Those south of Scotland’s border should consider their safety in the event of independence

letters@independent.co.uk

Scottish elections take place on 6 May (Getty/iStock)

Those living south of Scotland should consider their own safety in the event of Scotland’s departure from the union.

A needy Scotland, without an established military for protection and with the SNP desperately trying to convince the people that it was a good idea to divorce from its significantly wealthier partner, would be worryingly susceptible to the malign overtures of expansionist nations intent on the bigger prize of a foothold geographically, commercially and strategically on the mainland of this island.

With the North Sea and many other sovereign assets inevitably “up for sale” to raise revenue, and the inevitable pressure on the SNP to bow to the will of its new paymasters, there’s a new and deeply alarming meaning to the old maxim, “he who pays the piper calls the tune …”

M Liesching

Wiltshire

Short-sighted nationalism

The approaching Scottish parliament election is a critical opportunity for the rational majority of the people of Scotland to avert the threat of British unity being weakened by short-sighted nationalism.

Scotland’s enduring and mutually beneficial relationship with the rest of Britain is of far greater value than the tentative and unproven association with socialist Europe promoted by the incumbent party. Now is the voters’ opportunity to stand up for Scotland’s place as a significant and valued member of the United Kingdom.

A Watson

Leicestershire

Nuclear weapons

In Letters on 24 April, Luke Pollard and Ian Steedman expressed concern that an independent Scotland would endanger the safety of the nation by removal of the Trident nuclear “deterrent”. The reality is that while nuclear weapons are used by governments as a symbol of power “to keep us safe”, they actually leave us incredibly vulnerable. They are impossible to use militarily, are based on an outdated Cold War philosophy now shown to have been totally unnecessary – the Soviets only ever intended to be capable of replying to a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the west – and have now simply become an escalating power play that absorbs vast sums of the defence budgets needed to equip us to defend against much greater and more immediate threats of asymmetric conventional warfare.

The sophistication of these is such that they can threaten the existential existence of a state just as much as a nuclear attack, which threatens the deliverer and receiver equally through the global effects of population extinction by radiation and the environmental disaster of a nuclear winter. For every pound we put towards funding nuclear weapons, we are further away from being equipped to defend against immediate modern-day threats. Scotland may be doing us a favour by forcing a rebalance of defence priorities to be more realistic.

Robert Forsyth

Oxfordshire

Australia trade deal

The government has announced a preliminary trade deal with Australia. I wonder if this includes the UK accepting its chemically washed chicken and beef bred with growth hormones?

Alan Hutchinson

Address supplied

Break for boss

My boss told me last week, for the sake of their own jobs, employees in Scotland need to give their boss a break by voting for any party that won’t promote a referendum right now.  He pointed out since 2014 bosses have been steering businesses through two referendums, five elections, divorcing from the EU, a global pandemic, and the resilience isn’t there in businesses or public finances to sustain another round in Scotland. More uncertainty would be a disaster.

David Brown

Thorntonhall, South Lanarkshire