Today's letters

I noticed a couple of interesting letters in The Scotsman today. First, there's one from Falkirk objectivist, Bruce Crichton, who continues to correct the errors of John Rogerson, an advocate of environmentalism:

Government subsidies to business, far from being a free gift to the economy, are a massive expropriation of wealth which is redistributed from firms which make profits to those who make losses. These subsidies save jobs only at the expense of destroying jobs elsewhere in the economy. The same is true of protective tariffs which damage imports and exports.

Then, there is this one from David Stevenson. Confusingly, he refers to a previous letter from another David Stevenson, but I believe that today's writer is the David Stevenson who is well known as an SNP activist and former candidate for Brussels and Westminster.

Stevenson writes:

There may well be good reasons to wish for Scotland to be independent outwith the EU rather than "independent in Europe". I should be glad to see a well-informed debate, followed by a multi-option referendum, to test public opinion on this.

The fisheries debacle has almost persuaded me to favour the "outwith" option, although I believe most of the fault over fisheries lies with the British establishment, and its Scottish allies, rather than with the EU.

This is the second time in a few weeks that I have noticed that members of the Nationalist party are moving towards a more sceptical position vis-a-vis the EU. Good.