Readers' Letters: Government tier rules stretch credibility

Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister's Questions yesterday

Aberdeen was "punished" with a short sharp lockdown lesson, but the SNP heartlands in Glasgow and Lanarkshire were not and when the tier system was introduced, they escaped appropriate allocation into Tier 4. Had the same strict measures been taken, would the heartlands still be suffering as badly? The allocation of tiers is also confusing, with some areas being unfairly punished. Confusing and at times illogical treatment of businesses struggling for survival is difficult to understand. Comprehension of the commercial world has never been an SNP government strongpoint, with many of the government appointees to Secretarial positions having had no experience of working in the real business world.Concerns have been expressed by the First Minister about straining limited NHS resources, with not enough personnel to service the extra emergency “hospitals” converted for accommodating an upsurge of potential Covid patients.A case in point is the inadequate number of trained nurses. In 2011, the then Health Secretary started to cut nursing training places and managed, purportedly, to quadruple the number of unfilled nursing posts.Who was that Health Secretary? Nicola Sturgeon.

Fraser MacGregor, Liberton Drive, Edinburgh

Well placed

I would like to point out to Stan Grodynski (Letters, 5 November) that long ago I was both a practising scientist and teacher of such, particularly to medical students, and think I still have enough nous to comment in this area. The input to government anti-pandemic action is not definitive science but the opinions of scientists which may, of course, vary.

For example, our eminent epidemiologist Professor Sunetta Gupta is a prime mover for an alternative approach which could well give just as good a direct medical outcome but without the huge collateral cost to the economy, other health issues, etc., of our current methods. For this she has been vilified in the media. As I see it the problem of her method is that it relies almost entirely on voluntary compliance with guidelines where the current growing complexity of rules and growing failure of even compulsory compliance, particularly amongst younger people, is a major cause of our present miserable existence and likely future.

Of course I will "rather arrogantly" repeat that I am better placed to judge the safety of any planned journey of my own than the Scottish Government. I know where I intend to go, whether it will require any intermediate stops, who I am going to meet and in what locality. As I said before, it is the level of infection of the latter that matters, not whether it is in England or Scotland. If Mr Grodynsky had read my letter properly he would have noticed that I did not try to influence the travel arrangements of anyone else and, yes, did state that we would not go to meet family at Christmas as usual. We will of course take his advice to stay at home, as we have done for the past eight months – in fact I have refuelled my car just once in all that time.

(Dr) A McCormick, Kirkland Road, Terregles

Separate logic

So Nicola Sturgeon plans to use UK taxpayer funds to set up Scottish quasi-embassies across European capitals. Only the naive would believe these are for trade purposes – they'll inevitably be used as political hubs to try to generate support for an independent Scotland to join the EU, bypassing the EU's strict entry requirements, which currently Scotland nowhere nearly meets. However, of more concern is what this means our money isn't being spent on. The SNP administration has a purely domestic remit – education, the NHS, transport etc. Are all these services so massively over-funded now that the nationalists can afford to divert cash to chase their own separatist dreams?

Martin Redfern, Melrose, Roxburghshire

Norway knowhow

Your editorial (4 November) is spot on, and immediate government action is required to secure any future in offshore energy projects. The problems surrounding BiFab are symptomatic of the lack of investment in manufacturing by successive UK governments for several decades.

Scotland’s North Sea oil bonanza which was sent to Westminster could have been much greater if we had followed Norway’s ownership and taxation example. Now we can’t match Norway or Denmark in the manufacturing of renewable energy products. Norway spent some of their oil revenues investing in shipbuilding and renewable energy, including hydrogen fuel cells. Norwegian municipalities together with central government own 90 per cent of Norway’s electricity capacity, plus the bulk of Norway’s ports.

BiFab lost out in an order for turbine jackets for the big Seagreen project being built for SSE, a Swiss-registered energy company, when undercut by a US contractor called Fluor and a state-owned Chinese firm operating out of a low-tax port outside of Hong Kong. Despite the Scottish government spending £54 million to save BiFab, their ultimate owners, a Canadian private equity fund firm, appear to be unable to borrow funds to undertake the construction work yet blames the Scottish Government for withdrawing guarantees that would facilitate a bank loan.

Allowing private equity firms, often owned offshore, to control our strategist manufacturing, energy and transport interests is no way to run a country.

It is also worth noting that under the UK internal Market Bill, giving local preference in the procurement and awarding of public sector contracts will be illegal.

Fraser Grant, Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh

Only connect

The editorial "Offshore wind power dream in jeopardy" needs to be challenged. (4 November). To say "harnessing the extraordinary power of Scotland's wind energy is an economic opportunity of a lifetime" is at least ten years too late. Where are the 28,000 jobs Alex Salmond promised? Last year wind farms – mostly in foreign ownership – were given record subsidies of £1.3 billion. No wonder fuel poverty is so high.

The editorial touches on BiFab and that Scotland cannot give State Aid because of EU diktats. France got round this problem 51 times by giving tax breaks. The public has been misled by gullible politicians, who were promised by the wind industry that electricity would be cheap. So far this year £835 million of constraint payments has been paid to electricity suppliers in the UK, of which Scotland accounts for £773 million. Building even more wind turbines would mean even more constraint payments are added to our electricity bills. Germany has 29,546 wind turbines and the highest electricity charges in Europe and in the top four in the world. Spot the connection.

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow

Say again?

Taking the proverbial Tunnocks, we now have the Janus-faced SNP government bewailing that State-aid rules (emanating from their beloved EU) mean they are unable to bail out BiFab – and also fulminating that Scotland is being dragged out of the EU against its will – and simultaneously falling over themselves to assert that an "independent" Scotland would pursue a swift and easy return to the all-benevolent EU fold!

Ronald Johnston, St Ola, Orkney

Out of date

LGBT Catholics were heartened a few weeks ago by warmer comments from Pope Francis which seemed to back civil unions. While this largesse was not the marriage equality to which LGBT people are entitled, many rejoiced in what seemed like, “a step in the right direction.”

They shouldn’t have got their hopes up. The Vatican has now insisted that Francis’s comments were out of context, referred only to secular law and were in no way a departure from official Catholic doctrine which would never give “approval of deviant behaviour”. Seems like this surface modernising will survive only as long as the current Pope. Should we even care about these equality-flouting anachronistic attitudes?

We certainly should when they are running state-funded schools.

Neil Barber, Edinburgh Secular Society, Saughtonhall Drive, Edinburgh

Deplorable

Your leader column (5 November, ‘Level of support for Trump is shocking’) is more astonishing than the large Republican vote you decry. I am saddened you have been sucked into the same arrogant narrative displayed by the left in America which has its echo across the western world; and that failed to anticipate the electorate’s mood.

This attitude towards voters found its most potent outlet when Hillary Clinton described Trump voters as “deplorables”; costing her the 2016 election. Only when the current establishment drops its moral superiority complex which disregards all other points of view will a less divided path lie before us.

To be so confounded by voters of the Republican Party in the US, or pro-Brexit voters here in the UK, demonstrates a terrible intolerance towards those who think differently. This is much more shameful than anyone voting for Trump or Brexit.

Fraser Hudghton, South Crescent, East Saltoun, East Lothian

Trumped up

I was surpris ed the leader of the SNP made her comment about the losing side in a democratic process accepting the result.

The SNP’s ‘’reasons’’ for not accepting their own leaders’ self-declared “once in a lifetime ” and demonstrably democratic result in 2014 a re even more nonsensical than those of Donald Trump.

Alexander McKay, New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh

Write to The Scotsman

We welcome your thoughts. Write to [email protected] including name, address and phone number. Keep letters under 300 words, with no attachments, and avoid Letters to the Editor in your subject line.

A message from the Editor

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.