CLEARLY post-referendum there will be more than 1.6 million people in Scotland in various states of disappointment, ranging from acute despondency to mild frustration.

For many within that substantial number there will be those who have spent a lifetime committed to the cause of Scottish independence.

For them, it must be difficult to witness the failure to seize such an unprecedented opportunity to change for ever the governance of their native land and to see, as a consequence, their hopes dashed so definitively. It must be something of an unpalatable pill to have to swallow. For them there is to be no brave new world.

Winston Churchill once observed: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

On independence the people of Scotland have spoken convincingly. I believe that Alex Salmond set the right tone when he stated that the "democratic verdict of the people of Scotland" should be accepted. Amen to that.

It is now of paramount importance that the promises made by the Unionist parties on the subject of constitutional reform should be implemented timeously, otherwise there will be a widespread sense of betrayal and disillusion among many Scots, whether they voted Yes or No.

Ian W Thomson,

38 Kirkintilloch Road, Lenzie.

THE people of Scotland have spoken.They have chosen to remain in a union in which one partner totally dominates the other.

However, it is now incumbent upon all those No voters who believed in the "Home Rule" vision of Gordon Brown and the Westminster establishment to join those of us who voted Yes in holding them to account.

I won't be holding my breath, and I wish all of us good luck in our attempts to prevent a continuation of the business-as-usual approach in which Greater London and the south-east suck disproportionate amounts of public funding out of the UK economy.

Roger Graham,

23 Cullen Crescent,

Inverkip.

THAT my personal Yes in the referendum, and the many thousands of Yes votes across this land, was not carried is, in my view, a matter of deep regret, but like the vast majority of the good citizens of Scotland, I acknowledge and accept unreservedly the democratic will of the people.

However, I believe that the strongest feeling of the 45 per cent will be one, not of sour grapes, not of fears over Trident, not of the NHS, not of employment prospects, not of social deprivation and food banks and not of our place in Europe.

It will be one of disbelief. Disbelief and genuine sadness that so many of us did not have the self-belief and faith in our own people's talents and natural resources to secure our own future.

As a nation we have voted to allow the elite and the rich to retreat behind their gilded mansions secure in the knowledge that for another lifetime they are safe from the throngs of the disenfranchised and the poor at their electrified gates calling for social justice and an equal distribution of the wealth this nation generates.

As a nation we have voted to keep in power those for whom the price of a loaf of bread and a pint of milk are mysteries but the cost of retaining a hideous weapons system is a top priority on their shopping list.

As a nation we have voted to give banks and self-serving conglom­erates the lion's share of decision-making while at the same time strangling the small voice of the individual.

As a nation we have voted to aquiesce in the capitalist idea that the wealth you have and the position that wealth affords you in the higher strata of society, rather than the wealth you earn and a commitment to fairness and equality is pre-eminent.

Finally, as a nation we have voted to return to subservience and that may be the biggest hurt of all.

Metaphorically, many of those of our forebears who spent their lives fighting for the rights of the so-called "common working man" will be turning in their graves today; and equally astonished will be a world of nations trying to understand the rationale of a country and a people, who, without bloodshed or revolution, were given the oppor­tunity to grasp and to shape their futures for the benefit of its own men, woman and children for generations to come and saw fit to decline.

Mr G McCulloch,

47 Moffat Wynd, Saltcoats.

The referendum has been a nation-changing experience. Somehow all this energy, this effort by ordinary people to learn how a country works, needs to be used to build a new and better Scotland. We'll need people who have voted Yes and No working face to face, bringing different ideas and arguing in search of truth and sense as they have done through the past two years. If the media look for conflict, because conflict sells news, then we can just have a laugh at them and get on with the job together. If the Yes politicians blame Westminster and complain that we are powerless to achieve change, then that's Westminster negativity and not what we voted for.

There is a mountain to climb now. The obstacles will be different, climbing the mountain from this side. But it's still our own mountain.

Michael Jarvis,

44 Calder Street, Lochwinnoch.