LSE indy report is lacking credibility - your views

Keep waving the Union flag, Ian

Ian Murray (News, February 4) cites an LSE study by two London PhD students claiming independence would cost two-three times more than Brexit.

First, the study’s provenance is dodgy. The student authors thank Jim Gallagher, the economic advisor to the 2014 Better Together Campaign and a unionist, for his input.

The LSE Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) is hardly impartial, but is nakedly pro-market, funded by government and private grants, and is overseen by Sir Nicholas Macpherson, former UK Treasury boss in 2014.

Second, the methodology doesn’t stand up to academic scrutiny.

The students make up data and use a 15-30 forecast horizon knowing that long-term economic forecasts are unreliable, since recovering from the effects of the global pandemic will take a decade.

They look only at trade and assume a loss for Scotland. It is not credible that of all nations, rUK would refuse to trade with us, especially since the Tories have claimed they want free trade with everyone.

The students ignore the economic levers Scotland will have to create tax and spending policies to grow the economy.

Third, Ian should know that Scotland’s economic growth has been half that of similarly sized EU nations.

As a UK region, our state pension is the lowest in the OECD and poverty and income inequality are endemic thanks to Tory, not SNP, austerity policies.

The UN rapporteur praised the Scottish government for mitigating the worst aspects of Tory austerity.

I’m sure Ian endorses Sir Keir Starmer’s solution to the problems facing the Union, foremost of which is to wave the Union flag more vigorously.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Merchiston Crescent, Edinburgh

LSE indy report is lacking credibility

Ian Murray is indulging in scaremongering and has obviously not read the report on trade costs from the UK government funded Centre for Economic Performance, at the LSE, that produced a stream of reports hostile to independence during the 2014 referendum campaign.

The report has been rubbished by many economists for its poor methodology and lack of reliable data, not least by Richard Murphy, an economic adviser to Labour prior to the last general election, who said that he couldn’t take the report seriously as it was based on unsubstantiated data and absurd assumptions.

The researchers ignore any tax changes designed to boost exports or any investment after independence. This is virtually to rig the calculations. No wonder the principal author confessed to Martin Geissler on BBC Scotland Nine that the report should be “taken with a pinch of salt”.

Mary Thomas, Watson Crescent, Edinburgh.

Forty years after end of gay oppression

It is worth noting that this week marks only 40 years since homosexuality between men was decriminalised in Scotland.

Thanks to furious opposition from the Church of Scotland and other religious groups, this was 14 years after The Wolfenden Report of 1958 precipitated a change in the law in England and Wales in 1967.

How many Scottish gay men lost their youths in fear and loneliness during these years? February 1981 seems shockingly recent.. Even then, the age of consent was 21. Scotland now proudly boasts some of the more enlightened views of any country, but now as then, there are religious attitudes fighting progress.

Neil Barber, Edinburgh Secular Society, Saughtonhall Drive