Letter: Filling up

Everything is turned on its head in this topsy-turvy world of ours. When I was at primary school in the 1930s and 40s, we were taught about the virtues of land reclamation, with the Netherlands held up to us as a great success story in reclaiming land from the sea.

An area of Dundee bordering the Tay used to be part of the river estuary, but now accommodates an airport, playing fields, houses and hotels, restaurants, car salesrooms and offices. The area is called the Coup locally, for the very obvious reason that that was how the local council reclaimed it from the river.

I see no ill-effects either in Dundee or in the Netherlands of this use of refuse and rubble to reclaim land, yet landfill has now become such a taboo that our councils devote millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to avoiding it.

Why? Because of the influence of the European Union and a minority of politically correct extremists. Meanwhile, we are losing more and more of our low-lying coastal areas to the sea. Buildings, whole villages and valuable farm land are disappearing.

Our local council has just issued another expensive glossy brochure informing us of more and more detailed and nit-picking extensions to their recycling programme, involving more cost and more bins.

All this money, effort, power and energy could be saved if councils sent most of our rubbish to landfill. The bonus would be the protection of our coasts from the sea and the saving and extension of our valuable land and property.

GEORGE K McMILLAN

Mount Tabor Avenue

Perth