IT’S a miracle. As recently as 2014 we were told the oil and gas under the seas around Scotland would soon be exhausted.

I previously understood it took many millions of years for oil and gas to form. Given the recent announcements by the UK Government it now seems that billions of barrels of oil and untold amounts of natural gas have formed in only nine years. Isn’t nature wonderful?

The Prime Minister said: “We’re choosing to power up Britain, from Britain.” Or to put it another way – we’re choosing to power up Britain, mainly from Scotland.

Brian Lawson

Paisley

IT was so good of Rishi Sunak (below) to come up to Scotland and rediscover all that oil we were told had evaporated in 2014. All the Better Together crew said oil was running out and Scotland would be a pauper without it.

It now turns out they lied to us. What a surprise – Tories and Labour lying! Not only is there enough oil to make Scotland one of the richest countries in the world, there is enough to secure the UK’s energy requirements for years to come.

The National:

How many times will we fall for the lies and deceit of Britnat politicians and their tame media? How many times have we got to say never again? And isn’t it about time the SNP stopped dithering and produced an action plan to achieve independence and worked on that rather than telling us what colour of passport we’ll have once we’re independent?

The rest of the independence movement is growing restless. Other political parties have seen through the con of the Supreme Court decision and know it is well past time to act. We can’t keep waiting for the UK to drain us of every last drop of oil before it relents and gives us a referendum. You aren’t given your independence, you take it.

It’s time for the First Minister to meet with all other independence-supporting parties (except the Greens who have shown they are an electoral liability) and start the serious work to progress Independence as soon as possible.

Cllr Kenny MacLaren

Paisley

OH the hypocrisy! We set out how an independent Scotland would be more equal, diverse and people-centred and what do we get? The usual girning from Conservative and Labour nobodies/never will bes.

They girn about getting on with the day job and sorting out the NHS and cost of living crisis. It never crosses their minds as to who caused these problems in the first place!

The UK would rather spend billions funding a morally corrupt house of failures (the Lords), the royal spongers and new nuclear weapons that we can never use without American permission (and the smaller we let our armed forces become makes the use of them all the more likely). Let’s choose looking after our citizens in peace time rather than wasting money on something that if we ever use will result in all our certain deaths.

Steve Cunningham

Aberdeen

WHILE it is laudable to produce booklets such as the Citizenship in an Independent Scotland paper for future legislators, the average man or woman in the street will most likely find them heavy going to read.

A document of short facts about what an independent Scotland could be is more likely to be read by Joe Public, perhaps a list of measures already benefiting the Scottish people and what we could lose if we meekly submit our aims to an increasingly uncaring Westminster government, regardless of which shade of colour voted in.

Stop producing these tomes of wordy documents and get out something eye-catching that

READ MORE: How to make Scottish land benefit the many, not the few

Mr or Mrs Average will read, either in print or via social media.

Graham Smith

Arbroath

LABOUR and the Tories attacking the Scottish Government for spending resources on constitutional matters seems like another case of double standards.

The Welsh Labour government is currently spending money on the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales – the clue is in the name. The commission’s work will include assessing Welsh independence.

Meanwhile, the Tories in Westminster continue to meddle in devolved matters and want to spend money directly in devolved areas.

The SNP (and others) need to be quicker and bolder in calling out the hypocrisy and double standards from the London parties.

Kyle Arnot

Glasgow

LAST week at Findowrie, near Brechin, there was a meeting of our Radical Independence group in Angus. We’re not a big group. Some of us are old. Some of us are disabled. But we have big ideas.

We decided to organise a protest outside Queen Elizabeth House in Edinburgh on Thursday, October 19, and to tell the world, messaging newspapers and media in all six inhabited continents of the globe when we do this. We messaged All Under One Banner, Believe in Scotland, and Yes Edinburgh & Lothian, as well as our Radical Independence colleagues in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling and Dundee, to tell them what we’ll be doing and to invite them to get involved.

Hopefully, some of them might. But we are going ahead anyway, even if it should just be us and a few more folk.

READ MORE: Oil is key to Scotland's just transition – we can't 'just stop' it

And we just learned that the next meeting of the National Executive Committee of the UK Labour Party – Kid Starver and his cronies – will be in Scotland in early September. Starmer and co are acting as enemies of the working class.

They are suppressing our self-determination and going along with Tory attacks on our Scottish Parliament. There really ought to be an angry protest against them. In fact, there will be.

Dave Coull

Findowrie