Readers' Letters: Borders railway expansion would not benefit Scotland

In recent weeks readers will have been aware that £10 million has been awarded as part of the Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal to look into extending the Borders Railway from Tweedbank to Carlisle. No doubt this will be good news to rail enthusiasts; but, I fear, bad news for the taxpayer.

The question of extension was considered several times in the past and the proposition is wholly uneconomic; population densities are too low, and the existing direct Edinburgh-Carlisle link is, and has always been, much faster end-to-end. However, a worrying popular myth has been created around the Borders line as far as Tweedbank, with the media claiming that its traffic “greatly exceeded forecasts”.

By now the line should be carrying around 2 million passengers, based on the (as expected) opening 1.2m single journeys and 5.2 per cent growth predicted in 2015. But, in fact, the latest records, for the year to 31 March 2024 show only 1.41m, down from the pre-Covid peak of 1.56m recorded for 2018/19, in respect of entries and exits for the seven stations on the line: fewer commuters now, and south of Tweedbank is too far away anyhow for most of that type of user.

£10 million has been awarded as part of the Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal to look into extending the Borders railway (Picture: Scott Louden)

Some 72 per cent of the Scottish rail network's income now comes from subsidy; fictional accounting approaches, such as “value in non-use” had to be used by accountants working on the Borders rail project, a decade ago. The costs will be huge to extend, involving collapsed tunnels, built-over trackbeds and demolished stations. There are better uses for £10m in other transport ideas than this vote-seeking intervention.

“A day out of Hawick is a day wasted” goes the saying. Perhaps not. But £10m on an exercise in more fanciful projections would certainly be public money wasted.

Peter Smaill, Borthwick, Midlothian

Scotland will pay

Consequences will follow the £5 billion a year welfare savings announced by the Labour UK Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall MP this week. Consequences not just for those currently claiming benefits, but for the wider economy.

Because reducing public sector spending in England has consequences for Scotland’s block grant, so not only will some claimants have less to exist on, there could be an impact economically on some crucial public services in Scotland as a result. However, one aspect of the changes I agree with is the Work and Pensions Secretary adopting the policy of Social Security Scotland and doing away with continual reassessments for those with long-term conditions.

Labour’s raid on benefits clearly highlights why full welfare powers need to be devolved to Scotland, just like they are in Northern Ireland.

Catriona C Clark, Banknock, Falkirk

Plane speaking

How can one man be in power such a short time, talk so much and achieve so little, antagonise and virtually discard so many allies, while making new best friends with the West’s only real enemy (at the moment)? Donald Trump, elected to serve the American people, is serving no one but himself – a megalomaniac at full throttle.

He now seems intent on breaking up Nato, which must gain him brownie points somewhere... probably Moscow.

US plane builder McDonnell Douglas, currently constructing F35s for European air forces, now sees orders drying up because Trump’s misplaced sanctions are getting in the way, and Canada is reconsidering its purchase of Lockheed Martin F35 jet fighters. Now, European and British plane-makers are beginning to receive welcome new orders, thanks to the very clever Donald Trump.

Canada is under the ridiculous threat of being made America’s 51st State. Happily, Canada now has a totally sane, competent Prime Minister, former Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, a man who has all the attributes Trump lacks: integrity, honesty, competence. And by the way, Mr Trump, King Charles, the guy you’re (only pencilled in) to see in July, is also King of Canada…

If only Mary McLeod could have been persuaded to stay in Lewis.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

Oh deer

James Fenton does not seem to have noticed there is also a distinction between what we see with our eyes and what we don't know with our brain in his letter on Duncan Orr-Ewing’s recent article on Scotland’s deer population (18 March).

Just prior to the First World War, my namesake great uncle took several crates of red deer from a treeless Glen Strathfarrar to a heavily wooded New Zealand, where they grew massively in both size and numbers. Telling this to a Kiwi tourist with whom I shared a beer in my student days, he advised me: "George, if you ever go to New Zealand, just keep that information to yourself."

George F Campbell, Pollokshields, Glasgow

Tech a break

Your editorial yesterday (19 March) warns that resistance to net zero, as exemplifiedby Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, would exclude us from the discovery of new climate technologies. Would any of those include floating ducks, solar panels, or dropping weights down mineshafts? They’re just a few of the new technologies we have seen so far… not forgetting windmills, of course.

The older technologies worked well. Nuclear energy in particular being the best. Clean and continuous.

Has our search for these new technologies not just made us a home for inventors and subsidy seekers?

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Kinross

Damage done

I am happy to judge Nicola Sturgeon less “narrowly” than Stan Grodynski (Letters, 18 March) claims I do, in focusing on the damage she has done to Scottish women and girls by allowing biological males into women’s safe spaces.

Let us consider her stated priority of closing the attainment gap, between poorer and more affluent pupils in schools. That has been an abject failure. Then there have been the ever-lengthening hospital waiting lists. Or consider the exponential rise in the number of drugs deaths in Scotland, allied to Ms Sturgeon’s slashing of the budget for rehabilitation facilities for drug addicts. The long ferry saga is too easy a target. The Hate Crime Act is potentially totalitarian legislation that criminalises conversation in people’s homes. Ms Sturgeon’s use of her Holyrood platform to insult opposition MSPs instead of answering their questions has brought that institution into disrepute. I could go on.

Instead, all we have is the baby box, which its Finnish originators say is only a “nice gift” rather than something that promotes the health and wellbeing of newborns.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Not zero

Net Zero stalwarts, such as Ed Miliband in the UK, are becoming more and more rare. Most have accepted that the target was simply impossible without horrendous suffering for those least able to cope.

So, it is back to the drawing board on that line for Mr Miliband and his fellow eco-zealots. Meanwhile, Germany's first ever offshore wind farm, Alpha Ventus, is being dismantled after 15 years. It is too unprofitable to operate because the enormous taxpayer-funded subsidies can simply no longer be afforded.

Is it not time the UK joined the rest of the world and accept the truth? We need rapid readjustment of the masochistic plans to self-harm and close to insane timescales and a resumption of oil and gas production until we are really in a position to let it go safely. Fifty to 100 years as a first guess would be a fair term to get it right.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Suicide systems

So one of the UK’s ageing nuclear weapon submarines has completed a record tour of 204 days. The Navy has increased the length of nuclear submarine patrols due to refits and maintenance problems arising from skill shortages, and from maintaining the pattern of having one boat on patrol at all times. There is now great pressure on the submariners as well as the obvious risks around having nuclear reactors, missiles and nuclear warheads on board old tin cans.

According to the Ministry of Defence everything is fine and dandy since they are hurrying things up and will have the new boats ready by the “early 2030s”. They know that is rubbish, confirming what so many suspect that investment in the ghastly business by the current UK regime is more about giving the posturing and “vice-signalling” they deem necessary rather than a full-hearted intention to commit an atrocity and end human civilisation as we know it. They must know that the same dread outcome can be realised whatever the motivation – these complex systems for mass death have a way of acquiring their own momentum.

I am outraged by the presence of these hideous weapons of mass destruction in our lands and waters, and the failure of the UK to abide by its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to take genuine steps towards disarmament. This deplorable example, which is also given by the other nuclear-armed states which are party to that treaty, has contributed to moves in other nations to acquire these weapons by “nuclear-sharing” or by home-growing their own suicide system.

Those who have read Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War – A Scenario will know just how close we are to total catastrophe. The only genuine solution is total elimination. The majority of the world states share that understanding and supports the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

David Mackenzie, Edinburgh

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