SIR, The appeal for “fresh thinking” in R Walker’s letter might have been directed at any of our political parties, but its target was exclusively the SNP.

The temerity of the SNP in suggesting it was the Conservative party in need of original thought had caused “amazed mirth” in the Walker household and, of course, any rare enjoyment one may derive from politics should be given full vent, but hilarity in the letter soon gave way to feeling somewhat more venomous, and any “fresh thinking” in its climax was both factually incorrect and at least two years out of date.

“Since losing the Referendum they have sulked, whined and threatened,” opined R Walker. But, in fact, the party has openly conceded the result of the Referendum, and bolstered by a fantastic flood of new members and renewed optimism is already planning for the May General Election and on how best to serve Scotland at Westminster.

There is nothing discreditable in considering responsibility and strategy in the face of a morally bankrupt Westminster establishment. Scots have nursed the ideal of independence for centuries; some of our national heroes gave their lives for it. If R Walker thinks, as David Mundell likes to do, that the recent close call was the last word on Scottish independence, and that we can all forget it and concentrate on local issues like potholes, he is ludicrously mistaken.

Even the immediate future looks exciting: what might ensue, for example, if the election again returned a minority Tory government, but this time without a single Tory member from Scotland? Apart, that is, from further, ecstatic, roly-poly triumph among Edinburgh’s panda population.

“All their plans hung on the endless rise in the price of oil. Now they are learning that the price of oil can go down as well as up,” R Walker concluded.

Far from the fresh thinking the writer advocates, this is a myth that was peddled widely by our very largely pro-union press throughout the entire Referendum campaign in spite of the making clear by many SNP officers and documents that oil represents only about 15 per cent of Scottish public sector receipts and that, even without it our economic output per head is roughly the same as the UK’s.

The oil card will continue to be played by those who are most strongly opposed to fresh thinking. Its slap down face-up on the table whenever the oil industry is in crisis (as they like to put it) is indicative of their lack of vision, of a sad eagerness in them to equate markets and money with the unassailable ideal of independence, the very defining principle of nationhood.

This is not a mistake Norwegians would ever make, though their economy is more heavily dependent on oil than is Scotland’s. A proper nation, doing its own thing, Norway is also a shining example of best socialist practice where the national capital and bounty are directed in the interest of every Norwegian, and where movements in commodity prices are scarcely relevant; even a continuing dramatic fall in oil price, for example, would affect only current income, while the oil fund itself (some 870 billion dollars) invested in banks and securities worldwide will march on into a distant future for Norwegians unborn...even long after the oil has dried up. In the 23 weeks or so since the Scottish Referendum, the fund has (based on average growth since its inception) put on 18 billion dollars.

Norway’s happy situation won’t cause any hilarity in Scottish households, rather a faintly envious smile of admiration for genuine socialist principles put in inspirational practice.

I am, etc.

John Melrose Whitehaugh Park Peebles