WE should be indebted to Mark Smith for informing us that independence was somehow a "working class" issue ("Failure to broaden Yes support should scare Hope over Fear", The Herald, September 17). Although first mooted by Keir Hardie, it seemed that since then, the Home Rule movement/SNP was (and is) always largely run by middle-class people.

He also thinks having shouty, middle-aged white men is a negative for the Yessers. Does he also think have a shouty middle-aged, white woman from a working class background leading the Scottish opposition to independence is a negative?

And a miserable 500 people attending a rally? When did any of the Scottish Labour, Tory or Liberal Democrat conferences last have 500 attending? The few who do go are all herded into the front three rows of mostly empty halls to hide the lack of interest in them. Mr Smith should applaud any democratic event that attracts people's interest, rather than sneering from his, presumably, middle class perspective.

GR Weir,

17 Mill Street, Ochiltree.

ALLAN Sutherland (Letters, September 15) berates the Scottish Government for having no plans, he says, for Brexit. Mr Sutherland pins his hopes on the deal “Michel Barnier expects in eight weeks' time”. But what will that deal be like? Will it allow access to the single market, frictionless trade as now with the European Union? Or, at the other end of that spectrum, will it be “no deal”, with the Irish border problem addressed with no more than a wave of David Davis’s hand?

To confidently predict just where we will be deposited in that continuum requires the insight, at the very least, of the Delphic Oracle. Without clarity about the details of a deal in which “nothing is agreed till everything is agreed”, it is as unreasonable as it is impractical to expect a government with no role in the Brexit negotiations to commit to specific plans. Even British industry has been crying out for months for details of the Brexit deal, but to little avail.

Regarding the First Minister, however, Mr Sutherland insists she should know “which of the 50 new major post-Brexit agencies, jobs and localised powers she [propose] obtaining”. Perhaps, it has escaped Mr Sutherland’s notice that while on the one hand Westminster enjoins the devolved administrations to “pull together”, it has made it clear that it is “in charge”? It is not a matter of Scotland proposing what it would like to “obtain” but taking what it is given.

Alasdair Galloway,

14 Silverton Avenue, Dumbarton.

WHY do so many people seem not to understand the crucial difference between a second vote about Brexit and the occasions when there has been a second vote about an EU matter? In the latter case, when governments did not get the answer they wanted, they, those same governments, held a second vote.

In the case of Brexit, it is the voters, not the Government or political leaders, who are demanding a second vote, now that they know what is involved and feel they have the right in a democracy to change their mind, just as they can do at every other election.

P Davidson,

Gartcows Road, Falkirk.

HOW exactly would a Scottish immigration system work ("Majority of Scots want Holyrood to control immigration", The Herald, September 17)? What would stop someone wanting to move to London applying to Scotland, being accepted, then jumping on the train to London to live? It contravenes human rights to restrict a person’s movements and place of abode within a state.

The argument that immigrants do jobs that the existing population doesn’t want to do is bizarre. Why should we be paying benefits to fit and able people while jobs that they could do are being filled by immigrants? The favourite statistic that immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits is irrelevant. Education and health costs need to be added in, plus the cost of having other people who might otherwise have had a job receiving benefits.

Then add in the social costs incurred if integration does not proceed as hoped – as it often does not. In addition, we must be cautious about importing people with values and loyalties at odds with the fundamental principles that make our nation prosperous, free and peaceful.

Does this make me anti-immigration? No. My point is just that all factors should be considered when making decisions that can produce irreversible changes in a society.

Richard Lucas,

Leader of the Scottish Family Party, 272 Bath Street, Glasgow.

KEVIN McKenna has a way with words and can deliver a point as strongly as anyone with his liberal use of catchy turns of phrase. Equally, regular readers will have no doubt as to where he stands on Scotland’s place in the UK, namely he wishes it wasn’t. Yet there was something fundamentally unpleasant about his latest article, that was then reflected in an eye-catching, but in my view deeply offensive heading given to the piece ("Never mind the dodgy Russians, Britain is rotten to its very core", The Herald, September 15).

Me McKenna’s article deployed the oft-used technique of creating exaggerated caricatures of those he wanted to berate, making it so much easier to present them as the devil incarnate. His unbridled use of sarcasm throughout the piece also created a black humour excuse for what might otherwise be simply considered malicious.

When your headline writer got involved any doubt that a line had been crossed was lost. I am saddened that such a title could have been considered appropriate, even if it was in reference to an opinion piece. Scotland is still a part of the UK, and as such The Herald is published in, and its readers live in, the Britain that the title attacks. To draw parallels between our country and the actions of a foreign state’s assassins is unforgivable, and is I am afraid an example of you failing to meet your own high standards.

Keith Howell,

White Moss, West Linton, Peeblesshire.