Readers Letters: Believe carbon capture project support when we see it

More smoke and mirrors from the Labour Party and the UK Government.

From my recollection this is the third time the UK Government has proclaimed financial backing for the Acorn carbon capture and storage project (proposed 20 years ago) but there is still no money on the table. While tens of billions of pounds continue to flow into projects south of the Border, Scotland is supposed to be grateful for the UK Government now declaring financial support for the Edinburgh exascale supercomputer a year after it cancelled funding. Increased public spending commitments have been cynically hailed by Labour Party politicians without reference to projected inflation increases or different spending choices made north and south of the Border.

To cap it all, Scottish Secretary Ian Murray now hypocritically says that the Scottish Government did not spend last year’s Budget increase “wisely” when much of it was spent on increased public sector wages, while the Scottish Government also continued to mitigate the effects of Westminster-imposed austerity.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves leaves from 11 Downing Street on Wednesday before heading to Parliament to present her Spending Review (Picture: Henry Nicholls/AFP)

Or has the “Governor” now abandoned the last vestiges of socialist principles he presumably once held and if that is the case why are Scottish trade unions still supporting a Labour Party that in government continues to betray the poor and disadvantaged in Scotland while being complicit in the continuing slaughter and devastation in Gaza?

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Power play

It’s good that Edinburgh is to be blessed with the UK’s most powerful supercomputer, but what about the considerable electricity required to support it? Is there now to be a new power station built?

For surely our creaking National Grid system will either need to be upgraded or a dedicated and separately managed power station will have to be built to service it.

Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh

Privacy paramount

Jane Lax (Letters, 12 June) says the police are recording people's sex wrongly. She writes, “The law is the law”, but her description of the law on this is incorrect.

The Supreme Court was clear that its recent judgment on the meaning of trans people's sex applies only to the Equality Act. For other law, it remains the case that a gender recognition certificate changes a trans person's legal sex “for all purposes” (to directly quote the legislation).

The Court also said that discrimination against trans people continues to be unlawful under the Equality Act. For the police to ask victims, witnesses or suspects whether they are trans, as a matter of course, would very likely be unlawful indirect discrimination, undermining trans people's right to privacy.

The law allows an exception on a case-by-case basis: when asking is necessary and for a legitimate reason. There will be good reason to record that a suspect or victim of crime is trans in some cases where it is relevant to the nature of the crime, or where an accused person is remanded in custody.

But for the large majority of offences with non-custodial outcomes – theft, vandalism, speeding, and many more – whether anyone involved as victim, witness or suspect is trans will be completely irrelevant to the offence, and should not be asked or recorded.

Tim Hopkins, Edinburgh

Driving forces

Harald Tobermann (Letters, 12 June) wants even “more buses to ensure balance and harmony on our roads”. Actually we need fewer buses driving around with few passengers in them. Far too much taxpayers’ money is spent on public transport and far too little on maintaining and improving public roads. The chaotic Edinburgh tram project cost £1 billion for eight miles and because it was years late and grossly over budget there was a public inquiry into its failings, which cost £13m.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh has been turned into an anti-car city with bottlenecks caused by bus lanes, lack of parking, congestion, potholes, and more patches than Windows Vista. While Newcastle has a three-lane city bypass Edinburgh has a two-lane one which is often at a standstill. Sheriffhall roundabout was supposed to be replaced by a flyover with construction beginning this year. What happened to that?

The fact is that road users – commercial and private – are being robbed by central government and mostly ignored by local government in favour of subsidised buses and mass travel.

Take, for example, road fund licence, or vehicle tax as the DVLA now styles it. This is £195 for 12 months for a car with a list price under £40,000, but £620 for the first five years if it is over £40,000. A £40,000 car will trouser the government £8,000 in vat. All this largesse doesn't go back into the road system, it goes straight into Rachel Reeves's piggy bank.

A new road construction programme would boost economic development, as would reducing taxes on owning and driving cars, vans and lorries.

William Loneskie, Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire

Sick society?

Who will win a Scotsman Health Hero award ? Despite the nice picture of him on the front of The Scotsman of 11 June, is SNP health minister Neil Gray really in the running? Our NHS is floundering in a sea of crises, the latest being the recent sharp rise in drug deaths. This is even more awful given the SNP's “clean” drug usage programme at the Thistle in Glasgow which was meant to really help. It is rumoured that John Swinney is considering a cabinet reshuffle. If Mr Gray goes, who can possibly replace him?

This is not because Mr Gray is irreplaceable, more to do with the question as to whether anyone in the SNP is able to do the job following a long line of failures, including Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf. Mr Gray ought to have been a certainty for a hero award. The likelihood he is highly unlikely to get one speaks volumes.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Fly high

Lt Cdr Lester May raises an interesting opinion (Letters, 10 June), but I regret to inform him that he is almost a whole century out of date (and more so in the UK context). Military aviation has become acknowledged worldwide as the primary armed force, without which a modern-day army and navy simply could not function.

Postulating that a ship-borne or army-ancilliary alternative to an Air Force could ever work is, frankly, farcical. I could refer him to the many studies from the early 1930s onwards, but I think that the current UK perception as encompassed by the Chiefs of Staff Commitee is sufficient to vindicate a tri-service policy.

Iain Masterton, Kirknewton, West Lothian

Lines of sadness

Former Makar Kathleen Jamie this week, commenting on the unveiling of her words on the Canongate wall at Holyrood, said: “Poetry is democratic. It’s available to anybody – through libraries, through memory.” How right she is.

I was reminded of a beautiful poem of hers, “Lochan”, which ends with this line: “underneath a rowan, a white boat waits”. This poem captures my sadness at the growing evidence of a crisis in democracy in Scotland.

Yes, a white boat waits for us all: possibly beside a flamingo or near a needless wind turbine. Let’s hope there are some rowans left when our time comes.

Mary Howley, Dunoon, Argyll

Ferry tale

It is somewhat ironic that EU rules put the final voyage of the Hebridean Isles ferry on hold, given the EU funded its construction (your report, 11 June). A grant from the European Regional Development Fund enabled financing of the project and a senior Director-General from the European Commission attended its launch by the Duchess of Kent at Selby on 4 July 1985.

Stephen Fox, Edinburgh

Lights out

In all my years of attending art galleries and museums, I have never encountered such crass irresponsibility as that of Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art, which clearly think nothing of putting visitors’ safety at the height of the tourist season in jeopardy.

The ground floor main gallery “film installation” exhibition for John Akomfrah’s Mimesis: African Soldier is in pitch blackness – apart from the small video screens – and near to its only entrance, hidden in perfect darkness, are two large concrete pillars, impossible to see until one literally walks painfully into them, and particularly hazardous to those coming in from the street whose eyes have had no chance to adjust so as to have the remotest chance of spotting the pillars in time.

When I pointed this out to a staff member, their response was to shrug their shoulders and laugh. There's a twisted irony that this touchy feely, sensitivity training obsessed art gallery eschews basic common sense, never mind basic health and safety training that would never have allowed this dangerous state of affairs to have arisen, unless Glasgow Life (the city council's deniable asset Culture and Sport wing) are determined to bankrupt themselves in a litany of injury claims.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Mystery moon

On Tuesday night I looked out to the south from my bedroom window and saw the moon, very full and riding high over the Pentlands, but to my amazement, it was bright red!

Can anybody tell me, is this a natural phenomenon or is it a celestial forecast of impending doom? Enlightenment please.

Sandy Macpherson, Edinburgh

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