THE SNP/Green administration, in particular Lorna Slater, the Circular Economy Minister, has not thought through the Deposit Return Scheme for drinks bottles.

I accept that Ms Slater is not in the least interested in the damage that this will undoubtedly do to producers and their businesses. These have been rehearsed eloquently and passionately by Fergus Ewing, SNP MSP ("SNP MSP calls for deposit return scheme to be paused and glass excluded", The Herald, February 10). But neither is Ms Slater, nor anyone else in the administration, remotely interested in the logistics of returning the bottles and the difficulties this will present for citizens.

Does she imagine that people relish the thought of either having to visit a return facility every few days or else store empty bottles, filling bags with them and taking them to a facility using some means of transport? How many bottles can a cyclist transport at any one time?

How many car journeys – scarcely "green" – will people make to deliver bottles? Will the use of expensive petrol make it worth their while to recoup 20p a bottle? What about the elderly and infirm who can neither drive nor cycle? Are they expected to fill bags with empty bottles, walk to a bus stop with them and accommodate them on a bus for the journey to the return facility?

Ms Slater admits that she has not consulted experts from any of the countries that already have a deposit return scheme in place ("Minister’s admission over review of recycling scheme", The Herald, February 13), and it shows.

This is more Green pie in the sky which should, at the very least be organised on a UK-wide basis and by people who have thought through the issues I have mentioned. But all that matters at Holyrood is that it is another part of the Greens’ agenda that is the price we pay for Nicola Sturgeon’s manufactured majority.
Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Adding to the saga of misrule

TO the saga of misrule by the SNP Government of Scotland, assisted by the Greens, one can now add another episode in the form of the Deposit Return Scheme. Previous episodes, describing something short of heroic deeds, have included the Calmac ferries, the support provided to the businesses of Sanjeev Gupta, the non-existent publicly-owned energy company, the high level of drug deaths, the money spent on so-called overseas embassies, the declining treatment standards of the NHS, the failure to improve the attainment gap in education, and the gender recognition controversy.

Surely the position is now being reached when the majority of the Scottish people will consistently find it appropriate to paraphrase the folk tale words of Hans Christian Andersen: "The Empress and her cohorts have a paucity in the clothes department."
Ian W Thomson, Lenzie

Poverty fight will outweigh GRR

RICHARD Allison (Letters, February 13) fails to mention that the Gender Recognition Reform Bill was overwhelmingly supported by four of the five parties in our Scottish Parliament and, come an election, the hysterical moral panic by the Tories and the right-wing press over something that only impacts on less than one per cent of voters will be outweighed by the SNP’s efforts in tackling poverty and inequality, which is now less than in England or Wales.

Voters should be reminded of the Institute of Fiscal Studies report on the Scottish Budget which showed that low-income families with children have a disposable income of £2,000 per year more in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK, not least due to the Scottish Child Payment and other measures to mitigate against Tory attacks on the poorest in society.

The A9 should have been dualled decades ago when construction costs were much lower and the UK Government was earning tens of billions a year from Scotland’s North Sea to fund lower taxes and London infrastructure. Many more miles would have been dualled had all the opposition parties not combined in 2007 to outvote SNP funding proposals for the A9 and spend £500 million on the original Edinburgh tram line.

Scotland has lost more than €870m of EU infrastructure funding which mainly went to the Highlands and not replaced as a Brexit promise by the UK Government. As our farming and fishing industries have also been hammered as a result of Brexit, the anger in the Highlands is understandable.
Mary Thomas, Edinburgh

The real opposition

MSP Fergus Ewing has gained wide respect for his detailed, persuasive and courageous outing of the SNP/Greens' bottle recycling mess. The excellent campaign by a coalition of public figures such as JK Rowling and women's groups, culminating in two demonstrations outside Holyrood and their outing of the Bryson case, has shattered Nicola Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform Bill, and probably her career.

The pro-independence think tank Common Weal's forensic dismantling of the botched wind energy licensing round has uncovered a multi-billion-pound scandal of incompetence that makes Fergusons' ferries look like a punctured lilo and the daddy of them all, Wings Over Scotland, publisher of the notorious Wee Blue Book that turned so many heads in the direction of Yes in 2014, has aimed all its guns at the SNP's gender recognition reform and "de-faketo" independence strategy.

And lurking just below the mainstream surface grass roots campaigns by the Family Party and the Glasgow Cabbie (literally, a full-time Glasgow cabbie) who has a following of more than 30,000 in support of his campaign against sinister and deeply worrying sex education practices in Scotland's schools.

In terms of reaching living rooms, daily lives and hundreds of thousands of voters, these are the real opposition to the SNP and Greens.

I'm unaware of the main opposition parties highlighting the bottle recycling or offshore wind licensing issues, none of them seems to want touch the sex education scandal and while, to their credit, the Conservatives were the only party to oppose GRR, Douglas Ross now seems to be focusing on "is a rapist a man or a woman" questions instead of challenging the First Minister to meet the UK Government halfway and widening the debate to sex education and the growing bushfire of violence in schools.

The Ashcroft poll finding that electoral support for the SNP has fallen to 40% ("Poll: big lead for No and gulf between public and SNP priorities", heraldscotland, February 13) should be good news for opposition parties until you realise the Glasgow Cabbie, the Family Party and the Reform Party may all field candidates, and siphon off the few hundred votes that could otherwise win marginal seats for the mainstream parties but instead could save the SNP from defeat.

The mainstream parties would only have themselves to blame.
Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven

FM poll is not all bad news

YOU headline that in a Panelbase survey 40% of voters call for the FM to resign ("Forbes favourite to replace Sturgeon as 40% of voters call for FM to resign", The Herald, February 14). Surely this means that some Labour and Conservative voters want her to stay, since the SNP only gained 47.7% of the constituency votes in the last Holyrood elections? Do the maths.
David J Crawford, Glasgow

Hunt must act on energy prices

A TICKING time-bomb is just around the corner for millions. It has been ticking for some time and concerns have been raised by many charities, debt companies, food banks and households.

In a matter of seven weeks we are all going to see a huge rise in our energy costs once again, with the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) rising by a whopping 20 per cent, from £2,500 to £3,000. This £3,000 is the cap for a typical household paying by direct debit, but what about those on pre-payment meters? They, the ones who can least afford it, will once again be taking the largest hit.

This latest increase to the EPG will seem much larger as there is no new money for households from the Westminster Government being mooted. Perhaps MPs from all parties, refreshed from their recess, could get a concerted campaign together to pressurise the Chancellor to announce some form of relief for struggling households in his Budget on March 15? After all, the Government has been raking in extra VAT from energy customers such as you and me. And what about recent profit announcements by the large energy companies? It is so unfair.
Catriona C Clark, Falkirk


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