Readers' Letters: I'm not totally wild about idea of rewilding Scotland
I have a small concern about all this conversation about rewilding Scotland.
It sounds OK apart from the reintroduction of fierce animals that could attack humans. Hiking, walking and rambling generate an income from tourists taking in the fantastic scenery, and the reintroduction of fierce animals will put people off this pursuit.
David J Steel, by Newbigging, Dundee


Batty
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Hide AdMark Wild, the new Chief Executive of HS2, the train line that goes nowhere, expensively, has just spent £100 million on building a tunnel to keep bats safe and warm. He has the full approval of the UK Parliament that has removed the winter fuel allowance from the elderly, showing a fine example of priorities.
Holyrood has found the money to keep Scottish pensioners warm and it seems to me that every Scot making their New Year’s resolution should decide that this year they should support a government at Holyrood that takes full responsibility for governing Scotland. It is time for Scotland to escape from this batty government at Westminster.
Elizabeth Scott, Edinburgh
Hot air?
Yesterday’s Scotsman column by Chris McLauchlan declares “there is a buzz around the decision to locate the proposed UK Energy HQ in Aberdeen”. He says around 81 per cent of people feel positive about this proposal but, further in the article, doubts cannily start to emerge about funding.
However, my concern as an ordinary person is more along the lines of, will the proposed, so-called UK Energy invest to create UK-owned and operated energy sources or merely continue to underpin overseas investment and earnings? The concern centres on whether our UK business and public will benefit from control of pricing that reduces energy costs to allow our business to compete, reassuring the public that this country is less exposed to outside influences.
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Hide AdSo far I’ve picked up from our media that “green energy” will be the focus, that thousands of of jobs will be created with the HQ located in Aberdeen, and billions will be invested but little else of substance. At present that reads to me as: taxes will rise, more civil servants will be employed, a lot of hot air and meetings will be generated – and little else. Please prove me wrong.
A Lewis, Coylton, Ayrshire
Young minds
Commons Leader Lucy Powell said an Elections Bill – which would include lowering the voting age to 16 – could come in the next parliamentary session. Our politicos tell us to follow the science, anent Covid or climate change for example, but some – like Labour ministers and other so-called progressives – ignore the science regarding a further reduction in the UK voting age to 16-year-old children. The medical science increasingly shows the human brain reaches maturity in the mid-twenties, hence the previous age of 21 ensured that the average first-time voter was a mature 23 or 24 year-old rather than a teenage “probationary adult”.
John Birkett
St Andrews, Fife
Hardly hospitable
It was so lovely to read Jill Stephenson's letter in the true spirit of the Christmas Story, where Mary and Joseph were welcomed by the innkeeper despite not being from that part of Palestine (20 December). She characterises Leah Gunn Barrett's letter as “defective”, “ignorant” and “bizarre”. How unlike my own welcome when I moved here in 2022 and had a call from the late, great Alex Salmond saying “every New Scot gets a welcome from the former first minister!”
Ms Stephenson contradicts Ms Gunn Barrett with opinions, not facts. She goes on to say “it is arrogant for an American to accept British hospitality and then rubbish the British state”.
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Hide AdBoth Ms Gunn Barrett and I have Scottish ancestors (the clue is in her maiden name and my first name, which happens to be the name of Robert the Bruce's daughter as well as that of my paternal grandmother). As people who have paid taxes to the British state for more than 20 years in her case and 42 in mine, we are perfectly entitled to reject “British hospitality”. After all, our ancestors rejected it in the 17th and 18th centuries, definitively in 1776.We are simply here to return the favour and assist Scots in their struggle for liberation from a state which continues to take more money in taxes than we get back, consumes energy produced here at prices cheaper than we ourselves must pay, involves us in wars in which we do not wish to be involved, and “allows” us to host weapons of mass destruction on our doorstep.
Marjorie Ellis Thompson, Edinburgh
Federal idea
I agree with the conclusion reached by Stan Grodynski that the UK should have a federal constitution (Letters, 20 December). The present arrangement with a Parliament at Westminster acting both as the domestic assembly for England and that of the UK as a whole is irrational now we have devolution.
However, what we do not need is another talking shop and I suggest the federal authority should be an executive body dealing with such matters as foreign affairs, defence, financial and economic concerns for the whole UK. It would not need to be a large body – about the size of the current Cabinet – and mainly elected by proportional representation. It would function like a committee, with the chair elected separately in the same way as the president of France. Funding would come from corporation tax,VAT and the like.
The Westminster assembly would become the devolved government of England which, inter alia, would decide what to do with the House of Lords. Such an arrangement would put the four nations on an equal footing and give us a truly United Kingdom.
S Beck, Edinburgh
Write to The Scotsman
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