WHAT an articulate and sensible response to English complaints about the benefits Scots are reaping from their “‘independence” (Make England better, don’t begrudge the Scots, November 13).

The author is absolutely right. Members of all three main UK parties are now cut from the same cloth: private school, university, join law firm or become a parliamentary “research assistant”, local council, become MP (any party will do).

They have no experience of life, let alone of work and raising a family, and are supported by a “first division” civil service who are from the same background, with protected jobs, salaries, and pensions. Between them they produce public services and legislation which, at English working family level, is laughable, and has wasted billions of pounds.

Who can blame the Scots for wanting to get out? When it comes to “English Independence” you have to overcome 40 years of loathing of the English, by English public bodies and services. I go to many public service “diversity” meetings where it is taken as natural that white, heterosexual, English working people (who still make up 85 per cent of the English population) are considered to be the natural enemy of the “diverse” population. Showing detestation of the majority seems to give some public servants some kind of “diversity credibility”.

I disagree with the author that the Westminster culture is “rotten”, it is simply alien, distant, isolated and out of touch. Their lack of even a remote understanding of working families has led to control freak policies.

Who, for example, can argue with a “safeguarding vulnerable adult’s policy”, or laws giving disabled people rights?

However, MPs’ lack of understanding about these issues leads Westminster to not only legislate, but also to issue councils with “toolkits” telling them how to implement the law locally. Councils, mindful of who controls the money, follow the “toolkits” and produce statistics, and feed the statistics up. The well-meant policy is rendered meaningless at vulnerable or disabled-person level.

We pay massive salaries to council executive officers because they are “the best”. Why bother? We can find monkeys to follow toolkits, tick boxes and produce statistics. I am pushed to think of a single, worthwhile Bolton Council local service which has not been initiated by government, with toolkit. Not Bolton’s fault. This is the Westminster system which the Scots want rid of. The “Westminster system” is wedded to procedures and not to reality.

A child is brutally murdered, but the ‘inspectorate’ is “happy that procedures were followed”. It needs to be got rid of in England, but which party do you support to achieve that? Please do not mention the BNP and English Independence in the same breath, it is offensive to most of us.

Ron Shambley Clough Avenue