Solutions to currency queries after indy are quite straightforward

He has probably hit the nail right on the head as far as much of the backbiting that has gone on in your correspondence pages over the last several weeks – including some from myself. I won’t enlarge on that, as he covered it very well, but I would like to answer his questions as I see them.

1) Westminster will continue to pay any current pensions. The SNP actually held a letter at the time of the last referendum from the DWP stating that we had contributed towards our pensions to Westminster so they would have to pay them.

I can give you an example of a friend who was born in Eire, worked for several years in England and is now domiciled in the Isle of Man. He receives the Isle of Man pension but recently wrote to the DWP to ask if he could claim back some of the money he paid towards his pension while working in England.

As he is now 73, not only will they pay him his full British pension on top of his Isle of Man pension, but they will also give him eight years back pension in a lump sum.

This would also part cover new pensions because payments already paid to Westminster would either have to be transferred to an independent Scotland for us to pay, or part of the new pension would be paid by Westminster with the rest topped up from contributions paid into the Scottish Pension Fund.

2) Savings in an independent Scotland would be in the bank that presently holds them. Since most banks are international it won’t matter if their head office is in Scotland, England or America. They will still hold your money for you and it will be up to you to either maintain your account with them or perhaps transfer them into a new Scottish bank. I would expect the new Scottish Government to introduce some sort of protection, similar to the present protection, for any accounts in Scotland. But what you have in the bank at the moment will fall under the protection of whichever country your bank is in.

3) I would hope that we introduce a Scottish currency as soon after independence is declared as possible. The personal savings that we all have is, at present, in sterling. We would need a Scottish mint printing Scottish notes and minting Scottish coins. What would then happen is that we would have to use our sterling currency to buy Scottish notes and coins from the Scottish Government. I imagine that this would start out as £1 Scots for £1 sterling.

This act does two things. First, it gives us our own currency of Scottish notes and coins that we can use and spend in Scottish shops etc. Second, it gives the Scottish Investment Bank a sterling reserve equivalent to all personal monies presently banked in all the banks in Scotland.

We wouldn’t actually have to carry out any physical act of withdrawing sterling money and putting Scottish money back in. It would just automatically change over the same as happened when we changed to decimalisation.

We could continue to use notes printed by the Scottish banks as we do at the moment but the promise contained on them would have to change from “pay one pound sterling”. There would no doubt be a short changeover period during which both notes were accepted but after a certain date it would only be “Scottish” notes that become acceptable currency. It’s quite straightforward really.

Charlie Kerr

Glenrothes

YOUR colourful banner headline, Yes 53%, SNP 57% (The National, August 13) is exciting news but not altogether surprising. I suspect once the campaign for next year’s Holyrood election gets under way, those figures will rise dramatically.

It is obvious from the performance of the Labour, Liberal and Tory MSPs (in alphabetical order) in the Scottish Parliament that they are uniting under the Union Jack and with a campaign slogan of “Put the boot into Scotland”. This has been so eloquently articulated by the former “FM in waiting” Colonel Ruth Davidson. By doing so they will be recognising PM Boris Johnson as their boss. It may well be those MSPs are prepared to commit political suicide for the good of the Union!

I am not too sure that this approach will encourage the Scottish electorate to vote for them, and after all it is the Scottish taxpayers who pay their salaries, but time will tell!

Thomas L Inglis

Fintry

COULD you or one better informed reader please clarify the following for me?

You will remember the recent rule change promulgated by the SNP national executive committee which required the resignation of any MP wishing to stand as a MSP in good enough time for their successor’s by-election to be held on the same day as the Holyrood election. With the number of councillors recently announcing their desire to be selected to stand as MSPs, can you tell me if the recent ban on holding a dual mandate also apply to them, or was it introduced for other reasons?

If it does apply, their absence before the election could bring changes to who runs certain councils with tight majorities.

David Rowe

Beith

THE Scotland Office supposedly representing Scotland in London is no more than a UK Government department for the Union.

With 70 employees at the last count and a budget of £10 million and rising, they must be wondering about the latest edict from the Alice in Wonderland administration in London.

Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dom have decided small is beautiful and are going to slash the number of PR communications officers to a cap of 30 in each government department.

A sum of £10m buys a lot of propaganda experts who have been busy proclaiming the advantages of being ruled by London on social media, so how are they going to cope with just 30?

One option is for the two tweedles to just ignore the Scotland Office operation for the good of the union. Meanwhile the jolly wheeze by Tweedle Dumb to stick a union jack on all London spending in Scotland has one flaw, the union flag has become a symbol of authoritarian misrule in Scotland. Roll on when the only flag that matters is a Saltire.

Mike Herd

Highland