HOW tiresome it is, after every election or referendum, to have number-crunchers re-interpret the results in the light of the actual turnout, so that, for example, the substantial majority of 62 per cent in Scotland who voted to remain in the EU can be reduced to 41.7 by Anne Kegg (Letters, July 27) only to be adroitly countered by Steve Inch extending the same logic to the overall UK result. How satisfying for someone who seeks such small reassuring comforts. But this is the way of it, in our so-called democracy, as we have to make the best of the turnouts we have, and are left wondering why people don’t bother to vote at all.

Would it not be better to focus our energies on understanding how, in our “democracy’” we still have a ludicrously bloated House of Lords, with members for whom none of us voted at all? Or understanding why bankers are so feted by our governments and allowed to keep their snouts in the trough? And why they and their friends in the corporate world can have so much say in the political running of our country? Or why the needs of the rich are prioritised above all else? These may be some of the reasons why people don’t trouble to vote in the first place.

But I guess it’s so much more difficult to attach numbers and percentages to hypocrisy, duplicity and self-interest.

Dr Angus Macmillan,

76 Georgetown Road, Dumfries.