IF it is the case that timing is everything you should then spare a thought for the unfortunate SNP. Why? In the early years of this century the SNP made steady progress with a strong Scottish economy on the back of a growing UK economy. Oil prices were high and the financial centre in Edinburgh was performing well especially with the prospect of RBS becoming the largest bank in the world – championed by Alex Salmond.

Then the world financial crisis hit. Rather than the RBS becoming a cash cow it became a massive liability requiring a £46billion bailout with billions more in guarantees from the UK Government. Meanwhile debt soared as the UK borrowed heavily to prevent the financial crash turning into the Great Depression with mass unemployment.

However there was no turning back for the SNP and it pressed ahead for a "once in a lifetime referendum" deflecting attention away from high debt and borrowings by telling us that we were on the "cusp of a second oil boom", 100 per cent green energy by 2020 and we could keep sterling.

The rest is history – oil prices crashed and rather than generate billions the latest figures suggests it will be close to negative and the claims that oil was "just a bonus" and we would outperform our competitors with our onshore economy has proved to be a SNP pipe dream.

Not to be deterred and in a desperate attempt to keep the SNP relevant Nicola Sturgeon has kept threatening another referendum, but her timing could not be worse – especially with the latest figures from GERS which have shown a fiscal deficit of around £15billion and our economy falling behind rUK.

So if you are someone who believes timing is everything, it very much looks that the SNP opportunity has come and gone and it has become a busted flush.

Ian Lakin,

Pinelands, Murtle Den Road, Milltimber, Aberdeen.

THE news that Scotland's economy is the worst in the EU comes as no surprise to those of us who run businesses and try to create wealth in Scotland-this despite the best efforts of the First Minister to generate as much uncertainty as possible by refusing to let go of the bone that is Independence.

When will Nicola Sturgeon face up to the basic fact that Utopia does not exist for Scotland -in fact it never has, and the Scottish economy and its citizens are dependent on benign benevolence from south of the Border.

On every economic test, Scotland could not be an independent member of the EU - why would the EU admit another Greece?

Wake up, Ms Sturgeon: the moment has gone and thankfully the Novote prevailed-a Yes vote would have seen you begging for money from the IMF on the back of today's statistics.

What we want in commerce is certainty ,not drift, whilst you wait for Utopia to present itself to you and the electorate. Your pontificating stance is damaging confidence in all sectors and these numbers will surely only get worse as you erode confidence in the enterprise economy.

Andrew Lapping

Managing Director, Hamilton Portfolio Ltd,

120 Bothwell Street, Glasgow.

THE First Minister was poorly advised in trying to spin numbers related to Scotland’s benefits from the EU the day before the release of the GERS figures (“Brexit vote will cost us billions, says Sturgeon”, The Herald, August 24). This was a clumsy attempt to come up with figures to take attention away from the scale of the very high level of deficit for Scotland.

The Scottish Government knew the latest GERS figures would show a total fiscal deficit of £14.8 billion for the 2015/16 year, the difference between Scotland’s income and its spending. This huge sum is largely met by a balancing payment from the UK, with the rest met from borrowing. Inconveniently for the SNP the best numbers they could come up with for the annual benefit from the EU, were a great deal less than this.

In any case the figures are not properly comparable, in that a similar exercise to show the benefits lost if we left the UK would show a substantially higher figure as the rest of the UK accounts for four times the sales of Scotland’s goods and services compared with the rest of the EU.

To try to make its EU “dependency” number look more significant the SNP has run it out 14 years to be able to say that the impact on GDP of leaving the EU could be as high as £11.2bn per annum by then, although the variables are so wide ranging, they had to admit the figure could be as little as £1.7bn.

This desperate attempt by the First Minister’s spin doctors to cook up some projected figures to provide some distraction to the actual figures quoted in the GERS release, shows how thin the case they are trying to piece together for independence is going to be, in this post-oil price collapse, post-Brexit, world.

Keith Howell,

White Moss, West Linton, Peeblesshire.

THE GERS report for 2015-2016 has a handy Scottish Government summary online. The estimated net fiscal balance comes in at some £15 billion, similar to 2014-2015 (now thought to be £14bn). So our estimated accumulated debt since 2009-2010 is getting close to £100bn (by adding up the published previous years' GERS net fiscal deficit figures). This is contained in the UK's current overall accumulated national debt of more than £1,600bn, but if independent we would have it all to ourselves with, at current oil prices, about £15bn added every year.

One commentator patronisingly asserted that the figure of £15bn was too big for folk to grasp, but GDP percentages are even more impenetrable as company profits exported are imbalanced between us and the rUK. Sticking with hard cash, the annual deficits have to be serviced, adding perhaps £450m at three per cent a year. The accumulated debt servicing of eight per cent of the UK total is similarly about £4bn, which is encapsulated in the GERS notional expenditures. Even when the oil price goes up considerably above the current $50 per barrel, the annual fiscal deficit, including accumulating interest will continue to hold back the Scottish economy. Our First Minister's belief that growth, increased productivity and immigration will sort it out is hollow: there is a considerable time gap before whatever benefits result (and we have no idea what the details are of what is actually planned) will be evident.

Joe Darby,

Glenburn, St Martins Mill, Cullicudden, Dingwall.

YOUR correspondents (Letters, August 24) are quite right to point out the detrimental effects of the referendum vote to leave the EU.

At the same time, it is even more important to imagine the catastrophic outcome if Scotland had voted in September, 2014 to leave both the UK and the EU in March this year.

Likewise, we can foresee that if the First Minister is misguided enough to secure a further independence referendum, business confidence in Scotland will go through the floor as the prospect of still more instability and the loss of fiscal transfers (as shown in the latest GERS figures) loomed.

It would be better if Nicola Sturgeon dropped the idea right now; to do otherwise displays a boneheaded dogmatism which flies in the face of the available evidence.

Peter A Russell,

87 Munro Road, Jordanhill, Glasgow.

THE publication of the latest GERS figures triggers a now traditional feeding frenzy, with a “black hole” in Scotland's finances heralded by Unionists as supporting the continuation of their beloved Union.

Let us not forget, however, that this financial situation is under the Union and is therefore hardly the greatest advertisement for how the economy has been managed on the UK's watch. Most of the key economic levers required to stimulate economic growth are reserved to Westminster. It is therefore a bizarre scenario when those favouring the Union, who should be ashamed at the situation, actively gloat and support a Union that has mismanaged the economy so appallingly.

It should also be noted that under normal circumstances nearly all governments run a deficit. The UK's is now approaching £100 billion, a figure which with Brexit will inevitably rise. Indeed, figures recently published indicate that leaving the European Union is projected to cost the Scottish economy up to £11.2 billion per year and Scottish public finances up to £3.7 billion per year, hardly the financial security we were led to believe the Union supposedly provides.

So, what we have is a set of figures, based on a measure of guesswork, that indicate very little, except highlighting the negatives of Union, and certainly has little bearing at all on the finances of an independent Scotland.

The entire point of independence is not to do everything in the same way as it has been done under the Union, but to move away from a one-size-fits-all economic strategy to one that addresses our strengths and priorities, stimulating much-needed economic growth.

Alex Orr,

Flat 2, 77 Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh.

THE latest GERS deficit is a shocking indictment of Scotland's financial position under Westminster rule, as London still holds all the main economic levers and particularly considering Scotland sent a £300 billion surplus to the UK Treasury during the 30 years up to 2014.

No serious economist would claim that GERS is 100 per cent accurate as the basic GERS revenue numbers are more or less guesswork regarding such items as to where VAT is paid and Scotland is a net exporter, whereas the rest of the UK is a net importer of goods.

You can ignore all the financial arguments against an independent Scotland on the basis that no-one knows what they would be as, for example, GERS over-estimates the amount of defence expenditure by more than £1 billion a year and charges Scotland several billion a year on UK debt repayments mainly incurred on London-centric borrowing.

The recent Brexit referendum shows that the majority of people vote on issues other than economic forecasts and who can rely on a UK Government which after years of debate has no plan whatsoever for dealing with the Brexit financial deficit two months after the vote while government ministers go away on holiday?

Fraser Grant,

Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh.