Readers' Letters: Jail threats are not the answer to deer problem

Deer management remains a hot topic in rural Scotland

In relation to Ross Ewing and Lea MacNally’s article “SNP must ditch unbelievable plan to send people to prison for refusing to kill deer” (Perspective, 1 February), the important thing to understand here is that in order to get effective deer management at a landscape scale as people suggest they want, you need to encourage and persuade owners and employees of multiple landholdings that some new situation will be better for them all, as well as the public more generally, if they worked together. This requires skills in facilitation and consensus-building, which you can only develop through incentivisation and encouragement, making people aware of examples of good practice as necessary. “Show me, don’t tell me!”

You don’t get people to work together by threatening to send them to jail. We already have provision for this in Scotland through the Wildlife and Natural Environment Act (WANE) of 2011, whereby people can be treated as criminals for having the temerity for disagreeing with government agency analysis. The power was never used, and the only group to be threatened simply told the Scottish Government where to go and they backed down.

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The one thing I disagree with in the article is that all this nonsense is down to the Scottish Greens. The Deer Working Group report was commissioned when the SNP formed the Scottish Government by themselves, and they had it in their manifesto to take forward their recommendations. Lorna Slater MSP may be a Green Party politician, but as a Minister she was taking forward her part of an agreed programme for the whole Scottish Government. So, they are all complicit in this.

Landowners could soon face a £40,000 fine or three months’ imprisonment if they fail to comply with an instruction to cull deer on their landLandowners could soon face a £40,000 fine or three months’ imprisonment if they fail to comply with an instruction to cull deer on their land
Landowners could soon face a £40,000 fine or three months’ imprisonment if they fail to comply with an instruction to cull deer on their land

There is no need for the new powers being drafted, because Nature Scot already have all the powers they need for intervention, and have had them since 1996. All they lack is the will and confidence to use them, and you cannot legislate some backbone into people. The Scottish Parliament are wasting their time and ours, too, by continuing down this line. Work with people if you want to achieve things. Don’t threaten or patronise them. It is not a difficult concept to understand.

Perhaps the problem is that our politicians themselves probably do not have these skills, and they should take a long look in the mirror if they want to see what is actually wrong.

A bit of self-analysis would not go amiss.

Victor Clements, Aberfeldy, Perthshire

Farage fan?

You have to feel sorry for Scottish Conservatives leader Russell Findlay, he doesn’t know what to do with Reform UK.

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On the one hand he’s being tough in The Scotsman, accusing Reform of “hiding away from Scottish voters” (he is correct about that) and telling us “he doesn’t care what they do”. Well done Russell, you are trying to be a bulwark against Reform.

But then, Russell is copying their language in an attempt to halt the slide of support draining from his party to Reform. He accuses the Scottish Parliament of being a “desperate place in a bubble” and calls it “the epicentre of twee self-righteous Scotland.” That sounds like the language of Nigel Farage, who in the past has called for Holyrood to have fewer powers.

Of course, Nigel Farage is not completely against Holyrood. Thanks to our wholly undemocratic system of imposing MSPs on people; through the unaccountable list system Nigel will get a few MSPs, which will give his party’s faithful another platform to remind us all the central Reform message which, of course, is two things.

First, that Brexit is a roaring success, despite prices rising, living standards falling and bureaucracy flourishing.

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And Reform’s second big selling point, that Nigel Farage knows Donald Trump. Yes, thank goodness for the list system. Without it MSPs people don’t want would have to find jobs.

Russell was a cheerleader for Liz Truss. If he’s not careful he risks being seen as a cheerleader for Nigel Farage.

Alex Lunn, Edinburgh

Steady hand

Both in personality and politics, it would be hard to find a greater contrast than that between Donald Trump and John Swinney. In appearance also, for thankfully John Swinney wouldn't be seen dead wearing a baseball cap, emblazoned with the rather fatuous slogan Make Scotland Great Again (MSGA).

Alastair GJ Stewart, in his thoughtful article “Why John Swinney is the Gerald Ford of Scottish politics” (Perspective, 3 February), suggests that John Swinney, in his quiet, unassuming way, is in the process of doing that. He quotes Jimmy Carter's tribute to Gerald Ford, thanking him “for all he did to heal our land”.

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The SNP has taken a long time to recover from their agonisingly close defeat in the Independence Referendum of 2014. After the somewhat tumultuous terms of office featuring Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney has not just steadied the ship. He has also transformed the party to be the clear favourites for the 2026 election. It will be interesting to see what happens when MAGA and MSGA eventually meet.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Shaky fist?

Alistair GJ Stewart needs to watch First Minister’s Questions more often. Far from being the decent conciliatory chap he describes, John Swinney comes across as a blustering, bawling, bully.

That this unruly cockpit is ruled over by a feartie Presiding Officer only adds to this demeaning spectacle!

Andrew Kemp, Rosyth, Fife

Profit fears

After reading an article in The Scotsman regarding zonal charging which will reduce the wee energy bills in Scotland (2 February), it comes as no surprise that the big companies are against the idea, claiming it will affect investment for future green energy projects.

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I suggest it will only affect their huge profits which they are bleeding us for and not investment, I also think it will be an incentive for other areas to push ahead with their own area’s green power so they too may access cheaper bills. This would probably stop the so-called nimbies and accelerate the installation in other areas so Scotland can keep at least some of its scenery unspoiled.

The greed of the big companies is disgraceful, the whole point of it is to reduce our bills (or so they say).

Andrew Thorpe, Dunfermline, Fife

Still solo

William Ballantine suggests that Scotland as a member in its own right of the EU would not be independent because of power sharing (Letters, 3 February). The corollary is that the current 27 EU members, who share power, are not independent of each other. Some mistake, surely?

E Campbell, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Reverse Midas

With the lack of thought-through professionalism and competence for which the SNP are infamous, the administration again finds itself up a certain creek without paddles. They should know the way out by now, so many times have they been up there. This time it concerns batteries on their latest cunning plan to leave the UK floundering in the wake of Scottish Nationalist-Green technology.

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The first problem is a simple one – they do not have the onshore grid capacity to recharge their seven electric-powered ferries’ batteries as planned. One of them, the MV Hallaig, has been running on the SNP/Greens’ bete noire fuel, diesel, since late 2023. I could go on and on, listing all the problems, but they are pretty much along the lines of what preceded them – all of them touched by the SNP Reverse-Midas magic and ministers' startling incompetence.

Please can we return to the days when projects like this were taken out of the hands of scheming and one-issue politicians, in particular nationalists and Greens, and given to professionals who care only about cost, efficiency and safety.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

An old colonial

Keir Starmer has been very vocal about the nimbies who do not want renewable energy projects, giant pylons, overhead lines, substations, and battery energy storage systems (BESS) in their environment.

Yet, with a bit of research and observation, it would appear Keur Starmer is the greatest nimby of them all. For all this junk being dumped in our countryside in the name of “Net Zero” comes at a price, and that price is the offshoring of our industry and therefore our carbon emissions.

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The UK does not source the materials required to make all this junk from within the UK. It comes from countries where unethical and exploitive mining takes place.

It doesn’t buy all the junk – the turbines, the pylons, the lithium batteries for BESS etc – from countries where industry is carbon free.

In fact, many, if not most, of the materials used in the junk we import comes from unregulated countries such as the DRC, where child labour is the norm and toxic waste is something the workers wade in so we can get our lithium and cobalt. And all the junk mainly comes from China, which has the greatest consumption emissions in the world.

Starmer’s idea of Net Zero is a fantasy, for if you add a country’s offshoring of emissions, otherwise known as “territory emissions”, to its consumption emissions – the ones it produces within its borders – the UK remains pretty productive in CO2.

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Starmer is just an old-fashioned colonial; self-righteous, hypocritical and megalomaniacal.

Denise Davis, Kiltarlity, Highland

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