WITH all the present conflicts taking place around the world, most of which can be attributed to religious fervour, power and ambition, powered by greed to encroach on disputed territory over many centuries, the format by the United Nations assembly should digest a quotation by Gibbons: “History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortune of mankind.”

Reference to the present call for Scottish independence, one has only to reflect on the outcome of the world wars, when the outcome rested not only on our national identity i.e. Scottish, Welsh, Irish and English ancestry. But a commonwealth of nations, still retaining their national pride, but under the same banner: “United we stand, divided we fall.”

Taking devolution to its extreme, are we to revert back to danegeld (blackmail), tax and or an Anglo-Saxon society, slaves, partial freeman, common freeman, the mobility including dictatorship in this island of ours.

Kenneth Bowker, Vesper Walk, Huntington, York.