defences

“RISKING our security is too high a price to pay” says ­Major General MacKay (Insight, 23 June). Absolutely correct. Why have we allowed the UK to provide Scotland with a pitifully inadequate defence system which still costs Scottish taxpayers £3.4 billion each year?

Where are the SAS units based in Scotland? Do they even train here to protect us from possible terrorist attacks in the North Sea or West Shetland? How many naval vessels patrol regularly in Scottish waters? When a convoy of ­Russian ships anchored in the Moray Firth, the navy sent a ship from Portsmouth! Of course by the time it arrived the Russians had gone.

After wasting more than 
£3 billion on a Nimrod upgrade it was scrapped and we now have no aerial surveillance of the north-east Atlantic. Of course, we can always ask the Norwegians to help us.

We now have only one military airfield in Scotland, and our proud Scottish military tradition in the army has been devastated by redundancies. Who would want to be a British soldier today?

We are building two new aircraft carriers which have provided some jobs in Scotland, but we have not yet bought the aircraft which will use these carriers and can someone not tell us what good they will do in the defence of Scotland.

Your newspaper says that Major General MacKay had an important role in Afghanistan. Great. What has that got to do with defending Scotland?

George Leslie, Fenwick