IT was a pleasure to see the letter from Kevin Crowe (December 9) although I profoundly disagree with him on his core point. The issue of English or anti-English seems to me a red herring in this debate.

I have never encountered anti-Scottish resentment south of the Border (indeed the number of Scots in top positions in my industry rather suggests the opposite). What I have rather encountered is a quite genuine sense of bewilderment at an endless enunciation of grievance and inferiority.

This isn’t Anglophobia, it is something more. The nub of Mr Crowe's letter is his statement about wanting to control our own future and decide what sort of country we choose to live in. Quite right. That’s why we have a Scottish Parliament in charge of the vast bulk of the internal affairs of Scotland, capable of producing a radically different agenda if it should so choose. That after 13 years in power it is incapable of any substantial deviation from a UK perspective suggests to me not the thraldom of Westminster but the intellectual poverty and bankruptcy of a movement which has no ideas but only slogans. If Mr Crowe feels aggrieved, it is with Holyrood surely, that his beef should lie?

If you wish a better and different country go on and build it. Nothing stops you, nothing stands in the way of making change in your own life, nothing stands against your own empowerment except your own fears. I have built, worked in, employ some 25 people, and contributed (I hope) to Scotland's cultural heritage for some 30 years in my own publishing business. I have received no let or hindrance from the UK Government in any respect in so doing. Curiously, my main issues have come with a nationalist administration.

In the 13 years of nationalism what my industry has had is the removal of all cultural protection from Scottish Government procurement on the grounds of price, the elimination of small business supply from Scotland's schools and universities on the same grounds, the giving of more than £10 million in grant aid to a tax-avoiding multinational to create low-grade pick-and-pack jobs with no job security, the further rewarding of that multinational by changing the business rates system to further penalise small business and of course in recent months the closing of much of physical retail to the benefit of that multinational without any plan as to how physical retail can be revived post Covid. For most of the industry in Scotland these actions – taken without consultation or discussion, part of no strategic vision – smack of that disempowerment and lack of control so many of us feel with regard to politics and power. But these are the actions not of the UK but of the Scottish Government.

It is part of the malign intelligence of nationalism that it has refracted its own emptiness and failure onto a UK Government responsible for relatively few of the actions for which it is so vociferously blamed. I have often felt that independence represents not the resolution of this sense of grievance and inferiority so many Scots seem to feel, but its final triumph.

Hugh Andrew, Managing Director, Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh EH9.

WHAT an extraordinary article from Mark Smith in Monday's paper ("I will never be ashamed of my enduring love for England", The Herald, December 7) which I got today (December 8) as it missed the boat first thing yesterday. I am an islander with a long island ancestry (Dennis is my married name), but I lived and worked happily in England for more than 30 years.

My husband’s father was English and my husband was born and brought up in England, my four children were all born in England and two of them still live and work there. I love the bits of England that I know well – particularly the West Country from Somerset to Land’s End, and North Yorkshire, and have many English friends. I also love Vienna, Norway, Tanzania and the parts of Canada and America I know, but why should all that influence my political thinking in any direction? I just don’t follow Mr Smith's logic.

Dorothy Dennis, Port Ellen, Isle of Islay.

TODAY'S responses (Letters, December 8) to Mark Smith's column on Monday made a number of comments with which I am in agreement. However, I am surprised that no-one questioned his assertion that the death rate is higher in Scotland than across the Border.

I immediately looked online to check the relevant figures, which confirmed 53,570 deaths in England and 3,916 in Scotland. By my calculation, this indicates a differential close to seven per cent when it would need to be nearer 10% to exceed the English death rate. Excess deaths during the pandemic are reckoned by some experts to be a better indicator of assessing outcomes. The relevant statistics that I found only covered the first wave and, again, revealed a higher figure south of the Border.

I wish to add that, as a longstanding believer in Scottish independence, I have spent many happy times on visits to England and I would plan to do so even after independence. Furthermore, I consider myself both Scottish and British and that shall never change.

Gordon Evans, Glasgow G73.

I WAS touched to read Leah Gunn Barrett offering her sympathies to me for the grief I receive when defending the Scottish Government’s GERS figures (Letters, December 7). Unfortunately the rest of her letter merely served to advertise her lack of understanding about how the figures are compiled and what they can tell us.

Suffice to say, as I made clear in my article (“The figures don’t lie, despite what some critics might say”, The Herald, December 4), the GERS report is commissioned by the Scottish Government (not Westminster), the ONS awards it National Statistics status and the Scottish Government’s own economists are responsible for every assumption within it.

I must admit to being bemused when supporters of independence talk down the SNP-led Scottish Government’s understanding of our economy – why do they believe the SNP is trying to “show Scotland can’t be financially viable” or would be guilty of “making us look poorer, which is the intention”?

I respectfully suggest that Ms Gunn Barrett redirect her sympathy towards the hard-working team of Scottish Government economists based in St Andrew's House who compile the report she describes as “garbage” and “premised on false accounting”. After all, it must be hard for them to have to sit quietly by while people like her take to public forums to malign their professional integrity.

Kevin Hague, Chairman, These Islands, East Lothian.

IN light of the Peter Murrell appearance at the Holyrood committee hearing ("Sturgeon’s husband denies trying to engineer Salmond’s ‘downfall’", The Herald, December 9), it is understandable perhaps that John Swinney chose the same day to release the news that there will be no Scottish exams for our kids next year ("Swinney calls off Higher exams for next year", The Herald, December 9). The SNP criticised a Labour aide some years ago for exulting in finding a "good day to put out bad news" and it is doing exactly the same thing.

However, that is the not the point. What really galls is that the Scottish Government considers Covid and its implications so serious that the education of our children is jeopardised, but it does not alter one iota the plans to charge ahead with its divisive plans for breaking up the UK. Clearly, Scottish kids' education trails a long way behind another independence referendum in importance.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh EH6.

Read more: If Scots are so bad, why do so many English people here support independence?