REGRETFULLY I don’t get the Sunday National (I got the first one just to see what it was like and it was very good but am not able to afford to take it each week). Therefore, I am not up-to-date on the continuing argument between Jim Fairlie and David McEwan Hill over the future currency of an independent Scotland.

Can I just say that I cannot see us winning a referendum for Scotland’s independence if we adopt a policy of “let’s wait and see.” For instance: “Maybe we will change the taxation system, or maybe we won’t. Let’s just wait and see.” Or even: “Maybe we will put pensions up, or maybe we will lower them. Let’s just wait and see.” People want to know or need to know what the policies appertaining to an independent Scotland will be. They need to know what they are voting for, before they vote for it.

This doesn’t just apply to taxation or pensions. They also need to know what the money in their pocket is going to be and what it is likely to be worth. I think that everybody, even the Growth Report, agrees that eventually Scotland will have its own currency. Surely planning to have our own currency means that it has been calculated that we can afford to have our own currency. If that is the case, we should work towards it as quickly as possible. We have seen how England has handled our joint currency and must move to get away from that mess as soon as possible. Look how it fell after May’s visit to Strasbourg. We don’t need a devaluing currency.

We will undoubtedly share currency with England between the referendum and “Independence Day”, because while separation negotiations go ahead we will remain a part of the UK so will be using sterling. However, during that period our interim government – probably the same parliament as was in power the day before the referendum took place – should begin to work toward the installation of a separate Scottish currency either on or very shortly after the day we become independent. In fact, they should now be working towards our National Bank.

That period of negotiations is likely to be about 18 months to two years, similar to the present Brexit negotiations. All of the Balkan countries, when they became independent from Russia, and all of the countries that came into being following the break-up of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia managed to formulate and adopt their own independent currencies within that timescale. Scotland should be able to do the same.

If we are going to be independent from England, then let’s be independent from them. Why do we need to retain their currency? Are we reserving the right to perhaps crawl back and ask to become part of the UK again sometime in the future? I think not! No. Let’s make the break and make it work with our own currency from Independence Day onward.

It’s time our Scottish Government showed a bit of gumption and started laying down a plan to show how they will change things; how those changes will make Scotland a better place; and how they are going to fund it all. Without something definite to vote for, people won’t support it. And, this time, let’s make sure it is something that Westminster can’t cast doubt on by them saying, “We are not going to let you do that.” Let’s make sure we are able to turn round and say, “We’d like to see you try to stop us!!”

Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes

I DO not wish to bore our readers with a protracted debate which is still missing the point I was making. Can I come from another angle?

The day after we vote for independence (sometime soon, I hope) the pound in my pocket and my wife’s purse will still be that pound. There will then be a period in which we negotiate the terms of our divorce from the UK. During this period the independent Scottish Government will consider a number of options we have on what we will adopt as our currency and when this will happen.

That is exactly the position we should have described in our White Paper. Instead we choose one option (a perfectly achievable one out of many) and gave Better Together a nice target which allowed them to lie and scare our electors and got us involved in a distracting argument which halted our momentum at a very critical time. There are many other issues which can provide our opponents with similar opportunity is we are naive enough to offer them to them.

Serious and exciting options offered by an independent Scotland are an exciting prospect. And it is useful indeed to establish the viability of a range of options. But options are what they are. Fixed positions at this point adopted on issues which can be divisive are exactly what our opponents are looking for from us.

We get to independence. We elect a government. That government takes the decisions and the political consequence of them. That’s how it works.

David McEwan Hill
Argyll