WHILST I am first to admit that Team GB did a fantastic job in Rio in winning so many medals, I do suspect that some people, especially the mainstream media, are going somewhat overboard in their reaction as to the significance and importance of this achievement. We are often told that “politics should be kept out of sport”, yet we have been constantly bombarded with media reports claiming that the success of Team GB is proof that Scotland was correct to reject independence in September 2014 and that we are indeed, “better together” (“Team GB’s Olympic success ‘shows strength of the Union’”, The Herald, August 23). The hypocrisy of this standpoint is, I'm sure, not lost on many of us. To conflate the success of Team GB with justification for remaining in a political union with the rest of the UK is, to say the least, mixing politics and sport to the utmost level.

Scottish athletes won 13 medals in Rio, a pretty good haul for what could have been a small, independent, northern European nation had we chosen a different path. And more than comparable to other European nations such as Croatia, Switzerland, Sweden and Poland, all of whom won fewer medals. However, we must ask ourselves whether winning medals at the Olympics is really the correct criteria for measuring the success of ours, or indeed, any other nation?

Surely, striving for equality, social justice, universal franchise, an unbiased judiciary, accountable representatives, and so on are of far greater importance than performing well at the Olympics, which in itself is laudable, but does it make the problems we face any less significant? Sadly, we live in a UK riven with inequality in wealth, health, gender and race, with an unelected head of state, an unelected Upper House, a divided opposition, numerous examples of nepotism, cronyism and corruption amongst our elected representatives, never mind getting involved in illegal wars.

Many commentators, mostly of the Unionist persuasion, are using the performance of Team GB as evidence that Scotland made the right decision to stay with the UK. Well, if winning Olympic medals is the measure to be used, then they may be correct. However, if you are of the opinion that medal winning is actually one of the least important measures of the efficacy of a society, then, maybe not.

Personally, I'd rather live in an independent Scotland that wins far fewer Olympic medals, but is striving to create a better concept of nationhood than that which is presented by a dysfunctional UK. Let's look forward to Scotland competing in Tokyo 2020 as an independent nation, and if we don't win too many medals, let's keep it in perspective. It wouldn't be the end of the world.

Alan Carroll,

24 The Quadrant, Clarkston, Glasgow.

LAST year the Buzzard field, one of the oldest and biggest in the North Sea, produced its 500 millionth barrel of oil. At today's prices that is £20bn of revenue. Over the next five years Buzzard will bring in £12.5bn of revenue. The most recent oil find, Vorlich, will bring in £1.5bn over the next five years. Last year a new gas field west of Shetland came onstream that will generate £6.5bn over the next five years. Conservatively, oil and gas from the North Sea will generate £100bn of revenue in the coming five years. Surely, we should be celebrating this good fortune?

David Torrance has a different take and asks us to accept that North Sea oil & gas is simply spent as a tax generating resource" (“Why SNP must show mature response to economic figures”, Yhe Herald, August 23). No petroleum tax, corporation tax, payroll tax, national insurance, rents, rates, VAT or any other taxes?

I wonder if collections at HMRC share this view.

David Campbell,

74 Brunswick Street, Glasgow.