RUTH Marr (Letters, June 9) and others are indulging in a fallacy in their assertions that “if Scotland was independent…” with regard to the current Covid-19 pandemic. There is no comparison to be made between Scotland and New Zealand, not least because the latter is an archipelago so biologically remote from the rest of the world and anomalous that it had no terrestrial mammals at all until the Polynesians arrived in the 13th century.
What is more, Scotland voted to stay in the UK in 2014. The choice of two million Scots was the preference for the risks and responsibilities of being part of bigger and more diverse country and economy over those of being part of a smaller and narrower one. If we want to play Ms Marr’s parlour game and pretend that something else happened, we can also imagine the penury that Scotland would have faced following the greatest economic shock in its history, and wonder how on earth we would have managed with public services stripped of over £10 billion every year.
Such speculation is all very entertaining, and makes useful material for the attempts of nationalists to distract us from the failings of the SNP Scottish Government. But Scotland is not New Zealand. Nor Norway nor Denmark nor the Republic of Ireland. Nor in terms of responsibility for public health and the NHS and care homes, is it even England.
In the real world, we can only judge Nicola Sturgeon and Jeane Freeman and co by the actions and decisions they have taken, and have failed to take, and above all by the Covid-19 infection rate and death toll in Scotland. No wonder that their supporters want us to be distracted by their pointless fantasies.
Peter A Russell, Glasgow G13.
Planet Pedro! 
Excellent and incisive as always; well done.