Sir, - J.P. Duggan (September 1st) asks Kevin Myers if he would rather Ireland had "remained obsequiously under the Crown like Scotland and Wales". I'm fed up of Irish nationalists thinking they can tell everyone else how to do nationalism. Maybe he'd like to know what I, as a Scottish nationalist, think about it? My quarrel is with a Westminster system which sidelines the interests of the smaller nations in the UK and the peripheral regions of England. I am a nationalist because I got fed up with my country getting policies rammed down its throat by governments it didn't elect. I came to the conclusion that the best way for Scotland to develop its own political and cultural life was as an independent state within the EU. What has the Crown got to do with it? Scotland had its own parliament for more than a century after the Union of the Crowns. It will have one again very soon. If the country moves on to complete independence, it will be because Westminster won't allow that parliament enough power to meet the needs of the Scottish people. The Crown will be irrelevant to that. I am not a monarchist, but I really can't see why I am supposed to get worked up about an issue that makes very little difference, instead of getting on with making a difference. And I am not obsequious, to the Crown or to Irish nationalists. - Yours, etc., Dr Bob Purdie,
Ruxkin College, Oxford.