THE Smith Commission sat and produced an agreed way forward for additional powers for the Scottish Government.

Whilst I do not agree with all the proposals, I was happy that all parties appeared to have signed up for it and was looking forward to hearing how the parties might use the new powers when they become available.

Surely after the hard work put in by the Smith Commission it makes sense to bring the new powers into force, see how they work and then and only then discuss ways in which they could be improved on or changed. This time would also let the people of Scotland see how well their MSPs deal with the added responsibility.

However, what we have is rather than all parties working together to prepare the legislation, we have the SNP saying, in Oliver Twist fashion, "more please" , which really means nothing less than independence will do and the Labour Party engaged in an auction to try to show they are more left-wing and more Scottish. Meanwhile the Conservatives are tied up on the question of English votes for English Laws (Evel) and the Liberal Democrats, Greens and UKIP blowing hot air.

Fundamentally all parties are failing the electorate. It is time that the parties focus on making sure the legislation in support of the Smith Commission proposals is excellent.

During the General Election campaign they should focus on matters that those elected as MPs can take to Westminster, which does include pushing through the new powers for the Scottish Parliament as approved by the Smith Commission. Please don't plough on about what the Scottish Parliament does, that is for next year when just maybe we will hear how the powers will be used.

Peter Ramsay,

27 Kildonan Drive, Helensburgh.

IAIN AD Mann avers that English legislation can have Scottish effects due to its Barnett Formula consequences (Letters, February 5). If so, the formula should be changed, or preferably abolished altogether (as Barnett himself intended) as there is now minimal difference between our economies or overall public expenditure needs.

Of course English MPs have voted on Scottish matters since 1707, but the rationale for that changed entirely on Holyrood's establishment in 1999. Incidentally, it was Scottish Conservatives rather than Mrs Thatcher who forced the community charge through (based on a false understanding of the ratesrRevaluation) against the Treasury's and her initial judgment.

Since 1999, we already effectively have "first and second class" MPs, the former being MPs for Scottish constituencies in a privileged (and underemployed?) position versus English MPs who have to consider in detail those matters for England which are devolved to MSPs in Scotland. And if there is little purely English legislation to worry about, as many commentators state, why is there so much purely Scottish legislation that we need a Holyrood? Are we really so different?

Evel problems arise directly from the flawed devolution "settlement" of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Donald Dewar et al.

John Birkett,

12 Horseleys Park,

St. Andrews.

"HALF of Tory candidates are privately educated", states one of your headlines (The Herald, February 5). So that means that half of Tory candidates are publicly educated. Statistics, statistics, statistics.

David Miller,

80 Prestonfield, Milngavie.

THE concept offered by Paul Thompson (Letters, February 5) of being "buffered" by being part of a bigger economy which is £1.45 trillion in debt is an interesting one but is not the sort of offer any sensible nation would accept.

There is no immediate or vaguely discernible prospect of this debt being reduced, far less repaid. The annual interest paid on it by all of us is worth more than the annual budget economies of many of the world's nations.

What is encouraging, however, is evidence that more and more Scots are now aware that Scotland's taxation base efficiently supports Scotland's spending with a bit to spare so the Inionist scaremongering on oil prices is having a diminishing effect. Scotland has never had its oil revenues and therefore can't be inconvenienced without them.

The reality is that it is the UK Treasury which takes all the oil money that is taking the hit on oil prices. On a per capita basis the Scots have had exactly the same benefit from oil revenues as every other person in the UK. This means that Scotland as a whole has enjoyed only about 8.5 per cent of its own oil proceeds over the last four decades.

When oil was first extracted from the North Sea in the 1970s it was about $10 per barrel.

Even at today's prices (about six times that) getting 100 per cent of oil revenues would be a massive bonus to an independent Scotland, which was exactly what the Yes campaign said.

Dave McEwan Hill,

1 Tom Nan Ragh, Dalinlongart, Sandbank, Argyll.

ONE has to wonder at the sheer paucity of the Scottish Labour Party's response to the seismic shock from the Ashcroft polls: "Vote SNP, get David Cameron" ("Pressure on Miliband as poll predicts election meltdown", The Herald, February 5).

This mantra, it would appear, is their principal tactic for the General Election, to be repeated endlessly and at every media event. So, completely disregarding the historical evidence from 1970, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992 and 2010 when Scotland voted Labour but got the Tories at Westminster, Scotland's voters should see it as a moral duty to keep Jim Murphy, Margaret Curran and Douglas Alexander and the many other nonentities of Scottish Labour in their cushy sinecures. Even if the Tories get back in again, we can take comfort in the fact that we did the right thing - for Labour.

James Mills,

29 Armour Square, Johnstone.