Readers' letters: Alex Cole-Hamilton is in a currency time warp

Alex Cole Hamilton (News, December 1) is in a 2014 time warp over currency in an independent Scotland.

Thousands of Scottish workers will benefit at a time when the cost of living is soaring. Picture: Jon Savage.

Every country in the world uses its own currency, or one tied to a fully-convertible counter, and finds no trouble in doing so.

An independent Scotland would use whatever currency it wished. Its citizens would use whatever currency was accepted in shops, bars, online shopping, investments and tax payments.

Scaremongering over mortgage payments in a modern developed economy like Scotland is at the absurd end of Project Fear.

Like some other countries, Scotland could even run multiple currencies as the technology is there to handle multicurrency transactions, banks are perfectly capable of issuing multicurrency accounts.

Scotland will choose the currency option best suited to her needs, to optimise financial management including borrowing and interest rates.

In a situation like the Covid pandemic, having one’s own independent currency would allow Scotland to borrow and maintain the economy without having to beg the UK to borrow on our behalf.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh.

Scotland would be fine without pound

On which planet is Cole-Hamilton residing? SNP members resoundingly passed a conference motion to speed up the process to create the Scottish pound and central bank after the people affirm political independence.

Alba Party members also passed a motion to establish a Scottish currency. They recognise an independent Scotland without its own currency would forfeit control over its economy.

Decisions about Scotland’s income, expenditure and interest rates would be made for it by England in England’s, not Scotland’s interest. Haven’t we had enough of that?

Cole-Hamilton is wrong about support for a Scottish currency. A year ago, a poll found that 59 per cent of the electorate favoured our own currency, including 50 per cent of Labour voters.

If Sturgeon is afraid to confront banking interests she should recall that Gordon Brown’s 2008 taxpayer funded bail-out of the big banks exacerbated inequality, stalled productivity and stymied wealth creation. That’s not the Scotland we want.

Currency has no intrinsic value but derives value from the goods and services the economy produces. As long as Scotland makes things the world wants, its currency will have value.

Our natural, economic and human resource wealth is why the UK is terrified of losing us.

The flipside to the UK’s terror should be Scotland's confidence about the future outside this sclerotic Union.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.

Sturgeon failed over Omicron variant

Ten days after Omicron was detected in Scotland, the First Minister has failed to act yet again.

Unlike Austria she hasn't made the vaccine compulsory or made it compulsory for NHS or care workers like in England.Nor has she introduced eight-day isolation for people flying into Scotland, despite calling for the UK Government to do it.She hasn't led by example by making Holyrood Parliament online again, nor has she banned hospital visits or shutdown or curfewed pubs and nightclubs like many European countries.

In other words, once again she has done nothing but try to shift the blame elsewhere. As we head towards 13,000 covid deaths in Scotland by the end of this winter, Nicola Sturgeon should be ashamed.

David Watson, Leith.