Further to Kate Devlin's article on the Scottish budget veto, the amount of ignorance on the subject of national fiscal and monetary matters – extending right up to the top level of the UK Government – is quite staggering ("Scots budget veto threat to Bank of England plan", The Herald, January 28).

On the subject of currency and central banks firstly, Hong Kong has never had a central bank and their private banks – which are well capitalised because there is no HK lender of last resort – clear bank credit "real time", and issue bank notes. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority maintains monetary stability with a peg to the US dollar and a currency board backed by substantial assets, including significant capture of land rental value. The fact HK people do not have both landlord and government monkeys on their shoulders to the same extent as we do is undoubtedly a competitive advantage for that entrepreneurial territory.

Another approach is that of Ecuador, which is one of several countries which choose to use the US dollar as their currency but without intrusion from the US. While this does cause problems, they have been working on a very interesting idea whereby Ecuadorean businesses may access credit for working capital simply by discounting VAT invoices directly with the central bank. With such a credit clearing system, goods and services will change hands not in exchange for US dollars sourced from the US, but by reference to the US dollar purely as a standard unit of account or benchmark.

Those are a couple of examples of more or less conventional possibilities.

I advocate a simple but radical 21st-century version of the sovereign credit model which pre-dated modern central banking. Scotland could turn back the clock to 1693 when the then privately owned Bank of England first privatised public credit.

Sovereigns had for some 500 years funded public expenditure through issuing stock, which was simply undated credits or IOUs given to creditors in exchange for value received, and returnable in payment of taxes. The origins of the phrases "stock" and "rate of return" – which referred to the rate at which stock could be returned to the exchequer for cancellation against tax obligations – have long since been airbrushed from economic history as an inconvenient truth.

I advocate a new approach to stock creation and issuance, perhaps through basing professionally managed public credit issuance on taxation; or on Scottish land rental values, as proposed by John Law in 1705; or on the value of Scottish energy production; or even all of these.

I am sure Messrs Salmond and Swinney and their team could easily achieve monetary independence in this way.

Chris Cook,

109a High Street,

Linlithgow.

Many specious arguments have been put forward for Scottish independence, but supporters of an independent Scotland have invariably failed to address one crucial fact: there are too few people living in this country to provide the reservoir of first-class talent necessary to run a successful country in modern times. The shambles associated with the construction of the Scottish Parliament, the total farce of the Edinburgh trams scheme and the non-existent train service to Glasgow airport reveal all too clearly the level of government incompetence to be expected if independence were to be achieved.

Have any of your readers noticed how closely the First Minister resembles the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland? At Holyrood he appears and then disappears, leaving nothing except an enigmatic smile. Yet in spite of this, he is the only politician worthy of note in Edinburgh. It is an inescapable fact that everyone else in Scottish politics is, as Alice perceived, no more substantial than a pack of cards.

Were Mr Salmond to win this vote, instead of being an integral part of one of the world's most successful and influential nations, we would find ourselves relegated to being one of a number of insignificant northern societies, somewhere on a par with Latvia or Iceland, small and weak enough to be disregarded when global decisions, inimical to our best interests, were being taken by world leaders.

Simon Freebairn-Smith,

100 Haggs Road,

Glasgow.

"The UK will still exist and will still include Scotland" according to Dr Alex Woolf (Letters, January 27). But will it? Could the titles "United Kingdom" and "Great Britain" survive Scottish independence?

The latter name first came about under the 1707 Acts of Union, defined as "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain", thereafter sometimes referred to informally as the "united kingdom" until 1800, when the Act of Union with Ireland officially created the United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland (since modified to Northern Ireland after Irish independence).

So without Scotland there would be no Great Britain and little credibility at home or abroad in retaining the United Kingdom name to describe England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

What then about England's status on the international stage? Would it still qualify as a permanent member of the Security Council, or be eligible for continued membership of the G8 or other seats at top tables?

Diana Daly,

Milltimber,

Aberdeen.

Tom Shields's lighthearted column about institutions an independent Scotland might claim from Britain perhaps highlights the debate in a way he did not intend (The Herald, January 26).

He lists John Reith, John Logie Baird and William Paterson among the many Scots who achieved great things on the national and international field. However would they have reached the same heights coming from a small independent nation?

Has the success of Scots over the past three centuries not had a lot to do with being part of Britain and the Empire? I wonder how many young Scots today would like the opportunity of aspiring to prominence in British institutions. I write as someone happy with both Scottish and British identities and keen to keep both.

Duncan MacIntyre,

74 Montgomery Street,

Eaglesham.

It is odd that those who oppose the restoration of Scotland's independence are now eager to pick holes in the proposals for a referendum on the issue.

Why did they stay silent in the past when UK governments made similar arrangements? Did we hear them complain when UK voters were asked to approve the UK's entry to the EEC two years after entry had already taken place? Did they object to rigging of the 1979 referendum on a devolved Scottish parliament with the notorious "40%" rule? Did they express righteous indignation when it was revealed, 30 years later, that both Westminster politicians and Whitehall civil servants lied to the Scottish people about the value of the oil discovered beneath Scottish waters in the North Sea? And how many of these defenders of democracy can name the last single-party UK government elected with a majority of the votes cast?

Robin MacCormick,

82 Dalkeith Road,

Edinburgh.

Denise Davis supports the preposterous notion that a UK-wide referendum should be held to determine Scotland's constitutional future (Letters, January 28). Notwithstanding the fact such an arrangement would run contrary to the UN Charter and the right to self determination, the effect would be that Scotland would have to seek acquiescence, from the rest of the UK, to leave the Union. Did Norway, Croatia or Latvia gain the permission of their respective predecessor states to exercise their right to self determination? It is not in the gift of England, Wales and Northern Ireland to allow Scotland to break away from the UK.

Ian Maclean,

Lesmuir Drive,

Glasgow.

Denise Davis makes the observation that everyone in the UK should have a vote on whether Scotland removes itself from the Union. Would she therefore also agree that everyone in the EU should have a vote on whether the UK removes itself from the European Union?

James Gracie,

2 Church Road,

Sanquhar.