IT IS disappointing to see (January 26) Jim Fairlie promote consistently his narrow Nationalist message, now well past its sell-by date. For an independent Scotland to retain sterling until entry into the euro is achieved is hardly without precedent. Luxembourg was in monetary union with Belgium in Benelux and then joined the euro. Ireland and Australia retained sterling for approximately 10 years following their independence.

It is a nonsense, as Mr Fairlie continues to argue, that independence is lost by joining the euro, and an independent Scotland would have no say on control of monetary policy. With a representative on the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, Scotland would have the same influence as every other state in the eurozone in setting interest rates, a situation we do not currently enjoy with the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. Mr Fairlie's logic would lead us to believe that nations such as Ireland, Finland and Austria are no longer independent states, a scarcely credible argument.

Scotland will benefit from membership of the eurozone, affording lower interest rates, lower inflation and greater exchange rate stability, providing a far better economic environment than we currently enjoy.

Alex Orr, 35 Bryson Road, Edinburgh

Bristow Muldoon's latest letter (January 26) contains an inherent contradiction. He asks if an independent Scotland "would have to undertake the highly risky gamble of launching a separate Scottish currency that would be used by none of our trading partners". He then goes on to berate the SNP's policy for keeping the pound sterling in an independent Scotland: "It is, frankly, incredible that a central plank of the SNP economic policy is that it would continue to use sterling even after separation from the rest of the UK." If he believes that creating a separate currency would be such a high-risk gamble surely he must accept that retaining sterling is the sensible thing to do?

The SNP's policy for retaining sterling after independence from the UK is in line with historical precedent. In 1901, when Australia established its own constitution, it stayed with sterling until 1910, when it established the Australian pound. Similarly, Ireland kept sterling for the first six years of its independence, before replacing it with the punt.

Any future government in a sovereign Scotland could decide to change the currency, either by floating a Scottish pound or entering the euro, if it thought such a change would be beneficial to the Scottish economy. As would be the case if Gordon Brown lost a UK referendum on the euro, a similar result from a euro referendum in an independent Scotland would mean that the status quo would prevail. I don't see why Bristow is trying to make such a meal out of this; it is only common sense.

Alex Neil, MSP, The Scottish Parliament

In your attribution of comments about the discussion paper that I and a colleague produced for the Scottish Council for Development and Industry entitled Scotland's Economy - The Fiscal Debate, an unfortunate conflation between two quite separate points discussed at the launch conference has occurred.

In our paper we floated the idea of creating a UK body similar to the Australian Grants Commission which would be responsible - as that commission is - for advising on inter-state fiscal transfers according, inter alia, to an objective and generally accepted "needs-based" assessment. It would succeed the Barnett formula, and an accompanying requirement would be for a methodology to be determined which established acceptable UK-wide criteria of "needs" on the appropriate territorial basis.

For that reason, we proposed that the composition of that new body should be distinct from government, though supported by it. It was that putative body to which I was referring in my comments on "international experts without partisan attachments". But you linked that quote to a separate discussion on the Gers statistical exercise, which plays only a supporting role in our discussion paper.

I was not asserting that the Gers exercise was subject to political interference, or that the exercise requires independent scrutiny. It is, of course, conducted by entirely impartial statisticians using the best estimation techniques available.

Drew Scott, Professor of European Union Studies, University of Edinburgh