SIR, After reading last week’s Border Telegraph, it is no wonder that the people living in the south of England regularly refer to those living north of the border as 'The whingeing Scots’.

Firstly, Bill Calder says in his letter that he wants to be governed by Scots. May I remind him that we were governed by two Scottish Prime Ministers from 1997 till 2010 who brought this country to its knees and nearly bankrupted the United Kingdom.

They also got us into wars that we did not want to be involved in and sold a big part of our gold reserves for a song and opened the floodgates to let in millions of immigrants to this country. I don’t think that I need to remind him who they were.

Secondly, Mary McLaren says that England gets everything and Scotland gets nothing. Scotland gets a four figure sum of money per head of population more than England, free university fees where my gran daughters pay up to £9000 a year to go to university, free car parking in most hospitals including the BGH, whereby my wife had to pay £7 for an afternoon parking recently when I was admitted to the John Radcliffe Hospital here in Oxford.

In the Borders, until recently, garden rubbish was collected free. Here we have to pay £35 a year for a brown bin for a fortnightly collection.

You get free prescriptions where a prescription here is £8.05 per item unless you are exempt through age, or on benefits or such like. I personally have five on repeat every two months but luckily I am an OAP so get them free.

Your big bridges are now free to cross where the Tyne Tunnel, the Humber Bridge, the Severn Bridge and a few more still have Toll charges.

I’m sure there are more topics that I could add to the list of freebies that Scotland so stop whingeing and help make this United Kingdom a pleasant place to live.

I am, etc.

John Grant RVM Oxford