ALAN Fitzpatrick claims the "cost" of renationalising the Royal Mail in Scotland would push up borrowing or taxes (Letters, October 15).

Yet the Royal Mail was making profits of hundreds of millions of pounds a year for the UK Exchequer and Scottish Government. Every year it remains privatised is a loss of those profits to taxpayers, as they go to private firms instead, with only taxes on them recouped -and that will likely be less than half of them.

Labour have also pledged to renationalise the Royal Mail if they win the next UK election, so it will likely be renationalised whether there's a Yes vote or not.

He worries about whether an independent Scotland would be in Nato. Why would we need to be in Nato any more than Sweden or Norway? How many times have they been attacked or invaded in the 68 years since the end of World War Two? None. How many terrorist attacks have they suffered? One, by a lone extreme-right mentally deranged fanatic, compared to multiple terrorist attacks on the UK by an international terrorist group which got recruits for these attacks due to British involvement in US-led wars in mostly Muslim countries.

In other words, following US foreign policy as part of the UK puts us in danger where independence would not.

Presumably Mr Fitzpatrick also foresaw the Iraq war, the July 7 bombings, the financial crisis and the subsequent recession and was quite happy about them, as well as the bedroom tax, genuinely disabled people being denied benefits, and hundreds of thousands forced to rely on food banks to survive, all due to UK governments' policies?

Otherwise surely he would think that, based on the UK's past, its future is uncertain and probably has many similar risks and disasters in it? It's hard to see how any of these developments can be described as "continuity". Norway, which has experienced none of these disasters, seems like a much better model to follow to get relative stability, certainty and fairness than the UK.

Duncan McFarlane,

Beanshields, Braidwood, Carluke.

DAVID Cameron, in furtherance of Project Fear, voiced the opinion that an independent Scotland would be a much more dangerous place. For anyone who is tempted to be fooled by this spurious assertion I would recommend they read Eric Schlosser's book Command and Control in which he exposes the canard of the "illusion of safety" with reference to nuclear weapons.

The book describes the many accidents and incidents involving nuclear weapons which have brought various communities and indeed countries to the brink of disaster. In many cases it has been pure luck that devastation and/or escalation did not occur. The author admits that the US authorities were at least reasonably open about accidents which is in direct contrast to the UK, where there is almost total secrecy and frequent denials of any accident or risk at all. This is an absurd position to take when we have Trident missiles based 30 miles from our largest population concentration.

The design of the Trident missile is in itself hazardous, as the warhead is actually positioned around the third stage of the missile, making it very dangerous should the missile be dropped accidentally. Also Schlosser writes that these missiles need a high level of maintenance and logic tells us that as they get older unreliability must become a factor.

For the "it can't happen here" brigade I would illustrate the problem. Several years ago one of my clients was awarded a contract to instal equipment on the nuclear submarines at Faslane. I called the insurance underwriter to ascertain whether they would provide cover. His reply was: "If there is an accident we will have far greater problems than your client as the west of Scotland might not be there." Chilling words from a man who analysed risk for a living.

David Stubley,

22 Templeton Crescent, Prestwick.