BRIAN Farrell (Letters, November 16) paints a pretty picture of Scottish nationalism as exceptional to every other nationalism, in being some kind of benevolent and sanctified force. In contrast, he portrays England as xenophobic, intolerant and well on the way to fascism.

I would invite Mr Farrell to visit our UK capital city of London which is far more cosmopolitan and multicultural than any part of Scotland. The same applies to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leicester and every other major city in England.

England is far from perfect (because nowhere is) but has nothing to learn from Scotland about tolerance and integration. In fact, the lessons to be learned are mainly the other way round.

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Peter A Russell, Glasgow G13.

A TIMELINE of Scottish history published by the quango Education Scotland has been introduced in Scottish schools. It is a 27-page document, The Road to the Scottish Parliament and is part of You Decide – a political literary resource, which is produced by the Scottish government quango. It has been described by Professor Chris Whately, a historian from Dundee University, as a one-sided and potentially misleading version of the truth. Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said it was a biased "Braveheart” version of history that seeks only to portray Scotland as a victim of English oppression. He said: “The document would be more at home in a totalitarian state than in a fair-minded democracy”.

The document quotes the Declaration of Arbroath, stating: "We will yield in no least way to English domination. The SNP is mentioned repeatedly, including the party’s formation in 1934, along with the election of its first MP and Alex Salmond’s governments in 2007 and 2011. The Labour Party is referred to fleetingly and the Conservatives are mentioned once in relation to Margaret Thatcher. The two world wars, in which Scottish soldiers fought with their fellow troops from across Britain are not mentioned, while the 2014 independence referendum, when Scots backed the Union, gets a single line.

This is another clear example of the SNP trying to influence the minds of children towards their animosity towards England and they have to be challenged by parents and teachers for the sake of truth and democracy. How much more of this stuff will go into Scottish schools unchallenged before the next independence referendum, I wonder?

Donald Lewis, Gifford.

WHY are we tolerating the inaccurate reporting of policy initiatives during the General Election campaign?

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Britain is a union of four nations. Policy matters, particularly those relating to health, social care and education, are devolved to a greater or lesser extent across the four countries. However, unless you are a constitutional policy nerd you won’t necessarily know this. And, bizarrely, you are unlikely to be enlightened if you rely on the British Broadcasting Corporation – a publicly-funded body with a central remit of public information and education.

In the short space of time since the current electioneering began there has been a bias in favour of policy stories that relate to England. In some cases stories are told in ways that create the impression that policy initiatives in England apply to Britain as a whole. For example, the terms “England”, “the country” and “the nation” are used interchangeably, giving the impression that England is the default term for Britain. This means audiences need to be extra attentive during stories about England to understand that they refer to one nation rather than three or four.

The NHS is a prime example of this inaccurate reporting. The NHS, as we know, is a major campaigning issue for Labour and the Tories – many promises have been made, but the reporting of these promises has been biased in favour of policies that will apply only to England. Not enough attention has been paid to what these promises do or don’t mean for the other three countries, or to the fact that very different NHS systems operate in each of the four nations.

A clear example of this happened recently when the Labour promise of free dental checks was discussed on the Andrew Marr Show (November 17) - at no point was it made clear that free dental checks have been in place in Scotland since 2006.

The recent accident and emergency data is another example. No matter where you live in Britain, local NHS services are under immense pressure, but of all the four nations, hospitals in Scotland seem to have fared the best. Much of the credit for this has been given to the way councils and health services are working together. However, the media haven’t widely reported this performance differential between Scotland and England. Nor have they made it clear that whilst the Tories and Labour strive to find a solution to the growing number of older people needing care, free personal care in the home is already available in Scotland.

Why does all this matter? Well, for two key reasons: the potential to enrich stories by comparing and contrasting the performance of different policies in the four nations remains untapped, but, much more importantly, the right of citizens in the four nations to be properly informed in order to make choices at the ballot box is seriously constrained.

Christine Duncan, Moffat.