I welcome the Say No To Fallago campaign which is trying to stop the Duke of Roxburghe getting planning approval for 48 wind turbines, each between 300ft and 400ft in height, in the Lammermuir Hills south of Edinburgh (“Green energy plans ‘destroying heritage’ ”, The Herald, June 21). But this campaign is only part of a wider battle to remove the financial incentives that underpin massive onshore wind turbines. These are destroying Scotland’s wild and magnificent scenery, from the Borders to Shetland.
It has been reported that the Duke would receive £2.5m per annum if this project goes ahead. These wind farms, along with the Beauly to Denny powerline, are only going ahead because of public subsidy -- everyone who buys electricity is paying extra charges to fund this assault on our landscape and helping various landowners and the shareholders and directors of multinational energy companies to enjoy the spoils.
The Liberal Democrats came to power in the UK Government after promising to prioritise offshore wind and subsea transmission. So why have they not brought the gravy train of massive onshore wind shuddering to a halt? Offshore wind and other marine developments are going nowhere while so much of our money, the onshore wind farm subsidy, is going to help the Duke of Roxburghe and his ilk. Meanwhile, many people are struggling to pay electricity bills.
We have two LibDem MPs, Danny Alexander and Michael Moore, in positions of considerable power in the Cabinet. At this time of great public spending cuts, they need to be challenged to rip up the Renewables Obligation and replace it with a financial support regime which commands public support across the nation. Otherwise Liberal Democrats will go down in history as the political party which did nothing to stop the industrialisation of our wild land and the loss of the main resource that underpins our greatest economic assets: tourism and the enjoyment of our outdoor landscapes.
Dave Morris, Director, Ramblers Scotland, Kingfisher House, Auld Mart Business Park, Milnathort, Kinross.
Much has been made, quite rightly, of Scotland’s tremendous opportunity in the field of renewable energy, our nation’s green gold rush, but it is a sector whose skills base needs to be geared up if we are to achieve this envisaged growth.
While we have the potential, according to the Scottish Government, to create 26,000 new jobs in renewables by 2020, we also face the challenge of an ageing workforce and a shortage of skilled workers. Adequate forecasting will allow us to see those areas where there are currently, and are set to be, skills shortages. We will also require to re-skill workers from outwith the industry and upskill those within, while also attracting young people into the sector.
The need to attract young people is a challenge, which is why we need to make entry into it a more attractive option at school and university/college, supplying the necessary skills in relevant areas, as well as ensuring greater collaboration with employers in identifying skills requirements and providing practical support.
We are working closely with the Scottish Government, employers, colleges and other key stakeholders to ensure that the right skills are available, at the right time and in the right place, to allow Scotland to realise its full renewable energy potential.
Jacqui Hepburn, Director, Alliance of Sector Skills Councils, Scotland, 28 Castle Street, Edinburgh.
Reports that the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park directorate are to consider installing wind turbines suggest that renewables madness has perhaps become unstoppable while Renewables Obligation monies tempt officials in charge of the wellbeing of this unique Scottish asset even to consider such a proposal.
Wind farms are of benefit only to the developers (mostly foreign), manufacturers and landowners because they are of negligible utility in electricity production or in reducing the national carbon footprint.
Why do most of our politicians and administrators not yet recognise the emperor’s new clothes scam which is wind power ? After all, their job is to get the best deal for us voters.
Dr Charles Wardrop, Perth.
What a lovely photograph you published by reader Raymond McMillan of the Cocksburn reservoir, against a backdrop of Ben Lomond and the Cobbler (Picture of the day, June 21). It captured so well this beautiful place -- tranquil, secluded, yet readily accessible and, indeed, much loved.
How tragic, then, that this is one of a number of very special places in the Ochil Hills Area of Great Landscape Value that is hugely threatened by the giant pylons of the Beauly to Denny power line.
If ScottishPower -- the transmission company for most of the Stirling area -- gets its way, it will be putting a 56-metre high pylon, with a 200-metre diameter construction site, and a major new construction access route directly between Sheriffmuir Road, where the photo was taken from, and this reservoir, ruining this view for the next 50 years. Small wonder that we continue to hope that, even at this late stage, Scottish Energy Minister Jim Mather will see sense, listen to local MSPs and the council leader -- all members of his own party -- and tell ScottishPower that nothing short of undergrounding can offer an acceptable solution for the Beauly to Denny power line in this very special area.
Nicki Baker, Vice-chair, Friends of the Ochils, Parkhead, Logie, Stirling.
Young people’s wellbeing could be at risk from health cuts
While Young Scotland in Mind (YSIM) welcomes chief medical officer Dr Harry Burns’s comments on the potential impact of prioritising emergency care at the expense of preventive work, my concern extends to the impact on the mental health and wellbeing of Scotland’s children (“Cuts could put health of nation at risk, warns chief medic”, The Herald, June 21).
Without these preventive services, many children and young people might only access emergency and acute alternatives, where barriers to access may lead to many falling through the net.
YSIM is a network of more than 200 voluntary sector organisations working nationally and locally, which fosters a culture of working and learning together, in order to promote the rights of children and young people to positive mental health and wellbeing in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Our members provide services which aim to increase the range of protective factors in children’s lives, to enable a more secure and nurturing environment. They provide direct services as well as increasing the skills base and capacity of adults to recognise and intervene as early as possible.
This work can and does divert many young people away from already stretched acute services.
There is a clear need to continue to fund projects and services where early intervention and promotion and prevention are the main focus. It will save money today but in the long term the costs to individuals, families and society may be significant.
Brian Donnelly,Chair, Young Scotland in Mind, 235 Corstorphine Road, Edinburgh.
Could the current draconian cuts in public spending have a silver lining?
The chief medical officer has stressed that the most vital health service priority is stopping health problems before they develop. He also points out that diet is one of the most important focuses needed for health.
Commercial interests are feeding us an abundance of cheap, processed, chemical-laden food whose supply is largely dependent on genetically modified commodity crops, and cheap meat from animals fed unnatural, processed, genetically modified diets. Our diet is making us sick. Perhaps people will now be persuaded to capitalise on the value of fresh, local food to maintain their health and put their money to better use.
Joanna Clarke, Glasgow.
Availability and promotion of cheap alcohol are causing damage of epidemic proportions
YOUR editorial comment is spot on in identifying that price and availability clearly drive the consumption of alcohol and, ultimately, the more alcohol that is consumed, the more harm is caused to health as well as society (“Government has to give firm lead in tackling alcohol abuse”, The Herald, June 22).
Adults in Scotland are consuming the equivalent of 46 bottles of vodka a year (or 130 bottles of wine) for every adult. Glasgow Licensing Board’s use of the Licensing Act’s objective to protect and improve public health by refusing expansion of supermarkets shelf space was right.
Supermarkets claim that more shelf space doesn’t mean more alcohol sales but of course it does. Evidence from around the world, including the World Health Organisation, shows that the greater is the availability of alcohol, the more is consumed. The claims by supermarkets to the contrary should be seen as similar to those of tobacco advertisers who said they didn’t advertise for new smokers but only to convert current ones or that tobacco didn’t cause harm. Our alcohol consumption has risen to such an extent that, in the past 30 years, we have seen a 450% rise in liver cirrhosis mortality, with deaths now proportionately higher in younger age groups. We are at epidemic proportions.
This is a problem which affects us all, not just a minority of problem drinkers. We believe there is sufficient public health evidence for Glasgow to proceed but suspect that, in these financially difficult times, the prospect of a court case for any local authority is daunting.
The inclusion of the public health element in our Licensing Act was a major step forward and we must now look at how we can get the evidence to licensing boards to support them sufficiently in any legal challenges they face.
Barbara O’Donnell, Director of Services, Alcohol Focus Scotland, 166 Buchanan Street, Glasgow.
It should be pointed out that the new licensing provisions, which are being heavily criticised, were a product of the previous Scottish administration, taken through the Scottish Parliament by LibDem George Lyon MSP, now MEP, with little opposition. Any opposition parliamentarian trying to make political capital out of attendant problems is guilty of hypocrisy.
However, the problems some boards are facing with licence provisions in major supermarkets indicate precisely who is the real enemy. It is those supermarkets that are 99% responsible for our society being engulfed by cheap alcohol.
Brewers and distillers are producing oceans of booze in the happy knowledge that our supermarkets will distribute it cheaply enough to make sure their market prospers. Take supermarkets out of the supply chain and there would be no need for minimum pricing regulations.
No other body of retailers has any interest in selling drink as a loss leader and virtually no profit, which has bankrupted most of the licensed grocery industry and is well on the road to knocking out most of our pubs.
David McEwan Hill, Argyll.
Bloody Sunday troops should stand trial
Michael Hamilton is correct in saying the ideal time for prosecuting the Paras who ran amok in the Bogside on Bloody Sunday was 1973 (Letters, June 22). The injustice for the victims’ families is that coroner Hubert O’Neill’s inquest verdict was never acted upon by the government or the law enforcement authorities in Ulster.
But we don’t need another inquiry to determine why the law was not enforced. The truth was covered up to protect the MoD officials who sent the Parachute Regiment into Ulster and those who perpetrated this atrocity.
If these soldiers and those responsible for the cover-up are to be let off because the political will is not there, it makes a mockery of the law, and it means these 14 people died pointless deaths.
Colin C I Douglas, Scone.
May I assure Rob Morton (Letters, June 22) that “to no man should justice be denied’” should mean exactly that, and where there is evidence of guilt, prosecutions should follow.
Ruth Marr, Stirling.
Why do we allow our country to be home to the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in Europe?
DEFENCE Secretary Liam Fox has underlined the Conservatives’ commitment to keeping a continuous at-sea deterrent (“Fox announces study into Trident before full defence review”, The Herald, June 22).
In honest language, this means the government is determined to continue deploying the UK’s criminal and illegal nuclear weapons system, Trident, and to replace it with a newer, more efficient version in 2025, thus ensuring our continued deployment of weapons of mass destruction indefinitely.
This is despite the UK’s commitment under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to achieve nuclear disarmament “at an early date”, which we signed way back in 1968, 42 years ago. So what does “early” mean to the nuclear apologists of Great Britain?
On cue, Dr Fox trots out the new bogies North Korea and Iran, and the threat of nuclear proliferation. I share his concern. Why is the rest world were too stupid to understand that we are allowed to protect ourselves with nuclear WMD, but it is unthinkable that they should do likewise? What bit of “Don’t do as I do, do as I say” do these foreigners not understand?
Meanwhile, Bob Ainsworth, for Labour, claims that the LibDems “never had a sensible alternative to Trident”. What, I ask myself, is a sensible alternative to the world’s greatest machine for the mass killing of human beings? What is a sensible alternative to 1,000 Hiroshimas?
Harold Wilson famously said that the Labour Party was a moral crusade, or it was nothing. In abandoning a principled opposition to nuclear mass murder, and in its abject policy of me-too-ism towards the Tories and their beloved nuclear bombs, the Labour Party has revealed itself to be just that -- nothing.
Angus Robertson for the SNP said that Trident was “morally, economically and politically untenable”, which is so patently true that no additional comment is needed.
What is wrong with people in Scotland that so many continue blindly to support the Labour Party, knowing that a vote for Labour is a vote for Trident? Where is our self-respect that we tolerate all the UK’s nuclear WMD dumped on us, making Scotland home the biggest nuclear arsenal in Europe?
Brian Quail, Glasgow.
Only criminals need fear CCTV cameras
I suspect the majority of people do not share the abhorrence Thom Cross has for surveillance cameras (Letters, June 22). Most would welcome the numbers he has quoted being doubled. Civil libertarian arguments are boring. Any successful measure to control violence should be encouraged. The cameras give most non-criminals a sense of security and have helped fight crime. Only those committing crimes need be concerned about the proliferation of cameras.
Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.
Airport congestion
Glasgow Airport has managed a high degree of ineptitude over the years. However, as the holiday season starts, it has introduced temporary and new passenger set-downs, with integrated pinch points so there are repeated bottlenecks even before you get into the terminal. It’s high time someone thought through such proposals before they start on further alterations.
Bob Bishop, Glasgow.
