IT was a great pleasure to visit Crockerton Primary School on Friday.

I was especially impressed to see French being taught.

We are bad linguists overall in the UK and the reason is largely that we are not generally exposed to modern foreign languages at an early age when our capacity to absorb them is so much greater.

I had another full advice surgery with a range of problems and issues brought to my attention.

I do not pretend to be a great sage, but after holding these surgeries for 13 years I guess I know my way around the system sufficiently well to sometimes be helpful to people who have been unable to make progress by other means.

It is always very satisfying to be able to assist in such circumstances. I’m in Scotland this week in connection with my defence brief.

In less than six months people living in Scotland will decide whether to keep the Union or go their own way.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the defence and security of both the UK and Scotland would be seriously downgraded in the event of Britain being broken up.

However, most people will make their minds up on economic grounds. Since an independent Scotland won’t be able to continue to use the pound and it couldn’t join the euro, at least initially, it would have to recreate its own currency.

You don’t have to be an economist to understand what that would mean, for Scotland especially, but also for the residual UK.

Unfortunately the pro-independence people characterise the sober expression of big reservations like these as bullying. It really isn’t.

I enjoyed the Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg dialogues on the EU. It’s good to talk, but I’m bound to point out that there’s only one way people will get a say on our future in or out of Europe and that’s through the 2017 referendum pledged by David Cameron.