I KNOW we keep going on about GERS but we have to get some clarification for Yes voters.

It’s not because they are wrong in their beliefs that an independent Scotland could be a successful independent country, but just how some of the figures are made up.

The classic failings of GERS is that it makes people look for the money in the wrong places, or it simply does not show up because the UK Treasury don’t want us to know our true wealth.

Claiming the figures raised in excise duty is directly linked to the whisky exports that are routed through English ports is wrong.

There are no taxes raised on exports! Any excise duties collected are based on home consumption, so the whisky consumed in rUK would be taxed and collected by them and the same would go for an independent Scotland.

However – and this is the big however, it is the corporation taxes of companies such as Diageo where they pay tax in London that we should rightly be ensuring is paid in Scotland.

Corporation tax is something that is hidden off GERS because no single company declares and pays tax on their Scottish originating profits, none.

So as you journey round the country looking at retailers such as Argos, B&Q, ASDA, Tesco, Morrison’s, Next, Poundland, Sports Division and the list goes on and on, billions in profits are syphoned out of Scotland.

Then think there are oil companies, oil services companies, shipping companies, engineering companies, accountants, energy companies and so many other areas of industry.

It’s easy to see where the wealth that iScotland would have is hidden.

Yes there would be a flip side where Scottish companies would have to pay tax on UK trading but the trading is balanced in favour of them selling to us.

I’d suspect that most of the “Scottish trade” to the rUK that Unionists claim we are risking is actually being done by English companies ie Diageo selling Scottish whisky in England.

Now Diageo is not going to stop itself selling its own products after independence. On the flip side every Scottish company that imports through an English port pays import taxes which is collected and attributed to England.

When you start to ask questions of GERS it all unravels and it’s easy to see why the IMF value Scotland about £100 billion more than the UK treasury.

It’s time we take the fight to the Unionists on the right information and not the misinformation they provide to make us look like deluded fools.

Mark Breingan, Cumbernauld

I READ The National on Monday expecting a rebuttal of the GERS £15 billion [the figures showed public spending in Scotland was £14.8bn more than was raised in tax in 2015-16 because of the collapse in oil prices].

Alas, the piece “Sturgeon prepares to launch new drive for independence” (The National, Aug 29) just regurgitated the same old same old £15bn.

Just to be sure, at the weekend I checked the figures of annual oil tax paid the the UK Exchequer and its about the same as this £15bn mountain.

I further understood that Scotland at best receives far, far less than the 10 per cent pro rata of population of that £15bn.

Tongue in cheek I mused: “If Scotland can’t meet its outgoings due to the £15bn drop (97 per cent) in oil revenue, is London now going to hand the Scottish Government the £13billion it keeps for itself?”

Naw nae chance!

Scotland lost the money it never gets.

London did and that’s the point your journalist missed.

Bob McNair, Johnstone

TIME after time I see letters or articles from the likes of the Scottish Secular Society (The dignity of all pupils should trump ideology, Letters, September 1) stating or at least linking the two subjects of homophobia and religion.

The two are totally not linked – sure the press will find some small groups that link them in much the same way as Daesh say it’s correct to murder, but 99 per cent of Muslims don’t agree with that.

So continuing to print such statements increases intolerance against a huge range of people – and there is too much of that going around as it is.

It seems to be their (SSS) way of trying to force the agenda to get rid of religion and promote their ideology by making religion sound like some horrid, biased, unloving, unequal teaching – when the opposite is true.

Go find out what your local church does and I bet you’d be surprised at variety of acts they do to help local communities no matter who they happen to be helping.

How often do we see articles condemning the vilification and cheap inaccurate shots at the likes of MPs/MSPs? This is exactly the same.

If the SSS would take time to listen to what Christianity really is, then they would understand that EVERYONE is equal – there are no exceptions to this rule.

The other part that they continually fail to get is that EVERYONE does wrong at some point in their life and it’s irrelevant what that is, one single misdeed, one single sinful thought and because of that we are all classed as the same.

How many adults will get through life without one single adulterous thought or without telling a single lie? The Bible states that these are wrong.

Is the Church/Christianity then against everyone – and yet these places let everyone in.

So stop it with the continual linkage, sure there will be people in churches that are homophobic, but you don’t go around shouting about say Tesco being homophobic because someone they employ or who shops there is!

Christianity is clear, because we are all equal and we all do wrong, we all need the same thing to save us - it’s in the name.

Kenneth Sutherland, Livingston

LESLEY Riddoch’s recent article hit home on several levels (SNP intransigence is pricing their own grassroots out of access to party, The National, Sep 1).

As old SNP activists, my wife and I decided some years ago to give up attending conference, partly from the age thing but also from many of the reasons Lesley highlighted.

Conference used to be FUN, meeting old friends, enjoying the resolution debates and voting on them, picking out which fringe meetings to attend and the Saturday night ceilidh made conference a really enjoyable few days.

Many branches had stalls where they augmented their funds with various enterprises.

At our last conference they had mostly disappeared to be replaced by large organisations.

Also, I well remember the acute postwar housing shortage and the answer provided by industry. It was “the prefab”. This industrially-built unit was produced in many forms nationally and in the end they lasted well past their original sell by date. They were mostly two bedrooms/living room /bathroom and kitchen, centrally heated, they even came equipped with a small refrigerator!

The website TinyHomes.com shows many examples of small houses which seems to prove the prefab idea is alive and well and could and should be looked at seriously to help obviate the present housing crisis.

On holiday some years ago in Amsterdam we came upon a small exhibition that the Dutch Government had set up to look into housing ideas to take the country into the next century, yes, the next century!

Most of the examples were small terraced houses with all the amenities needed for modern living and many were prefabricated.

For young couples nowadays the new houses provided by builders are mostly large and expensive and for many people out of reach.

Surely small-prefabricated starter homes could be a massive help and the designs shown on the website are modern and innovative but most importantly they could be fairly cheap to produce and site.

Jim Gibson, Selkirk