WILLIAM Marshall may have had something when he suggested that voting against the status quo is not enough to motivate people to vote for indy (Letters, Jul 16).

However, isn’t it remarkable that the deplorable and oppressive policies of the Tory government appear not to be the convincer, nor the potentially incoming Labour alternative that only promises more of the same and is completely bereft of any attractive vision for our future?

Why are we failing to get the message across? Why are our MSPs not making the argument that our limitations are political and fiscal restrictions placed on us by Westminster control?

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Why are our MPs not vociferously driving home the message to Westminster that its external control is no longer acceptable? It’s failing and we don’t accept it, and that denying us our democratic right to self-determination? Indy can’t be given, or “won” – it can only be retaken by calling the UK out internationally for denying democracy.

For example, telling us that our NHS performs better than the English version serves no purpose other than to allow some to think “well that’s all right then”. How can it be right for us to accept standards just higher than those of the English, when we should be demanding at the very least the higher standards available in most other Western economies?

Shouldn’t we be looking at those higher service levels and demonstrating how that’s what we deserve and only indy can deliver and – as William Marshall suggests – show how it will deliver on them?

For me what is missing is the sense of identity that we’ve long claimed to have had, such as is evident in Catalonia – a common purpose because we’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns, we’re different to the rest of the UK through our collective society sense of Scottish identity.

It’s that sense of identity that the anti-democracy, feudalistic monarchic system imposed on us works to reduce us to Stepford Wives-like subservience, acceptance and unquestioning adherence to it. Let’s not forget how the unwarranted (hugely expensive) procession of monarchy, the fluttering of the Union flag on everything from our food to our town halls, and the Unionist political bias of most of the media saps the will and Scottish identity of many people, whose attention is already distracted by our Tory-ravaged economy and struggling to just get through life, and to a point where even this fractured Union status quo seems too much of a challenge to contest.

There are many who see anything happening beyond their own front door and family hinterland as too onerous to get involved with – it’s easier to just ignore it.

And that’s what we need to cut through. We need to drive home the problems, and the imperative to deal with them, if not for just our own sake but for the legacy we leave our descendants.

It’s not enough to work to leave the cleanest planet for them to live in, don’t we also need to create the best political and economic background for them to thrive in, for the legacy they in turn will leave?

And isn’t that an independent Scotland for all who live here?
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

UNELECTED Lords and Ladies using so-called Henry VIII laws – could I mention Article XXV of the Act of Union between England and Scotland (1707) Article XXV.

It states: “All Laws and Statutes in either Kingdom, so far as they are contrary to, or inconsistent with the terms of these Articles, or any of them, shall, from and after the Union, cease and become void, and shall be so declared to be, by the respective Parliaments of the said Kingdom.”

Surely raking up Henry VIII powers from a previous, distant time, before any Union, can only be called void and invalid?
Richard Easson
Dornoch