WHAT nice timing from Lesley Riddoch in her excellent article highlighting the plight of 1950s women being denied their state pension (Where is the justice for 1950s women …? March 7) with International Women’s Day the very next day.

This article should be sent to MPs of all parties and Ms Riddoch is right when she calls for justice for those women. Hot on the heels of International Women’s Day is the Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s Spring Statement on March 13) when he will have the opportunity to address the disproportionate suffering many 1950s women are enduring. This statement could start by abolishing National Insurance payments for those women who have worked all their lives paying into the system and now find themselves dependant on state benefits for the first time. This is shameful.

Hopefully Mr Hammond will be reminded that there is cross-party support in the House of Commons for justice for 1950s women. Even previous pensions ministers recognise the error of their ways.

Lesley Riddoch’s article clearly demonstrates that 1950s women are not going away until they get justice.
Catriona C Clark
Falkirk

LESLEY Riddoch’s otherwise excellent column ended on a rather jarring note for me. She states: “Two days after Brexit, it’s Mother’s Day. This year, mums and grandmothers deserve just one surprise present – the gift of our attention to their campaign for pension justice”.

I would hope that those of us who are neither mums nor grandmothers would be regarded as equally deserving.
Mo Maclean
Glasgow

CAN I make a serious point? It’s all about giving our opponents targets. The longer we discus and disagree about what currency we will use (a decision surely for an independent Scottish Government – when we get there), the more it will be painted as indecision, confusion and incompetence.

We don’t have to do this. I agree entirely that we should have our own currency and our own bank. But what Mr and Mrs McGinty need to know is that if they vote on a Thursday with a Scottish majority for independence, then the pound in their purse or their pocket will still be a pound on the Friday morning.

This is entirely in line with our present position of what we do after independence and we can tell our people that – and that we’ll decide on own our future currency after we have cleared up lots of issues (and negotiated our share of the assets of the Bank of England, which we presently jointly own).
David McEwan Hill
Dunoon

AT a time when politicians of other parties and their supporters are demonstrating the very essence of the Scottish cringe and parochialism by complaining about Nicola Sturgeon’s visits overseas, David Pratt makes a very powerful point when he says now is the time for Scotland to remain outward looking.

Mr Pratt then again displays his gift for making extremely complicated situations accessible by unraveling the complexities of the political situation in Ukraine related to its forthcoming elections.

It’s journalism of a high quality which educates, entertains and informs.
Douglas Turner
Edinburgh

THE reasons I’ve always supported independence are as follows:

Agricultural: Scotland produces a surplus in agriculture. The rest of the UK relies heavily on imports.

Arithmetical: If a room contains 12 people, 11 of whom live in England and one in Scotland, then, with the best will in the world, whose interests shall prevail?

Financial: In world trade, the Scots export more per head than Germany or Japan.

Geographical: Scotland has the longer coastline and occupies a larger area of the globe, when we include our territorial waters, than England, but we’re always referred to as the smaller country.

Geological: Scotland has more natural defences against the predicted effects of climate change, than rUK.

Historical: Long before England was a united country, Scotland was the oldest kingdom in Europe.

Meteorological: Despite masses of publicity to the contrary, the area with the most sunshine in Britain is the Moray Firth coastline.

Military: Since the Union, we may not have had to fight the English, but we seem to have fought against everyone else – and we have had the obscenity of Trident thrust upon us.

Mineral: Scotland is the largest oil producer in Europe; the fourth largest gas producer in the world, and has more water in Loch Ness than there is in the whole of England.

Poetical: “What are all the boasted advantages, which my country reaps from a certain Union, that counterbalance the annihilation of her independence, and even her very name?” Robert Burns.

And I have not even mentioned Brexit or the McCrone Report.
Joseph G Miller
Dunfermline