SIR, A month on from the national referendum finds embattled Scotland in choppy waters and neighbour Norway three billion dollars richer.

The thoughtful and eminently sensible letter from Dave Robb in last week’s Peeblesshire News called for a new union in which Scotland would be a “paying partner rather than a supplicant”.

This would be achieved, he reasoned, by empowering our parliament to raise all revenue required to run the country and to contribute to Westminster our share of joint expenditure.

In such a federal-style arrangement, much healthier financial transparency would obtain.

Mr Robb’s detailed description of our revenue did not, however, include that from North Sea oil and gas, of which we would be entitled to our own lion’s share - a huge disincentive for change by a Westminster government that has been more than ready to demonstrate globally how fiercely it values oil.

And just how much value is at stake may be seen from the fact that in the last month the Norwegian Oil Fund has put on approximately three billion dollars ($3,000,000,000). Nor does this sum represent record monthly growth; it is simply an average found by dividing the fund’s current capital of over 850 billion dollars by the number of months since its inception in 1990.

Yes, astonishingly, this wee country’s squirrelling away of its oil revenue has produced the planet’s largest sovereign wealth fund! And it is growing daily.

A fitting reward for one of the world’s happiest, healthiest and most peaceful states, which readily took on the responsibility of self-determination and then had the vision not to squander its oil wealth on instant follies. What a splendid example for mankind, a tiny candle in a murky world!

I am, etc.

John Melrose Whitehaugh Park Peebles