The letter from Mike Joslin, (Need Political Change, Dorset Echo, September 22) hit the nail on the head.

As a Scot living in Weymouth, I was not eligible to vote in the independence referendum.

Had I been eligible I would have voted yes - not because I want to see an end to the political union between Scotland and the rest of the UK, but because I see it as the only option on offer to bring about major political, economic and social change for Scotland.

However, what was not on offer alongside independence in the referendum – and it should have been – was federalism.

I believe that, had that option been offered, many, many Scots who voted in both the YES and the NO camps would have endorsed it.

One school of thought claims that federalism couldn’t work in these great British Isles because of the inequity that would arise from the disproportionate sizes of voting power between dis-proportionately sized federal ‘states’, e.g., between Scotland and England or between Wales and Northern Ireland.

Suppose, though, that a method could be found which broke up the UK into similarly sized political, regional blocks, which took no account of national borders, each with its own seat of government, then federalism becomes an attractive alternative to the archaic inequitable Westminster parliamentary democracy we have had to endlessly endure.

Federalism would take sovereignty out of the hands of the Westminster politicians and place it in the hands of the people – where it rightfully belongs.

I do not accept that it couldn’t be done.

Anything can be done, given the political will to do it.

If the result of Scotland’s independence referendum is not taken very seriously by the body politic, then I believe there will be a major upheaval, not just among the Scots but among all the people who are crying out for real democracy in these great British Isles.

Crumbs, falling from the master’s table, will no longer be enough.

Frank Bott
Clayton Close
Littlemoor
Weymouth