RESPONDING to Charlie Kerr’s letter yesterday. It is not a case of Nicola Sturgeon “kicking the can down the road”. We are all impatient for the day of independence, but that impatience does not deliver it. The point of waiting for a foreseeable optimum time is to make sure that when the time comes, we win.

There are some who forget that it is not the vote of the activists that will deliver independence but the support of those who are yet to be convinced of the merits of the case. Sadly there are too many of these to be certain of a victory as yet, and while the pandemic still rages there are other more urgent immediate issues to deal with.

READ MORE: It’s not rhetoric we need, but details of what independence will look like

Yes, independence would help us recover from this, but we still need a large enough majority of our fellow citizens to agree. We should also recognise that there is a commitment to hold a referendum within a reasonable timeframe, and the collaborative parliamentary majority provides the political means. The arch activists should focus on helping us and our leaders to seed the ground for that, rather than continuing to publicly sow dissention in our independence ranks.

Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire