C TAYLOR professes himself "bemused" by my plea that the electorate do not conflate the Yes campaign with the Scottish National Party (Letters, July 23).
This is apparently on the grounds that Yes Scotland – he claims – is reliant on its funding from "either the SNP or SNP donors", and that the Yes website is "eerily similar" to the picture as painted by the SNP.
The funding claim is simply not true. I am a Yes Scotland donor, as are friends and acquaintances, none of whom, including myself, has the slightest connection with the SNP.
The Greens, the SSP, Labour for Independence, the SDA, Business Scotland, and even some Tories and Liberal Democrats, as well as many other groups and non-aligned, are all involved in and contribute to the Yes campaign. The SNP has about 25,000 members which, although more than the other parties put together, is nowhere near the numbers who have signed the Yes declaration, by a factor of around 15. It does no credit to label all of these as "fellow travellers", though the pejorative now seems to be the default position when discussing "the separatists".
As for the website being some kind of mirror of SNP policy, I would suggest that something more than "a cursory glance" would reveal a broad canvas of opinion from all avenues of Scottish life, and wide-ranging discussions of issues, from the poverty of children to the stealthy privatisation of NHS England and the Royal Mail (not quite so stealthy), and all points in between. Only a small effort is required.
The whole point of voting for self-determination is to be able to choose what kind of governance we want: a referendum is not a General Election; there will be no party policy manifestos put forward for it. The time for those will come afterwards, when all of the parties will be free to outline their own vision of what Scotland could and should look like.
And then we get to choose. All of us.
Stuart Black,
62 South Mains Road,
Milngavie.
C TAYLOR purports to be confused about the non-party status of Yes Scotland. I would suggest that he studies the information put out by the campaign in which he will discover that the Scottish Socialists and the Scottish Greens and many non-aligned independents are also involved.
At the weekend I was handing out Labour for Independence leaflets beneath a poster advertising Liberal Democrats for Independence. Whether C Taylor wishes to believe it or not, it is truly a cross-party campaign.
I confess to being a member of the SNP but I don't consider my party to be the only one able to run Scotland and no SNP member I know thinks that. Instead we are at pains to tell people that the referendum will not be a vote for Alex Salmond or the Scottish National Party but for the future status of Scotland.
Once independence is gained, Scotland is ours to make of it what we will. Whether that is with an SNP, Labour, LibDem, Socialist or even a Tory government is for the Scottish people to decide.
It's truly our nation and our decision.
David C Purdie,
12 Mayburn Vale,
Loanhead.
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