Sandy Holt-Wilson treating a young patient in Ethiopia

Dr Alexander (Sandy) Holt-Wilson, who has died aged 78, crowned a career in which he became a consultant eye surgeon in Wales with a retirement devoted to establishing health services in Ethiopia.

The African country had fascinated him since he had heard tales of it at his grandmother’s knee, and between 2001 and 2014 his achievements there included founding an eye hospital in the grounds of the university at the former capital city of Gondar; setting up a health centre at Debarq, at the foot of the Simien Mountains; initiating cataract surgeon services for rural areas; and almost single-handedly running a charity to train Ethiopian doctors.

^{Sandy Holt-Wilson examining a patient in Ethiopia}

Alexander Daniel Holt-Wilson was born at Alverstoke in Hampshire on April 30 1936, the youngest of three children of a naval officer.

Holt-Wilson’s grandmother had been the daughter of Henry Montagu Draper, headmaster of Lockers Park School in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, where Prince Alemayu, the orphaned son of Emperor Theodros II of Abyssinia, was a pupil after having been brought to Britain on his father’s defeat and suicide at the battle of Magdala in 1868. The prince, whose mother had died from illness, became a protégé of Queen Victoria.

Sandy’s boyhood dreams of Ethiopia were soon matched by ambitions to become a doctor and, in his teenage years, a keen interest in the achievements of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr Albert Schweitzer (who also founded a hospital in Africa). So enthused was the 17-year-old Holt-Wilson that in 1953 he bicycled all the way to Schweitzer’s house in Alsace-Lorraine to shake hands with the great man. Possessing, however, no shared language, the two were unable to make conversation, so Holt-Wilson turned round and cycled off again on the long journey home.

Having attended Rugby School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, he did his medical training at Barts, spending a year of it at Bulawayo, Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He made a point on his way home of visiting Ethiopia, staying with friends working for the British Council in Addis Ababa. He completed his training as an ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London.

He married, in 1970, Caroline Davies, whom he had met while both were volunteering with Rugby School’s boys’ clubs. Her father, Rear-Admiral Anthony Davies, was at that time Warden of St George’s House, Windsor Castle, and the wedding ceremony was held at St George’s Chapel, where Prince Alemayu’s funeral had taken place in 1879, and where he had been interred at Queen Victoria’s wish.

Holt-Wilson took his surgeon’s examinations in 1971, working in London until moving to Kuwait in 1976. On their return to Britain, the family settled in South Wales, and Holt-Wilson became a consultant ophthalmologist at St Woolos hospital in Newport and Nevill Hall hospital in Abergavenny.

Nevertheless, Prince Alemayu and Ethiopia remained in his thoughts, and he would often travel to auctions, acquiring related photographs and artefacts. His discovery of items left by the Prince’s guardian, Captain Tristram Speedy, yielded up a letter from Queen Victoria.

^{Sandy Holt-Wilson and his wife Caroline}

In 1989 he bought a farm near Raglan on which the family bred free-range bronze turkeys. While that proved a success, the stress of managing the farm’s flock of sheep during the outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 2001 spurred Holt-Wilson to return to Ethiopia. Fed up with the agricultural crisis, he eagerly agreed to fill the place of an absent member of staff at the University of Gondar, which was until 2003 Gondar College of Medical Sciences, and before that had been known as the Public Health College, the country’s oldest medical institution, founded in 1954.

There he found himself fully occupied removing cataracts and attending to eye problems, many of which sprang from vitamin deficiency or fly-borne infections. By 2004 he had established the charity GEES (Gondar Ethiopia Eye Surgery) to remedy gaps in care and training.

The work was not without risk. In his seventies and bent on attending to Ethiopians’ eye complaints, he lived on tinned sardines for six months and began to show signs of scurvy. He also caught the protozoal gut affliction, giardia, which made him so thin and weak he became stuck in a bath.

Despite these setbacks, he tirelessly conducted negotiations with Ethiopian government ministers and medical bodies to bring nursing and doctoring expertise to rural areas. He communicated his news to his wife by letters which took 10 days to arrive, there being no other means of communication. On one occasion she joined him to climb the steep-sided, flat-topped Simien mountains, 40 miles from Gondar, where they stayed in a tent surrounded by grass-grazing baboons.

^{Holt-Wilson, his wife Caroline, and their border collie Bet (NICK MORRISH/SOUTH WALES ARGUS)}

His last journey to Ethiopia was in October 2013, and at the time of his death, by then confined to home by illness, he was pursuing a means to bring into production a small, cheap, light and portable ophthalmoscope of an acquaintance’s design that doctors in Ethiopia might carry about easily in their pockets.

For his work he was appointed OBE in 2013.

Sandy Holt-Wilson hoped his collection of mementoes of Prince Alemayu might raise money for the charity’s work, and also gave lectures about the prince to the Anglo-Ethiopian Society in London and to students in Addis Ababa. One of his talks was broadcast in Ethiopia. At their farm he and his wife entertained the novelist Elizabeth Laird, to whom he gave access to his collection for her book about Alemayu: The Prince Who Walked With Lions (2012).

He is survived by his wife and their son and two daughters.

Dr Alexander (Sandy) Holt-Wilson, born April 30 1936, died May 7 2014

I’m a pro-union Scot, but I have to admit that the yes campaign’s positive vision for a fairer society with closer control of its fiscal affairs has appealed to me and others. The overly negative no campaign has also upset many on both sides. The question though is not can Scotland be independent but should it?

The yes campaigners talk about national debt, social inequality, the NHS, TTIP and UK intervention in wars, but those concerns affect the whole UK. Our friends in England are disaffected too, but feel they have no power to change things. People underestimated Scottish teenage voters, but look how informed and articulate they proved themselves on a televised debate recently. Together we could put more pressure on politicians in central government to effect change for everyone, from the inside.

If we gain independence, we still won’t like our neighbour’s wars and ethics, but without any MPs in Westminster, we will have absolutely no power there any more. And if the UK’s massive debt causes a financial implosion, we’re stuffed as well if we’re in a currency union. Many people have compared this to a divorce. It’s not and we can’t move out. Our fates will be for ever inextricably linked and we can either be selfish and go it alone or work together for the good of all these islands.
Jenni Allardyce
Braco, Perthshire, Scotland

• Billy Bragg (Scottish nationalism and British nationalism aren’t the same, 16 September) is correct to say that the SNP is a different kind of party from the BNP. Though its central aim to repatriate powers is akin to Ukip’s, it hasn’t linked this policy to immigration. True, terms like rUK-settlers can be heard from the yes camp, but this is a broad church and groups such as Radical Scotland have done much to avoid it.

Yet these blunt facts do not absolve Scotland’s “civic nationalism” from all of the accusations so readily levelled at “ethnic nationalism”. This distinction, popularised by Michael Ignatieff in the mid-1990s, has received much debate, which Bragg blithely ignores. Its critics point out that both kinds of nationalism require drawing a boundary between those who belong and those who do not: between citizens and non-citizens. Nationalism can embrace multiculturalism and draw its boundary liberally, but a boundary must still be drawn.

The Scottish left hopes that a yes vote will bring rights for Scots that are not available in the UK. But these will only be extended to the rUK through hard work; work which the Scottish left, as citizens of a separate state, will have debarred themselves from doing. This is the reason why those of us who oppose a yes vote claim it is a break in solidarity.
Dr Liam Connell
University of Brighton, England

• Tom Devine (How history turned on Tory-voting Scotland, 16 September) seems to show that while historians are good at analysing the past, they are no better than the rest of us in making political judgments about the present or the future. His account of Scotland’s history since the second world war is interesting, but does not seem to me to support his conclusion that it now makes sense to end the union. The UK is surely at its strongest as a united kingdom, which accounts for its continuing importance in the world today. In the face of the 2008 recession, most particularly in the west, I find it hard to understand why Tom Devine thinks that a relatively tiny country can, let alone should, be insulated from the effects of that recession.

He says that many Scots think the union has outlived its purpose but that does not, I think, justify the breakup of this small island. That would seriously disadvantage all of its inhabitants as we face the increasing globalisation of the world’s economies. Economic wellbeing and social justice are a target for all of us. In my opinion we must tackle it together.
Terry Holmes
Pocklington, East Yorkshire, England

• For a while it looked like this might be different, but sadly tomorrow’s decision seems to be coming back to the usual political choice of whom we distrust the least. We have the “vow” of more powers from Westminster and, from the SNP, indignation that anyone might question the economic viability of the “land of Adam Smith”. Going with what seems a reasonable assumption – that Scotland can be successful either independent or in a federal Britain – we are left with a leap of faith in one direction or the other, based on whose utopian vision of our future is most likely to be untrue.

For Westminster’s part, we have definitely been let down before. Alex Salmond referenced Nick Clegg’s broken promise on tuition fees. The very man who is now asking us to trust him again. But at that time Clegg led the smaller party entering negotiations with a larger party that held the opposite position. Agreement of the three main UK parties is unprecedented in my lifetime.

For Alex Salmond’s part, Alan Greenspan has described his economic forecasts as being “so implausible they should really be dismissed out of hand”. Both are smart men, but which is the more reliable? One, as the retired chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has no obvious reason for bias in the question of Scotland’s independence. The other has dedicated his career to one political moment. Thursday.
Hamish Matheson
Edinburgh, Scotland

• Paul Younger (Letters, 15 September) says: “A yes vote would simply formalise a parting of the ways that was started under Thatcher and perpetuated under Blair.” Exactly right – a yes vote will finish the job for them. That job, the very thing Thatcher set out to accomplish, with the backing of the richest and the most powerful, was the breakup of the British working class as a force for change. Will Scottish voters hand them that prize?

Why can’t we build a better Britain together? The Scots have to ask themselves: what is deficient in ordinary English and Welsh people that makes it impossible to continue this vital struggle with them as allies? Most people south of the border hate the bedroom tax, as they did the poll tax, the Iraq war and the idiotic tuition fees. Can it make sense for the British people to separate into their constituent parts? Our foes won’t make that mistake.
John Rigby
London, England

• The SNP has been in government in Scotland for seven years, in which time it could have transformed governance in Scotland so that come the independence referendum the voters of Scotland would be able to observe their achievements and think what further transformations would be possible if Scotland was fully independent. The outcome of the referendum would then have been a shoo-in. Unfortunately, the SNP missed this opportunity and attempted to rely on flattery to achieve their goal, rather than a bedrock of actual positive achievements. Stay calm. Vote no.
Neil Sinclair
Edinburgh, Scotland

It is no surprise that the big financial guns and corporate bosses are coming out at the 11th hour to try to frighten the Scots people into voting no. They are inevitably worried about what they have to lose if Scotland becomes independent. But they don’t seem to understand that this debate is not just about money. It is about equity and social justice. It is about creating a fairer society for future generations by taking care of its weakest members. Of course finance is important, not for its own sake but in the service of vision and values. Yes, currency matters but life ultimately does not reduce down to pounds and pence, or euros or any other currency.

Successive Westminster governments put the demands of big business and profit ahead of wellbeing every time. The creeping privatisation of the NHS and children’s services, the contracting out of the probation service, the selling off of Royal Mail and so on, have not been in the best interests of society but instead are lining the pockets of corporations, a process that will only be exacerbated by the TTIP negotiations which the government appears to support. Meanwhile Serco and G4S are allowed to continue bidding for public contracts in spite of being under investigation for serious fraud.

So Scotland needs the freedom to find another way. As I understand it, the yes campaign is about Scotland being able to realise the communitarian principles which are embedded in the Scottish psyche by rejecting the neoliberal policy agenda of both main Westminster parties in order to create a better, fairer and more sustainable future. This referendum is not about Alex Salmond and the SNP. They could be voted out in May 2016, two short months after the planned date for achieving independence.

Perhaps the pro-independence camp should give a nod to another small, mountainous, albeit poor, country – Bhutan – which pursues GNH (gross national happiness) rather than GDP. That might help to clarify the difference between the two sides by drawing a clear line between a government in hock to big business and the aspiration to achieve a government by the people, for the people.
Fiona Carnie
Isle of Coll, Argyll, Scotland

• How many members of Labour feel a sense of shame about their part in the referendum debate? They must know deep down that their door-to-door campaigning and transporting of MPs en masse has far more to do with their fear of never winning an election again in the UK than with genuine concerns for the people up here. Yet still they do the bidding of the establishment and the Tories, who could not possibly persuade voters on their own.

I am no nationalist. Maybe that is because I am English and I am not particularly proud of some of my country’s history. Maybe it is also because I don’t believe waving a flag ever did much for anybody. But where I will defend the Scottish Nationalists is on the policies they have introduced since they came to power. It is no coincidence that their majority increased dramatically after they introduced genuine democratic socialist policies, which New Labour could only dream of.

That is the big threat that this referendum poses to the establishment – the setting up of a real alternative to what is going on in Westminster. Is wrangling over Europe, updating nuclear weapons rather than schools and hospitals, and prioritising fracking over investment in renewable energy, the best we can come up with? Why should Scotland vote no this week and then next year wake up to the nightmare of a Tory or Tory/Ukip coalition? Despite what they have been promising, Labour cannot guarantee this won’t happen.

Many in England and Wales want the same vision that much of Scotland has. However, the status quo will not achieve it. The liberation of our different peoples is essential for the flourishing of a new perspective that will prevent us falling into social fragmentation and European isolation.
Peter Strother
Grantown-on-Spey, Inverness-shire, Scotland

• I listened in amazement to a TV contributor explaining how she didn’t want Scotland to leave because as British she felt 40% Scottish and she didn’t want to lose that 40%. Like a lot of other people she just doesn’t get it: we don’t want to be 40% of something or 20% of something or any per cent for that matter, we just want to be Scotland. I know this has come as a great shock to many people, especially Mr Cameron – he does seem a bit like the husband who reacts to his wife saying she is leaving him with “I thought we were great together … you can’t manage on your own … I’m going to stop you using our bank account” and when all else fails “If you leave me now I’ll never let you come back ever, ever”.

Don’t worry, folks, you will get over it – and when you do, we will be very good friends.
Douglas Martyn
Sandilands, Lanark, Scotland

• To choose to stay in a union is as valid an expression of self-determination as voting for independence. So whichever way it goes, I think it is incumbent of everyone in the UK – including Scotland – to respect that decision. I just hope the Scots have the courage to decide their own future. Scotland’s not a region trying to break away from the rest of England. It’s a country that happened to share a common government with England. The time has come to unshackle those political bonds, but even with independence England and Scotland can remain close, just as Sweden and Norway do.
Richard Bartley
Henllan, Denbighshire, Wales

• The historical momentum is with the nationalists. Whether it happens on Thursday or 25 years down the road, independence for Scotland is coming. Once the future has been imagined, it is best to be realistic and strive to achieve that outcome as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Change can be difficult but it can also be invigorating. Not just for Scotland but for England, Wales and Northern Ireland too.

There is nothing to fear in an independent Scotland. Scotland will be one of the wealthiest and most vibrant economies in Europe, with one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world. Ireland, with a similar population, ranks 17th or 18th in GDP per capita (higher than the UK) and we don’t even have any oil.

So, will there be another 10 or 20 years of frustrating procrastination while the reactionary naysayers dwindle and eventually concede defeat, or will the people of Scotland take their destiny into their own hands and embrace the future with courage and confidence and create a fairer, wealthier, more democratic state that will be an inspiration to the rest of the world?
Tom Gelletlie
Rathnew, County Wicklow, Ireland

• I know I’m only 72 and three-quarters but I’ve never looked forward to something so much in all my life. Even if Scotland doesn’t vote yes, just getting this far has done irreparable damage to the nonsense world our current constitutional arrangements are built on. Either way it will be the Bullingdon Club’s, and Toryism’s, greatest gift to civilisation. Can’t wait.
John Smith
Sheffield, England

Catherine Shoard compares the film Still Alice to a “Glasgow kiss” (Review, 13 September), describing the emotional effect as “a sucker-punch that smacks sufficiently hard you have trouble breathing”. I hope she is alluding not to a head-butt but to John Barrowman’s cheeky wee snog with a male dancer during the opening performance of the Commonwealth Games, which has led to a revised definition of the term – one that reflects the modern, friendly and tolerant city that Glasgow really is.
Patricia Davies
Lenzie, Dunbartonshire, Scotland

• Whether or not the Scots follow the Queen’s advice and think carefully (Report, 15 September), how can David Cameron say a vote for independence would lead to a permanent split from the UK? Neither he nor Alex Salmond will be in power for ever. What happens in the future will be decided by others and, as Gladstone said in the Reform Bill debate in 1866, “You cannot fight against the future.”
Chris Birch
London, England

• There’s a lot of hand-wringing now in England about “losing Scotland”. Unless there is some major tectonic shift, we will be able to find Scotland in the same place, and people will be able to move up and down freely as before. What we will have lost is the ability to control the day-to-day life of Scots from Westminster.
Jim Pettman
Anglars-Juillac, France

• What would Jesus vote? Surely yes, since he chose Saint Andrew to be an apostle, whereas all the other home nations have made-up patron saints.
Fr Alec Mitchell
Manchester, England

• Is it too late to offer London independence and let the rest of us get on with redesigning the society we’d like to live in?
Jill Wallis
Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire, England

• If Scotland votes for independence, what will be the point of the SNP?
Brian Ronson
Liverpool, England

• If it’s a yes, does that mean we can do away with British Summer Time?
Les Farris
South Petherton, Somerset, England

With a vote so close, in many senses of the word, the historian’s sense of perspective is increasingly being drowned out, even though we are often invoked: we must “learn the lessons of history” or we are “doomed to make the same mistakes again”. Slogans that the vote would mark the “end of Britain” or “the end of the union” provoke anxiety and caution. But Britain existed as a concept and an identity before parliamentary union, and if people wish to continue to identify themselves as British, they will not cease to be so if the inhabitants of Scotland vote to dissolve the parliamentary union of 1707.

The new slogans of this final week of campaigning also cause anxiety, probably because they are contradictory. While warning that the decision is irrevocable, there is now the threat of “neverendum”. Whitehall has made statements on the benefits of stability and permanence that come with union in 1536, 1603, 1653, 1654, 1707, 1801, 1914, 1922, 1937 and 1972. And if Scotland votes yes there will still be a union, but maybe those who live in England, Wales, islands, and six of the 32 counties of Ireland might be encouraged to have a debate about whether union is the most appropriate and workable political model.
Sarah Barber
Department of history, Lancaster University

As the English press has woken up to the possibility of Scotland voting yes this week, there is relatively little coverage of what is happening in Northern Ireland and the implications of a yes vote in Scotland for political stability in Belfast. On 9 September, the Belfast Telegraph carried an article by first minister Peter Robinson where he claims that the institutions agreed in 1998 and refined in the St Andrews agreement are “no longer fit for purpose”.

He is merely confirming what the Northern Ireland electorate has known for several years: devolution has ground to a halt because of the intransigence and mutual dislike of the two extremes of local politics – the DUP and Sinn Féin – who dominate the executive.

A yes vote in Scotland will provide a huge destabilising dimension to a settlement which is already in trouble. Unionists will be very unsettled by the loss of those with whom they feel closest to in the UK, while Sinn Féin will demand a referendum on Irish unity under the terms of the Belfast agreement. Instead of tackling the entrenched segregation of Northern Ireland through the devolved institutions, we could be facing political turbulence on a massive scale.
Professor Emeritus Bob Osborne
University of Ulster

• “If Scotland votes yes, Sinn Fein will call for a new referendum on Northern Ireland’s membership of the UK” (The genie is out of the bottle – we want more power, 12 September) Well, yes, it would certainly be a nice revenge to see the partition of the island of Britain used as a justification for the ending of the partition of the island of Ireland.

What would be interesting would be the inducements Sinn Féin might offer the electorate of the six counties to lure them into union with the Republic. Vote to withdraw from the NHS? Vote to adopt the euro? Vote for centralised rule from Dublin rather than devolved government from Stormont? Vote for union with an economy that offers so many of its young people the opportunity to emigrate?

Martin McGuinness and his fellow Sinn Féiners currently share power at Belfast and cooperate in the government of the six counties; one must wonder if they really are eager to relinquish that power for the pride of seeing the tricolour flying above a redundant Stormont.
Michael Ghirelli
Hillesden, Buckinghamshire

• I can’t work out whether was it to antagonise the yes camp or the no camp that you let Fintan O’Toole loose on your pages (Forget Braveheart, kilts and tribal nationalism, this is about democracy, 13 September).

Any commentator who speaks of “Ireland” (26 counties thereof) gaining “independence” (sic) whole ignoring the fact that almost one million of its citizens are now trapped in a gerrymandered United Kingdom statelet in which they want no part of, nor ever wanted, shouldn’t be pontificating on Scottish independence.

The “toxic bitterness … passed on through generations” that he refers to stemmed exactly from this same partition, the sticking-plaster British solution to the Irish problem of the time, which stored up trouble for generations to come.
Kieran Murphy
Dromintee, County Armagh

• Owen Jones may be right that “whatever Scots decide, the old order is dead” (Comment, 8 September) but there is an interesting omission in his article. Among the constant references to the Scottish, Welsh and English, including the “need for a new constitutional order” involving these three, there is no mention of Northern Ireland.

As you reported earlier this year (Don’t harm no campaign, Ulster loyalists urged, 12 May): “The cross-party Better Together organisation banned the Orange Order from taking part in its official campaign as soon it was set up in 2012 … fearing it would inflame sectarian tensions or polarise voters.” Nor do I imagine would Better Together have welcomed the Orange Order march in Edinburgh on Saturday, which included Loyalist marchers from Northern Ireland.

However, the implications for Northern Ireland are the real issue. Loyalists are very proud of their “Ulster-Scots” heritage. If Scotland leaves the union it can only make the position of the North of Ireland as a part of the rump UK even more untenable.
Declan O’Neill
Oldham

• Recent days have seen the Westminster unionists’ desperate appeal to the Scottish people to reject a yes vote. Their argument appears to be based on a great principle – the idea that the people of small islands should remain united. This sounds good, but only until we look at the country closest to Britain.

The British government partitioned the island of Ireland in the early 1920s and Westminster has ensured the division of that country’s land and people ever since – with Britain’s armed forces being used to enforce this.

So, until we see the parties at Westminster supporting and calling for the unity of the Irish people, we can only believe that the great calls of Cameron, Miliband and Clegg to the Scottish people are just weasel words intended to gull them into accepting the Westminster unionists’ status quo.
Alastair Renwick and John Lloyd
London

• David Trimble said a yes vote in the Scottish referendum would inevitably intensify pressure for a similar vote on Northern Ireland’s future (Ulster warning, 11 September).

Surely the people of Northern Ireland should be given the choice of whether to go with the UK or Scotland. History and geography make Scotland the logical choice. It’s rather strange that this question hasn’t been raised. It might affect Scottish votes. Presumably Mr Trimble means that union with the Republic of Ireland will be an option. How a referendum should accommodate three choices is an interesting question.
John Wilson
London

A yes vote in the Scottish independence referendum would initiate the breakdown of the current UK constitutional settlement, decided on a narrow margin by an electorate of less than 10% of the total.

The arrangement that made this seem appropriate was set up by the leaders of the Scottish Nationalists and the Conservatives. As things stand, initial arrangements for the separation would also be made by negotiations between those two parties, perhaps starting on Friday. Is this, as hoped by Ruari Gordon (A yes vote in Scotland would be good for the rest of the UK, Letters, 15 September), or the constitutional assembly elected by all Britons preferred by Hugh Brogan (Historical messages for the Scots, Letters, 11 September), more likely to lead to an “informed, peaceful, democratic” shakeup or breakup? If the latter, how could such a constitutional assembly be created, outside the reach of existing political parties?

Yes or no is a simple question, but the ideas it suggests are complex, as will be the results of asking it. How do we take the power we need to make a new, equable, constitutional settlement?
Jan Dubé
Peebles

• After a close-run general election, the losing side commonly asserts that, if a couple of thousand voters in a dozen constituencies had voted differently, they would have won. While this may be arithmetically correct, it relies on the highly implausible event that they would have won a dozen seats with a majority of just one vote, while their opponents won no seats narrowly at all.

With 650 or so constituencies, we can confidently expect that narrow majorities are shared fairly evenly across the parties, so that the overall result is generally seen as just. But in the Scottish independence referendum – a single constituency with several million voters – would a yes victory by, say, 20 or so votes really constitute a mandate for separation?

Many clubs place a high threshold – perhaps 75% – for a change to their constitution; plainly that would be too high in the present question, but should not such a momentous change require a comfortable majority, say at least 52%?
John Haigh
Brighton

• The closer we get to the date of the referendum, the more obvious it seems that to base the outcome on a simple majority is just ridiculous. Surely such an irrevocable change to the constitution of the UK should require at least a 60% majority of the voters, and preferably two-thirds. Presumably the UK government agreed to a straight majority because it was confident Scotland would not vote for it. If the yes votes do marginally exceed 50%, I do not think this could be considered a sufficient mandate for such a fundamental change.
Peter Garnham
Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire

• The yes campaign will have to win by more than a percentage point or two if independence is to be justified against the terms of the Edinburgh agreement signed by the UK and Scottish governments in 2012 (Nine legal questions if Scotland votes yes, 11 September). The agreement reads: “The governments are agreed that the referendum should deliver …. a fair test and a decisive expression of the views of the people of Scotland and a result that everyone will respect.”. It is hard to see how victory by a few percentage points would constitute a “decisive expression of views”; nor how it could command the respect of “everyone” in Scotland, let alone the rest of the UK.
Tim Lankester
London

• Practically all the ex-colonies of the British empire with constitutions require three-quarters of votes for any change. Mauritius went through this process recently to remove the obligation to declare one’s “community” in order to be a candidate for a general election. There was and is much sense in this three-quarters requirement: it guarantees stability and preserves acquired rights of those who do not wish for “catwalk” change.

How come that the UK itself can stand to undergo a major constitutional change with only 50%+1 of votes? We call on Britain to apply to itself what it has to so many of our nation. No independence for Scotland without a 75% of votes. (Northern Ireland would have been a better candidate to independence, leading to a possible unification of Ireland.)
Dr Michael Atchia
Past programme director with the United Nations, Mauritius 

• Whichever way the vote goes, Scotland’s future is going to depend on how the winning side behaves immediately afterwards. The losers are going to be worried, fearful and/or heartbroken. If the winning side treats them with compassion, humility and respect, then the divisions and wounds of the referendum campaign will begin to heal. If, however, the winners exhibit triumphalism and smugness, then wounds will become scars, disagreements will become enmities and the country could end up permanently divided. A public “day of celebration” by whichever side wins would therefore be extremely unhelpful – let them celebrate in private, instead of making the day even worse for those who don’t get what they want. Everyone from the leaders to the ordinary people involved in both campaigns needs to bear this in mind.
Dr Richard Milne
Edinburgh

• Whichever way the vote goes on Thursday, Alex Salmond can bask in the glory of his achieving the acrimonious splitting of the Scottish people. If the result is yes, he will also have earned the animosity of the other residents of the UK who were given no opportunity to participate in a decision that affects all of us. I hope he feels proud.
Sam Sexton
Kenilworth, Warwickshire

• George Monbiot (Comment, 9 September) paints a sunny picture of a nation united in the struggle to free itself from foreign domination, ready to emerge on to the level playing fields of independence. Isn’t it more likely that, as in the case of so many liberated nations, from Ireland to Ukraine, once independence has been won, divisions in Scottish society will re-emerge as Scotland becomes a battleground for rival factions struggling for power and influence?
Hugh Closs
London

Your feature answering the key questions raised by the prospect of Scottish independence (What a carve-up! From politics to sport, oil to national debt, how the split could work (10 September) leaves out an issue which many of us consider extremely important: culture. There is constant, fruitful cultural collaboration between the four nations of the UK, including touring across borders, funding and sponsorship, co-production and shared educational initiatives. The article mentions the BBC, but as the BBC Proms 2014 season ended many of us were asking whether the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will still be around in a couple of years, and whether the participation of an independent Scotland in this great national music festival had yet been considered.

Scotland may be able eventually to join the EU as an individual nation, but in the meantime will it still be able to draw on EU funding for cultural projects – and, indeed, for educational purposes? Even a short hiatus could be deeply damaging.

The Edinburgh festivals receive funding not only from Scottish sources but also from the BBC, VisitBritain and Arts Council England. Will, and indeed should, this funding cease in the event of independence? The Edinburgh fringe may well remain a mecca for arts companies from all over the UK, but the funding and resources that individual national arts councils currently put into this annual cultural hotbed may be thrown into question.

I think it very likely that artists north and south of the border will strain every sinew to keep cultural relationships strong and thriving, but I fear that the upheaval of moving towards independence for Scotland may unintentionally break or damage a great many cultural links and ties.
Catherine Rose
Olney, Buckinghamshire

• The debate on the Scottish referendum has been littered with the panegyrics to the union from the Westminster-based politicians. Yet what has the union done for the cultural life of Scotland and its heritage?

From my experience the union has stunted the cultural life of the country. Linguistically, Gaelic has been brought to the point of extinction, Doric and Scots have been sidelined for years. Scotland remains the only country not to teach its own children its history, and the built heritage has been neglected, bulldozed or shunned by politicians fearing anything that might be construed as “too nationalistic”. During my time on the Ancient Monuments Board, the struggle to secure the protection of Scotland’s battlefields was a case in point, as time and again the political masters of the British parties sought to block moves that might be too Scottish.

In conclusion, if you believe in the cultural life of Scotland unhindered and a heritage truly protected and nurtured for future generations, then there can be only way to vote.
Dr Scott Peake
Director, The Saltire Society, 1998-99; member, Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland, 1996-2000

• Claire Enders (What would a Scottish yes mean for democracy, 14 September) claims that “Scotland simply isn’t big enough to support strong independent media”.

She suggests the substitution of a Scottish Broadcasting Service for the BBC in Scotland would reduce media plurality. However, since 1957 Scotland has had an independent commercial station, STV, with a vibrant news and current affairs output, which would continue to offer strong competition to any licence-fee/state-funded broadcaster. Not since the 1980s has Channel 4 had any Scottish current affairs or political output, so the level of plurality would remain unchanged.

She suggests Scotland could not secure a free-to-air deal with the BBC. The licence fee (or post-independence equivalent) in Scotland raises £300m; the pro-rata share of network BBC television is £75m, while BBC Scotland costs £86m. Even if the BBC secured £100m for supplying its services to Scotland (considerably more than Ireland currently pays for the same privilege), that would still leave £200m to fund SBS, radio and online services.

After independence the Scottish parliament and whichever government the people of Scotland elect would shape Scotland’s media regulation. Holyrood, elected on a proportional representation basis, and with much greater cross-party pre–legislative scrutiny, is considerably more democratic than Westminster.

The biggest threat to democracy in broadcasting posed by independence has been the BBC reverting to the kind of suspension of impartiality that we last saw during the General Strike of 1926.
Professor Robin MacPherson
Edinburgh Napier University

• Tara Conlan’s article (Independent Scotland faces doubling of BBC licence fee, 12 September) chimes very closely with my own knowledge and experience. I was BBC controller Scotland from 1982 to 1992. While the sums involved now are different, the relativities will be unchanged. In my time the licence fee income from Scottish viewers pretty well equated to the sum required to run the radio and television services for Scotland. In effect the BBC centrally provided network programmes for Scotland at nil cost. The same is true of Wales and Northern Ireland.

To provide the programmes which Scots currently enjoy from London and other parts of the UK would require the successor body to purchase broadcast rights and content. The cost of such provision could, as suggested, double the licence fee for Scots.

If a BBC paper was drawn up three years ago, I am disappointed that it has not been published. As Burns said , “facts are chiels that winna ding”.
Patrick Chalmers
Bibury, Gloucestershire

Let countries fix themselves

Is US foreign policy “principled realism or failed isolationism?” writes Dan Roberts (5 September). Indeed, this debate has merit: many argue that Obama has used hard power too much, such as with his drone programme, resulting in many innocent deaths. Others argue he is too soft, on Vladimir Putin and others, resulting on lines being crossed. It seems Obama can’t win, as he is criticised heavily either way.

However, I would argue Obama is soft or softer than George Bush. This is what many Americans and people the world over have wanted to see for many a decade: for there to be more time and thought given before intervening. This is what Obama and his associates are doing. He knows complete western intervention will not solve any problem in the Middle East, neither is the Islamic State his problem; sectarian infighting has existed since Islam’s inception.

What is needed is less US intervention and for countries to sort out their own problems, perhaps with a helping hand from the west. This is no failed isolationism, or it is at least too early to call it that.
Daniel Pearson
Perth, Western Australia

Growth is not the answer

In your editorial about the EU (5 September) you state that “nothing matters more … than the crying need for a stronger growth strategy”. Are you kidding me? How can you publish all your thoughtful articles by writers like George Monbiot and yet still tout this nonsense in your main editorial? As we all know, indefinite growth in a finite world is impossible; in the short term, in today’s crowded world, one person’s gain can only be another’s loss.

Europe started the modern world and its greatest challenge now is the responsibility to lead us out of it. Europe is wealthy and its population is relatively stable, so there is no need for growth. What we have is all we’ve got and we have to learn to live with it. The “crying need” is to show how to expand, not upwards but sideways – sharing what we have equitably, both globally and nationally, so that poverty and unemployment are reduced. If you don’t say it, who will?
David Trubridge
Havelock North, New Zealand

Will the wars ever end?

Why are there so many wars? My compatriot Annie March (Reply, 15 August) is correct. Further to her comments, “For every dollar spent on United Nations peace-keeping, $2,000 is expended for war-making by member nations … Four of the five members of the United Nations security council, which has veto power over all United Nations resolutions, are the top weapons dealers in the world: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia” (Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the largest social movement in history is restoring grace, justice and beauty in the world) .

So how can wars ever end? It would seem to be impossible. But we have to keep trying, by wielding our pens and demonstrating, and all of us maintaining our own little oases of peace in our daily lives. It doesn’t seem much and we don’t have much money for our cause but what’s the alternative?
Penny Hanley
Canberra, Australia

Solution for India’s women

I do not understand the problem outlined in your article, Lethal risks in India’s sanitation battle (5  September). You report that millions of Indian women have to wait all day to relieve themselves so that they can go out in the fields at night, braving monsoon rains, wild animals and an occasional rape. All the blame seems to be levelled at the Indian government, but what are the Indian people doing individually to solve the problem?

I was born in a small village in North Dakota. We had an outhouse: a small wooden building over a hole in the ground. All the farms in the area did the same thing. No one had to wait to relieve themselves in the fields at night. So why don’t the Indian people build an outhouse when they build a house as a matter of course, instead of suffering while waiting for the government or some charitable organisation to do something?
Jon C McKenzie
Fairfax, Virginia, US

The wonder of books

Rachel Cooke’s article about Phyllis Rose hit the mark (22 August). I grew up in a household with no bookshelves to explore, no stirring dinner table discussions, and in our neighbourhood, no libraries that I knew of.

When I went to high school, I discovered a library. At first I was selective. But then I decided to just go along the shelf and take whatever book was next. My world suddenly changed. I read about other countries; I read books about nature and other areas of science. But most of all, I discovered creative writers who connected me to their imaginary world, and this was a eureka moment. I found that my imagination had its fellow in those who wrote the novels I took home. I had discovered a place where I might belong.

I had not thought about another “hoovering” exercise at my age. Maybe I could consider a trip to another library, and try books that I otherwise would bypass. Who knows what I may discover this time? And what that may do to my own writing. And to my perception of the world.
Lavinia Moore
Aldgate, South Australia

Resting is a good thing

Like Stuart Heritage (29 August), I’m dedicated to siestas, and organise my days around an hour’s rest at noon, and a 20-minute endocrine recharge before tea. The odd one out in a family with boundless energy and nerves of steel, I can’t remember ever not being more or less tired. I’d always grudged, resisted, felt guilty about resting, until an epiphany during a conversation with an ex-athlete crippled by chronic fatigue. We were shocked by the realisation that in heroically, habitually forcing ourselves to override tiredness and instinctual wisdom, we were in fact enacting on our bodies the self-same abuse that humankind is inflicting on the planet; and that entrenched in our psyches was a template not just of violation and power misused, but of the body-mind dualism that so corrupts our religious traditions. Can our bodies, can earth forgive us?

Resting is an act of moral, political, ecological, spiritual and creative defiance and sanity.
Annie March
West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

City of dreams

The good news for Paul Mason (5 September) and his 10 criteria for the perfect city is that it already exists as Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. The bad news is that if he wants to join in, he’d better get a move on because it’s under attack from the usual quarter – the multinational property developing financial and commercial monster that swallows up all good things.
Tony Simpson
Wellington, New Zealand

• I read Paul Mason’s criteria, and was amazed that he did not realise he was describing Vancouver. Near the sea: yes. Hipster neighbourhoods: yes. Finance sector big enough: yes. Theatre: yes. Bicycle lanes: yes. Hangouts of various orientations: yes. Concerned with heritage: yes. Hospitable to women: yes (mostly). Hopeful slums: yes. Loud political culture: yes.
Donald Grayston
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Solving the Scottish problem

As an American living high in the inland mountains of the western US, I am far removed from the political turmoils of Scotland and England. Yet, perhaps because of that very objectivity, I believe I have a good solution to your problems.

Somewhere in Scotland there is likely to be a presentable Stuart duke, hopefully with a few good stalwart sons, who could replace the Windsors at Buckingham Palace. I recommend to my British friends that you usher the Windsors into an honourable retirement and end their long and arduous duties as royals. Bring back the Stuarts: that way the Scots cannot complain, and by all means invite Elizabeth II to replace Maggie Smith on Downton Abbey, where I feel she would be a huge success. I call it representation without taxation.
Jim Van Sant
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Briefly

• The Queen may have inherited wealth and position, but not power (22 August). While the sovereign remains head of the legislature, of the judiciary and of the military, no one else with power can combine these roles. And while all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely and should be accorded to no one, especially one who would then also wave flags.
Adrian Betham
London, UK

• In my experience the reason teenagers need to sleep in late (5 September) has less to do with their neurological development and much more to do with electronic devices in their bedrooms.
Nicholas Houghton
Folkestone, UK

Even if Scotland votes “no” on Thursday, Britain has another conundrum to answer

Sir, You are right to endorse the answer to the West Lothian question (“Wild West”, leading article, Sept 15) proposed by John Redwood (who, contrary to your assertion, has often called big issues right, such as the disastrous European exchange rate mechanism).

The idea of “English votes for English laws” was the basis for the 2010 Conservative manifesto commitment to set up what become the Mackay Commission in 2012. Devo-max makes implementation of its key principle even more urgent, namely that “decisions at the United Kingdom level with a separate and distinct effect for England (or for England and Wales) should normally be taken only with the consent of a majority of MPs for constituencies in England (or England and Wales)”. This can be given effect by resolution of the House of Commons, rather than by legislation, and would give the English an effective parliament.

There would, however, be consequences for Whitehall. We could never have a Scottish UK chancellor setting English taxes in England at the annual budget but not in his or her own constituency. So Parliament will have to consider how to establish an English executive, with an English first minister and finance minister, along with England-only departments for matters such as health, education and local government, made accountable to English MPs alone.

This does not preclude enhanced functions for counties and cities (rather than for artificial regions), but that would be a matter for the new English executive.

Bernard Jenkin, MP
Chairman, Public Administration Select Committee

Sir, You say in your leader that the best answer for the Union and its nations in the event of a “no” vote in Scotland is not clear. It seems to me to be obvious. If the Scots get devo-max, historically known as home rule, then England and Wales must have the same (Northern Ireland already has own its unique version). That means an English parliament.

This need not be a costly and cumbersome solution because, as has been pointed out by others, English MPs could divide their time between the English parliament and the UK parliament, and could share the Palace of Westminster. The only extra cost would be the setting up of an office for the English first minister to whom the devolved English departments would report. It could also be enacted by the coalition government before the next election, thus being up and running next June.

Any other solution — grand committees or stronger regions — are just fiddling at the edges and would eventually collapse under pressure, as the present arrangements have done.

Lord Horam
House of Lords

Sir, Equitably solving the conundrum which would be posed by the introduction of devo-max and the ramifications of the West Lothian question might prove difficult. Matters apparently of only English relevance could, nevertheless, have indirect implications for other regions. Issues might also come before parliament that were not within the purview of devo-max assemblies but which did not affect England. In that case, presumably only MPs from Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland would be able to debate and vote on them?

Without the benefit of relevant precedents to be drawn upon in Erskine May, the task of future Speakers and Clerks to the House does not seem enviable.

Gerry Jackson
Nether Poppleton, N Yorks

Sir, The alarming fall in the value of sterling (report, Sept 13) has been accompanied by many clear reports on the financial damage that a “yes” vote would bring to Scotland. Without seceding, however, the case for the devolution of Westminster’s power is strong.

The best example of devolution comes from the United States, where individual states can accept the policy decisions of central government while retaining a freedom of action that is the envy of countries in the European Union.

If the United Kingdom could follow America’s devolution policy, it would not only preserve a vital relationship with Scotland but would serve to remind the EU of its commitment to “subsidiarity”.

Professor Maurice Lessof
London N1

Sir, How can Will Hodgkinson omit Madonna’s Jean-Paul Gaultier-designed conical bra outfit from his “10 fashion statements that changed pop music”? (Times 2, Sept 16).
Nicholas Bostin
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbys

Sir, China will welcome, as Leo Lewis confirms (Sept 16), an independent Scotland as it welcomes all new small nations — with the construction of a vast new embassy. From these the Chinese expand their military and political influence. What a chance for China and indeed the Russians to sit athwart Nato’s communications and bases and preside over the emasculation of the UK’s Trident nuclear defence system base in Scotland. One trusts the Scottish people will weigh the emotional attraction of separation from Westminster against the proven practices of the communist powers when new nationhood is available for their exploitation. There will be no way back.

Sir Kenneth Warren
Cranbrook, Kent

Sir, Ian Ward’s claim that the strengthening of Scottish independence was caused by the Tories and the poll tax does not in its own right stand up to electoral scrutiny (letters, Sept 11). The SNP only re-emerged on the parliamentary scene in 1987, winning just three seats from the Conservatives, and were still stuck at three seats in 1992, four years after the introduction of the community charge. If the impact of the poll tax was so strategic, the Conservatives would never have held all the nine Scottish seats they were defending in 1992 or go on to gain Aberdeen South from Labour and take back their by-election loss in Kincardine. It is worth comparing that result to 1987 when the Conservatives lost nine of their Scottish seats and a tenth at a by-election. Poll tax was not even mentioned.

Neil Pearce
London E16

Sir, Professor Martin West (letters, Sept 15) makes valid points on the origins of the geographical term Great Britain. However, his suggestion on the name of a successor state should Scotland secede is inelegant. Far simpler would be changing the “of” in the current title to “in”. The United Kingdom in Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be geographically correct as neither component would encompass the whole of Britain or Ulster but would compose the larger part of each territory. Moreover, the Union Flag should be retained in its current form as it represents our country being a mixture of peoples.

James Dawson
London N11

Sir, Ben Macintyre’s article on William Wallace (Sept 11) struck a chord. Much has been made during the referendum debate of Scottish history and culture, including several references to Braveheart. That is all very well, but during the past seven years the Scottish government has invested absolutely nothing in preserving the original medieval remains in Lanark relating to Wallace’s era. These are St Kentigern’s Church and Lanark Castle.

Ed Archer
Lanark

Sir, Those of us who have been watching the Invictus Games and Last Night of The Proms must be asking what is it that Scotland does not like about being part of the UK. The unpleasant and sometimes suspect attitudes and actions from the independence movement’s so-called debate leaves me somewhat ashamed to call myself a Scot.

Andrew Irwin
Yeovil, Somerset

Sir, Is there a conspiracy to keep quiet those English who want to see Scotland leave the UK? Or could it be that I am the only Englishman who has that aspiration? The West Lothian question will return with a vengeance unless Scotland votes yes.

John M Bostock
Paddock, W Yorks

Sir, As an expat Scot, I shall be making my mark for Scotland and the Union on Referendum Day by riding my motorcycle from Land’s End to John o’Groats. Of course, with all the hazards and uncertainties along the road I may never reach my intended destination — rather like voting in a flawed referendum where the only choice is between two bum steers. And yes, I shall be taking my passport.

Pete Evans
Wisborough Green, W Sussex

Sir, I listened in amazement as one contributor on Sky News explained how she didn’t want Scotland to leave the Union because she was British and felt 40 per cent Scottish — and she didn’t want to lose that 40 per cent. Like a lot of other people she just doesn’t get it: we don’t want to be 40 per cent of something or 20 per cent of something or any percentage for that matter . . . we just want to be Scotland. Don’t worry, folks, you will get over it and when you do, we will be very good friends.

Douglas Martyn
Sandilands, Lanark

Sir, If, and I hope it is not the case, the referendum returns a “Yes” vote, we must not erect a “tartan curtain”. What will be required is for men and women of goodwill on both sides to negotiate the best deals and compromises. If that means using the pound or letting Trident remain, so be it. Both nations must maintain the bonds and friendship which currently exist.

John Crook
Brookwood, Surrey

Sir, How unfortunate it is that, so far, neither party seems prepared to look beyond the arithmetical result — “one vote is enough”, presumably, after a recount. When the result is announced, the time for statesmanship will begin. Let us hope that both parties will rise to the challenge.

Sir Anthony Evans
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2

Sir, The Yes campaign is built on “civic” nationalism and there has been no talk of sacrifice, just a plethora of uncosted giveaways and some inane warbling about “Scottish values”. It is Yes voters who will be devastated in the aftermath of a Yes victory — No voters have few illusions, will transfer their assets south and follow them if the new statelet hits the wall.

Rev Dr John Cameron
St Andrews, Fife

Sir, Can the time-expired phrases “too close to call” and “go down to the wire” be despatched to a fiery grave after the current hostilities?

Robert Aspinall
Christchurch, Dorset

Related Articles

• Salmond makes last-ditch plea: ‘This vote isn’t about me’

  17 Sep 2014

• Diesel bribes are not the answer

  16 Sep 2014

• Alex Salmond attacks Cameron, Miliband and Clegg powers ‘vow’

  16 Sep 2014