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Yes, they were energy rich, proud of their independence and very hard working, but their cost of living was very high. Their retirement age was 65, but very few could afford to stop work at that age. Also so long as they or Denmark were not involved in a major war, Denmark would come to their defence, but if there was a threat of invasion they would have to fend for themselves.

I wonder if the SNP has given any thought to the defence of Scotland should we become independent. At the moment Scots are well represented in the armed forces, but I fear that this would change.

Jean Duncan Troon

Innovative prize

RE Iain Macwhiter's article, the good folk of England may well be grateful to Scotland for resisting policies such as Trident II and ID Cards which cost a colossal amount but will not improve security.

This removes an important obstacle to Scottish Independence. As a consequence of Trident and ID Cards being scrapped the politicians who proposed these policies may well end up on the scrapheap.

The Saltire Prize for Energy Innovation is another example. Every 30 years produces government of radical change the Attlee government continues the social revolution started by Lord Beveridge, Mrs Thatcher started another kind of consensus South of the Border and now the new Scottish government through the Saltire Prize is forging a consensus to make the most of our resources through innovation rather than squandering them on nuclear weapons. Already the Saltire Prize has backing from the National Geographical Society and all the main US presidential candidates.

Andrew, J.T. Kerr Jedburgh

Novel ideas

RE "In Buchan's Footsteps", Alan Burnett's article ought to have been titled "In Hitchcock's Footsteps".

I well recollect my huge disappointment and outrage when I rst saw the Hitchcock version of 39 Steps in a cinema. I had read the original in school and had been red up to read all the rest of John Buchan's Richard Hannay tales. None lived up to the first title. In that long-ago cinema, I had awaited some of the more outstanding details from the novel: Hannay eeing on foot across the Border hills; the slow menacing drift of the monoplane with its pilot searching for him.

His arrival at the remote house and apparent help from the occupant. The realisation that he had fallen into a trap and was captured by "the man with the hooded eyes" who could assume any appearance. And so on. Instead, the film followed a completely different tale altogether. No need to recount the absurd Hitchcock deviations from the original. The final insult was the discarding of the subtle significance of the title: The Thirty Nine Steps. This was the ingenious conclusion of the tale: the house on the south coast of England being used by the Black Stone spy ring and the number of steps from it down to the shore. Our hero, naturally, foils the sinister plot.

Here's an idea for a film producer.

Read Buchan's Thirty Nine Steps and make a film of the novel just using Buchan's imagination. You never know.