SPROUTING around us daily are academics, think-tanks, and a variety of institutes warning us of the cost of independence. Such concern for us ordinary people! Very touching!

But I wonder where they were when Margaret Thatcher came to power. I don't remember them warning that we would lose our car industry, coal industry, steel and aluminium industries, and shipbuilding industry, nor that our country would be reduced to a desert, industrially speaking.

Morag McKinlay,

36a Weir Street, Falkirk. April 27.

P W AGNEW's letter (April 20) gets near to the reason for the relative poverty of the UK. Sir Alastair Morton has stated, about the financing of the Channel Tunnel, that we do not know how to provide the necessary capital for such projects, which, in 30 years, may well be yielding handsome returns but which, for the short-term lender, have little to commend them.

Wealth creation requires adequate capital, borrowed for a long term at affordable rates. Unfortunately, this the UK money market seems unable to provide. How then do the Swiss, despite their gnomes, and the Scandinavians manage so much better?

Mr Agnew is quite right - call centres do not create wealth; like all service-industry jobs they are the icing on the cake. Our cake is far too small. No-one in this over-hyped election campaign seems to have grasped that their wish-lists will remain thus unless the UK, and in particular the Scottish, gross national product is substantially enlarged.

Instead of seeing the best brains go into the ''professions'' and finance, we have to create a climate which will induce them into wealth-creating industries, not as accountants but as engineers and production managers, the creators not the administrators. We are not deploying our brains and capital with a proper regard for the future of the nation - this is and always has been the nub of the British disease.

Much play is made with the importance of the small business and the entrepreneurial spirit. If such businesses are to flourish and grow, the UK financial world must take a very different attitude to funding them. The ''fast-buck yuppie'' creates no wealth - he eats the cake, making it smaller, not larger.

George A Davidson,

Redcroft, Prieston Road, Bridge of Weir.

April 22.

I WAS ready to vote SNP until about three years ago, when I first noticed a startling untruth being uttered. Roseanna Cunningham said: ''Michael Forsyth has done nothing for jobs in Scotland.''

This will have got roars of approval from

committed SNP supporters and that in turn will have nourished the MP's ego, but to me it was just an irritating manoeuvre to claim possession of the question while possessing absolutely

no answer.

It is the most important question. Patriotism consists in employing Scotland's school-leavers, not in crawling to film-stars. The campaign fliers I have received from the SNP simply blame New Labour for every job loss in Scotland and claim without explanation that an SNP administration can change all that. How? And by the way, adults don't worship celebrities. Airheads do.

Tim Cox,

34 Dunbar Road, North Berwick. April 27.

ON May 6, voters in Scotland will be voting for the first Parliament (of sorts) in 300 years. Economic scaremongering can never win the hearts and minds of people in Scotland.

''Divorce is expensive'', but is well worth the cost. Ask Robin Cook, who says he has never been so happy! Voters will have the chance to begin the process whereby, as Mahatma Gandhi said of India, ''the country will have the right to make its own decisions, right or wrong''.

Tremendous energy and vitality will be released throughout industrial and business communities and there will be a resurgence of spirit released in our ancient nation.

Patricia Cockburn,

The Birches, College Road, Methven, Perth.

April 27.

IN the current debate over the financial viability of Scottish independence, has due account been taken of Scotland's liability for part of the British National Debt? At the time of the Union of 1707 Scotland was actually paid a cash sum, the ''equivalent'', as compensation for undertaking a share of this liability. Scotland cannot simply walk out of the Union without accepting responsibility for this commitment.

Peter D G Thomas

(Emeritus Professor of History, University of

Wales; former Lecturer in History, University

of Glasgow), 16 Penygraig, Aberystwyth.

April 25.

I THANK Mr Maughan for his comments today on my proposition, which, I emphasise again, represents my own ideas.

This correspondence began with my letter of disgust at Labour's election broadcast in which, among other things, it was claimed that Scotland would need to order new battleships! It also contained nonsense about the extra costs of embassies and, if I remember correctly, the costs of tax and benefit offices. The last may have been introduced by Mr Maughan.

Mr Maughan asked the SNP to provide the precise costs of the various services and accused the SNP of lacking principles. I replied that those costs could not properly be evaluated until full information was provided. The Westminster and Whitehall machines are notoriously reluctant to divulge any information. The Labour Government has made no progress towards the freedom of information that was ITS declared aim at the last election. Such principles!

My last letter, admittedly deliberately contentious, proposed that because of Scotland's part ownership of UK assets, start-up costs would be approximately, I repeat approximately, zero and the running costs could be, approximately again, as they are at present or even negative.

Mr Maughan has a valid point in that, on a unit cost basis only, then a smaller Scottish defence force could be more expensive and that running two houses instead of one is more expensive. The last analogy applies only if the two houses are of the same standard as before and if the same services are used.

The Scottish defence force does not need, since an independent Scotland would have no pretensions to being a world power, to be on the same scale as the UK armed forces. The Scottish force would be set up on a scale suitable for Scotland, that is, smaller, therefore the total costs would be smaller. For example, it would not incur the costs of the Trident system.

Mr Maughan has had to become a nitpicker in this discussion. However, in the case of the distribution of assets, let us hope that Mr Maughan, being a patriotic Scotsman, would insist on a fair deal being made for Scotland, when the time comes.

I note that Mr Maughan has conceded, by dropping the subject, the case I made for the zero cost of tax and benefit offices. Likewise, Labour's scare about embassies seems to

have vanished.

John Scott Roy,

19 Blenheim Court, Kilsyth. April 28.