Parting could be sweet
Sir: Your leader (‘Disunited Kingdom’, 7 May) omitted to mention that if Scotland becomes independent, tens of thousands of British government jobs will be moved to England, and as many again from the private sector will invigorate our northern cities, as the financial organisations now based in Edinburgh will have to move their operations to be based in the country in which most of their business is transacted. Obviously, the Shetland Islands will have to be given the option of independence from both England and Scotland, which they will undoubtedly accept, and the North Sea oil fields will then be divided between the three countries according to international law. The Shetland Islands will get by far the greatest share, but given our greater economic clout, I would expect that England would be able to offer a better deal for the oil than Scotland, so that is a further benefit. We will no longer subsidise the Scots from English taxes, and the House of Commons will have a near-permanent Conservative majority. What, exactly, is the downside for England if the Scots get independence?
John Duffield
Loughton, Essex
Sir: Gerald Warner is spot on in his sad assessment of Scottish politics (‘We’re all doomed’, 23/30 April). But the premise of his article, that the money is about to be taken away, is surely wrong. The Barnett Formula mechanism, which results in Scotland getting higher public spending, is nothing to do with ‘needs’. It’s the means by which Scotland gets its North Sea oil revenue (the two figures have been roughly equivalent on average over the years). No Westminster government in its right mind will take this away. So until the oil money runs out, the public-sector splurge goes on.
Tom Miers
Kelso
The brains behind Ruthless
Sir: It would not keep me awake at nights if Frank Birch rather than Ian Fleming was the creative mind behind Operation Ruthless (‘Spy Fiction’, 7 May). I write to make two points. The first is that ‘loot’ was a very Ian word. (He was my stepfather.) In fact the wording of the original proposal is typically Ian: more so than the details in the ‘dressed up’ version. The second point is that at that date professional colleagues did not use first names. Copies of letters from Ian in this house routinely start ‘dear Birch’, for example. (Sorry! I have no actual ‘Birch’ letter.) It is, therefore, more likely that F stood for Fleming rather than for Frank.
Fionn Morgan
Battersea, London
Leave off Scarborough
Sir: As a Yorkshirewoman, I cannot allow Theodore Dalrymple’s myopic vilification of God’s Own County’s top watering-hole (‘Scarborough Unfair’, 7 May) to escape without correction. Hard to believe that he staggered uphill as far as Anne Brontë’s grave yet failed to notice the architectural majesty of the great medieval castle a mere few yards in front of him. Personally I have never seen flowers on that grave in a jam-jar, and as Miss Brontë is buried between two Holdens I have reason to monitor the situation. Degradation has its fascinations — you can go to the Royal Crescent (home to Edith Sitwell) and see the shell holes in the facades from a first world war German gunboat attack. Scarborough also sits slap-bang in the middle of the world-famous Dinosaur Coast; and the Rotunda gallery, an Enlightenment geological museum, has just re-opened after a multi-million-pound facelift. Scarborough may not be prospering economically, but that doesn’t mean it is devoid of interest, pride or beauty. We don’t have people in Yorkshire called Theodore, but if we did we’d probably knock their teeth out in the playground.
Wendy Holden
Yorkshire
A modern woman?
Sir: I cannot help but wonder if, in describing Kate Middleton as ‘a woman so confident in her modernity that she feels nothing wrong in being the wife’, Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 7 May) intended to be so revealing; it is plainly some time since he associated with anyone whom most people would think of as a modern young woman. I also wonder how other women who are, like me, perfectly happy in their status as wives, yet who have managed to spend their single days doing something more constructive than waiting for wealthy men to marry them, feel about this description. I would be deeply insulted were it not so utterly silly. Kate Middleton is about as modern as the family she has married into.
Joanne Wardale
Godalming, Surrey
The snorting masses
Sir: I am afraid the assertion by Denis MacShane (Letters, 7 May) that Wall St and other elites are among the main consumers of the Mexican narco-trade is not based on fact. Their sales, like that of most ‘globals’, are derived from volume not vintage. It is the masses who pay and consume.
Dr Daniel Rock
University of Western Australia, Perth
Interesting weaponry
Sir: I was intrigued by Christian Adams’s clever cover (‘Operation Amnesia’, 9 April) depicting a coalition soldier pursuing a member of the Taleban on a hamster wheel. Leaving aside the underlying message I find Mr Adams choice of weapons of particular interest. The Taleban insurgent appears to be armed not with the ubiquitous AK47, but rather the 7.62mm Czech Model 58 — with the ‘58’ indicating the year that it was introduced — which bears little mechanical resemblance to the Kalashnikov rifle. Of even greater interest is the weapon carried by the coalition trooper. It bears a distinct resemblance to the 5.56mm Nato calibre Swedish MKS rifle of the early 1980s with the magazine forming the ‘pistol grip’. Is Mr Adams perhaps a closet small-arms expert?
Keith R. Dyer
Durban, South Africa
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