LEAH Gunn Barrett gave vent to a detail-free rant in Saturday’s Letters Pages (June 12).

Exports to the EU and to non-EU destinations are up in April 2021 from the same time last year and total exports are up for the fourth calendar month in a row. April’s export levels were also within a whisker of December 2020, which were the highest of the year and artificially boosted by Brexit-related anxiety about possible 2021 supply chain problems. April’s total exports were 10 per cent short of the same month in 2019, but the upward trend is strong and were a creditable performance in Covid-constrained trading conditions.

However, “as any child will tell you”, it is far too early to make a call on the success or failure of any trading arrangement on the basis of just a few months of figures.

Perhaps your correspondent would like to offer the analysis she has been privy to in calling the UK’s recent trade agreements “sub optimal”. Any increased non-EU trading volume and value, especially as it does not appear so far to be at the expense of exports to the EU, is welcome. I very much doubt that the companies exporting to any newly tariff-free destinations are doing so at a loss. So, “sub optimal” or not, new routes for profitable endeavour now exist.

Whether on our doorstep or not, the pursuit of profitable international business – part of an outward-looking, bigger-picture approach to trade designed to take advantage of global non-EU GDP growth that the flatlining EU cannot match – is a logical and enterprising way forward for any ambitious trading nation.

And lastly, if the time for Scotland to get out of the UK is now, Ms Barratt is choosing the time when the financial and economic case for independence is weaker than ever with English taxpayers footing a higher than ever percentage of Scotland’s expenditure. Maybe 2021’s rising oil price will help fill the gap. No, wait, the SNP and its Green Party colleagues want to restrict then wind down the oil and gas industry. Never mind.

Grant Ballantyne, Paisley.

STOP PICKING AT OUR SCABS

REFERENCE Kevin McKenna’s article lamenting the poor state of our historical insight ("There’s a reason Tories don’t want us to know Scots history", The Herald, June 12), I would argue that it’s time to stop picking our historical scabs and prepare to forge a stronger alliance with England as we carve a way through the economic landscape left scarred by our leaving the EU.

The manner in which Nicola Sturgeon and her acolytes presents Scotland as the abused child of the matriarch, Brittania, gives an insight into the pathology of our relationship within this 300-year Union. Repeatedly dredging up the past is a sure way to keeping the wounds fresh. Yes, we were treated abusively before the Union but so were the Irish and the Welsh but you don’t see them stamping their feet or hear them moaning frequently about their relationship with the English. No, they seem to have healed from the wounds of the past and look forward to a better future for the UK.

Do we really want to exit the Union and face the possibility of being cast as the orphans of Europe with our begging bowls at the ready for handouts from the EU? Do we really want to have independence and have to apply to the International Monetary Fund to stabilise our currency and help us deal with a devastated economy with concomitant high unemployment and taxes?

Scotland is already in debt to the tune of £15 billion; to put it another way, £2,700 each individually compared with £855 individually for other members of the Union.

The SNP has made it very clear to us that it has been incompetent in its handling of our finances, frequently blaming the Westminster Government for under-funding our monetary largesse. We really must grow up in our dealings with Westminster if we are to be regarded as a strong nation with our self-respect intact.

Independence is not the way forward.

Martin Robertson, Kilmarnock.

WHERE WAS UNITY IN 2003?

COULD Gordon Brown ("Brown fearful of ‘50 years of conflict’ over Scotland and England split", The Herald, June 14) please explain to us all how his ex-colleague, Prime Minister Tony Blair, united the country when he chose to go to war in Iraq in 2003? I've not voted Labour since then.

Patricia Fort, Glasgow.

OLIVER DID NOT MERIT THE COVERAGE

PROBABLY like many others, I was surprised at the widespread coverage given to the thoughts and opinions of Neil Oliver over the weekend ("‘Lockdown has been the biggest mistake in world history’", The Herald, June 11, and "I’ll celebrate Britain. It’s not being triumphalist. I just love the place", Herald Magazine, June 12).

That is not because I have any particular animus against Mr Oliver. He is a citizen of the country and like all of us in a democratic society has the full right to express his opinions on any matters, no matter how trivial or mediocre they might be.

What is unacceptable to me, and I believe will be to many of your faithful readers, is that you have given space to an individual who was intent on brazenly advertising a new TV and radio news programme via his interventions. They ought to have been paid for in the advertisement pages and not served up in the news and opinion columns of your paper.

If the person whose views we were encouraged to read was one of substance, such as a great scientist, man or woman of letters, renowned journalist or significant politician, either from home or abroad, we would have read contributions from people of that standing with considerable interest.

Instead we were presented with the opinions of a TV presenter, no better or no worse than any of his trade, with remarks empty of interest or stimulation.

I began reading the then Glasgow Herald in the early 1960s. My English teacher at that time told his class that doing so on a regular basis would help us to understand how lucid prose should be written and assist us also in separating the wheat from the chaff in the coverage of national and world events. It was in his words, "a quality newspaper".

You have betrayed your honourable tradition by printing this stuff from Mr Oliver. 

Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine, Hamilton.

* Magazine Editor’s note: The launch of a new TV channel is newsworthy. As the first British TV channel that aims to follow the American model of chat and comment, rather than the traditional straight news coverage, it would be remiss of us not to examine it in our Arts pages.

Neil Oliver is one of the main presenters of GB News, which aims to shape the discussion of big issues, and we will always interview Scots who wish to play a role in the nation’s cultural and political life. It’s important to note that we don’t endorse the views of our interviewees.

DOUBLE STANDARDS ON GB NEWS

NEIL Oliver makes the self-evident point that nationality is an accident of birth, and that the arrogant concept in the minds of the very recent inhabitants of Earth that caused them to mark out lines on the planet to distinguish one patch of land from another, and led to the “conceit” of giving these areas names to denote “countries”, is a mere fiction in the context of geological time.

This does raise the question of how he will feel at home working in an organisation with a title and a logo so expressive of its particular geographical location and “nationality” as GB News.

Ian Hutcheson, Glasgow.

END SCOTLAND'S EVICTIONS SCANDAL

IN the space of two weeks including this week 229 eviction hearings are taking place in sheriff courts and first tier tribunals across Scotland. The Scottish Government has said it will monitor evictions as they happen; we could be seeing people being put back on the streets or councils at best putting tenants and their families into sub-standard temporary accommodation.

The advent of the Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus surely means that the eviction ban should be reinstated for public health reasons at all levels and not just levels 3 and 4. The fact that East Renfrewshire Council has publicly announced that it will not evict any of its tenants for rent arrears as long as the pandemic lasts shows that this can be easily done.

Instead the Scottish Government remains silent as private landlords, including housing associations and some councils, with greedy avarice rush to the courts to evict tenants and their families who are in dire poverty because of the pandemic and previous austerity policies.

This is Scotland’s shame in the 21st century to increase homelessness when this can be avoided.

Sean Clerkin, Campaign Coordinator, Scottish Tenants Organisation, Barrhead.

Read more: We are sinking ever deeper into the Brexit fallout mire