Readers' letters: Climate activists' protest at cycle race counter-productive

The interruption of the cycle road race by climate activists at the weekend (Scotsman, 7 August) was really stupid. What other activity than cycling, if adopted by the majority of people, would help to make cars redundant and thus oil less necessary? What would be more likely to act as an advert for cycling as seeing such a series of events held in the beauties of Scotland? But what action is more likely to lose Scotland its reputation as a hospitable place?

Cyclists climb Montrose Street in Glasgow during the UCI Cycling Championship men's elite road race, on Sunday. (Picture: Ross MacDonald/SNS Group)

Also, to interrupt a race such as cycling which stresses participants to the extreme and to risk exposing them mid-effort to rain or cold wind for an hour is not clever.

Why do this in a country which is committed to following the United Nations’ lead on control of climate damage, stopping fossil fuel extraction and doing away with illegal nuclear weapons but is stopped by the UK Government, which acts to prevent it by colonial interference?

However, today I must show my true colours by commenting that my private feeling on witnessing a solid line of traffic stopped on the A9 heading north and stretching for many miles between Ballinluig and well on to the dual carriageway south of Dunkeld was of quiet satisfaction that the day of the car is over, caught between the Scylla of increasing traffic and the Charybdis of road improvement.

Iain WD Forde, Scotlandwell, Perth & Kinross

Climate alarmism

Another day, another outrage by climate cult zealots. Apart from the harm these attention-seeking idiots do to ordinary people, and to extraordinary people in sport and in the high offices of state, commerce, and industry going about their lives, they are completely wrong in their assertion that civilisation is doomed unless fossil fuels are scrapped. The same fossil fuels are the things which give us steel, concrete, energy, plastics, power, manufacturing, hospital equipment, and heat and light.

According to the former Portuguese politician and now UN boss Antonio Guterres, we are “in a world of global boiling”. No we aren’t. We are in a world of climate alarmism. Global temperature has only increased by one degree centigrade since 1900, and the number of weather-related deaths since that year has plummeted. That the climate is very slowly warming should be celebrated here in Scotland, not portrayed as some doomsday event.

William Loneskie, Lauder, Scottish Borders

Alcohol lies

There is a quote, wrongly attributed to Joseph Goebbels, that if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth. The article by Tamasin Knight (Scotsman, 8 August) is the latest example of this.

She repeats the assertion that minimum unit pricing (MUP) has reduced alcohol deaths in Scotland by 13.4 per cent. It has done nothing of the sort. To quote from the National Records of Scotland, alcohol-related deaths in Scotland in 2021 were 1,245. The figure for 2017, the last year before the introduction of MUP, was 1,120. Simple arithmetic suggests that alcohol deaths have increased therefore by 11 per cent since the introduction of the policy. Historically, mortality rates from alcohol fell between 2006 and 2012, and since then have risen. The introduction of MUP in 2018 has had no effect on this increase.

The policy was originally sold on the basis that it would target the hardened drinker by increasing the price of cheap cider and the like. Even the latest report admits it has had no effect on such individuals. The further increases demanded raise the price of drinks favoured by ordinary people at a time of huge inflation and just after the chancellor has increased alcohol duties by up to ten per cent. MUP has become a quasi-religious mantra and it is time it was consigned to the dustbin of history.

Robert Cairns, Perth, Perth & Kinross

Laying down law

One might have hoped that the Scottish Government would have learned from its various legislative failures – Named Person, Deposit Return Scheme, Gender Recognition Reform, to name but a few – that legislation requires to be well-conceived, robust and commanding support from those charged with enforcing it.

A new law, in transit through Holyrood, would give the government the power to intervene in the regulation of solicitors’ activities. Political interference in the law and the legal profession, which is supposed in a democracy to be separate from the legislature and its political power, is a characteristic of unsavoury regimes.

In Scotland, we already have too few checks and balances in our polity and too much power in the hands of the prevailing regime, not least through patronage. We do not need further encroachment on the balances that remain.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Unsightly pylons

Those in favour of a windfarm planning application because of the bribe of a community fund, should note that in addition to the windmills – unsightly in themselves – there will be associated pylons and overhead cables to take the windfarm output to the grid.

Windfarm developers never mention this in their planning applications.

Highland region residents are presently discovering this to their alarm, as pylons and cables impinge upon dwellings and tourist attractions.

The magnetic fields these power lines create, are also considered by some to be a health risk to humans and animals.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Perth & Kinross

Murray needs a pal

Voters of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, please vote Labour in the upcoming by-election. If only to give Ian Murray, the conscientious and all-round wonderful MP for Edinburgh South, and currently Labour's only Scottish MP, a new pal at Westminster.

Martin Redfern, Melrose, Scottish Borders

Labour pains

What is Labour’s message to Scottish voters ? A question that arises as a result of Shadow Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting suggesting UK Labour does not have to sing from the same hymn sheet as Scottish Labour.

The UK Labour Party has abandoned its principles, hanging hard-working families out to dry, by confirming that the Conservative two-child cap on benefits would be retained should Labour win the next UK election. But it is not only policies relating to welfare that have raised eyebrows. Sir Keir Starmer has gone completely against his Labour MSPs’ voting record on gender issues.

So is there a split between UK Labour and Scottish Labour? Are Scottish Labour picking and choosing what they think voters in Scotland want to hear?

Mr Streeting claims Labour is the party of devolution and devolution means devolved powers. However, the two-child benefit cap is not devolved, just like 86 per cent of welfare spend in Scotland. The gender issue being devolved and democratically voted upon at Holyrood (including by Labour MSPs), is now being undermined by Westminster. Wes Streeting can’t have it all ways – the message to the voters in Scotland from Scottish Labour must include the message from the UK Labour Party which hopes to form the next UK government.

Catriona C Clark, Falkirk

Poll position

Poll trickery indeed (Letters, 8 August). Well said to Aileen Jackson, particularly her last point. Apart from the footling numbers of people actually asked in such surveys, which are then headlined and reported as supposedly an accurate reflection of the whole population’s opinion, the questions very often cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. Nuance and context can be not only relevant but critical.

Having said that, in my 65 years of deemed adulthood (i.e. deemed nowadays by so-called “progressives”, actually about 59) I have never been asked my opinion in any such survey, and find it rather sad when election results turn out to be very close to the latest opinion or exit polls.

Without going as far as giving a false reply, why do more of us not just say “it’s none of your business”? And if we do, how is that recorded?

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

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