Oil reserves

Ian Lakin’s reply (1 September) to my letter on the waste of 40 years of oil revenues is straight out of the well-thumbed unionist handbook.

Even Denis Healy, the former chancellor, said, in 2013, that one of their biggest mistakes was the failure to set up an oil fund. He also admitted that the governments of the time lied consistently in order to conceal the size of the reserves from the Scots. Nothing new there then.

Mr Lakin’s figure of a £15 billion deficit for the Scottish economy is also plucked uncritically from unionist-supplied figures which are disputed by the Scottish Government, but if he is right, surely it is a shocking indictment of the 300-year-old Union, that such a rich and  productive area as Scotland can be in such a state.

Time for a change, methinks.

Anyway, all countries run deficits (except Norway!), and the United Kingdom is  currently running an annual deficit of about £160 billion. But that is a UK deficit so, no doubt, Mr Lakin will approve of that.

James Duncan

Rattray Grove

Edinburgh