Readers' Letters: Misguided plan for Edinburgh's Soutside ignited the conservation commun

Alison Campsie’s article (Scotsman, 12 February) on the failed plans to comprehensively redevelop Edinburgh’s Southside 50-60 years ago brought back many memories.

A new pedestrian deck sits over Edinburgh's Nicolson Street with a view opening up towards the university's Old College in this artist's impression of the abandoned plans. Illustration by Alexander Duncan Bell from the Collection of Clive Fenton, University of Edinburgh.

It is to the everlasting credit of my favourite Edinburgh Professor, Percy Johnson-Marshall, that he ultimately turned his back on the massive proposal to raze many historic buildings and replace them with characterless modern structures linked together with intrusive pedestrian decks.

One excellent result of that misguided plan is that it ignited the conservation community and spurred it to redouble its advocacy for sensitively rehabilitating old buildings with architectural value.

In June 1973 I was a member of a postgradutate studio team in the Department of Urban Design and Regional Planning (at 57 George Square) which produced a detailed report recommending the conservation approach for Southside, as opposed to levelling scores of solid 18th and 19th century buildings that simply needed reinvestment to elevate them to modern standards. Surprisingly (to us students), our report caught public attention and became the subject of an article in The Scotsman.

Four months later similar recommendations were put forward by the Edinburgh Amenity and Transport Association, followed in March 1974 by Forgotten Southside, prepared by the University Rector’s Working Party on Planning, advocating the same approach. These efforts were also supplemented by the hard work of the South Side Association around the same time.

By happy coincidence, the approval of the huge St James Centre reduced commercial interest in redeveloping the Nicolson Square area into a competing shopping area. Another fortuitous event was the decision by the Crown Estate Commissioners in October 1977 to provide essential funding to enable many buildings in the study area to be rehabilitated. Fortunately for Southside, and for the city as a whole, many historic buildings were saved from needless demolition, and the idea of submerging streets beneath elevated pedestrian walkways became too great a leap from reality for municipal leaders to accept.

Randall Arendt, FRTPI Brunswick, Maine, United States

Online abuse

It was reassuring that Christine Jardine was magnanimous enough to acknowledge that online abuse of political opponents can occur across the party spectrum (Scotsman, 21 February).

She is on less strong ground when she attributes the growth of this abuse to “identity politics”. It is rather the idea that winning at all costs is in the nature of campaigning. If some activists feel that exposure of personal weakness, or past misdemeanours, or duplicity, can achieve a win then they will resort to it. Certainly, online abuse, sadly backed by anonymity, is now part of the lexicon. But vitriol was always a tactic to be used even when the standard method of persuasion was chalking on pavements or lengthy speeches in town halls.

It was sad that outgoing BBC Scotland political editor Sarah Smith was subject to hostile criticism during the 2014 independence referendum. But I doubt if her new role as the broadcaster's North America correspondent will bring her the anonymity she craves.

The events at Capitol Hill some 13 months ago should remind her of that. The physical attempt to intimidate the United States legislature deserved worldwide exposure. The BBC had a duty to cover the event and its aftermath fully. Its reputation would ensure that both sides of the argument would be watching closely to see how the matter was covered. It would be wrong for Sarah Smith or any other correspondent to be reviled for the work of reporting on it. It would be realistic to note that American politics can be even more febrile than that of Scotland, presenting a challenge for journalists from over the world.

Bob Taylor, Glenrothes, Fife

Rein in spleen

Christine Jardine complains about the appalling abuse thrown at Sarah Smith, but turns an otherwise fair analysis on its head by apportioning most blame to the First Minister and her party.

By stating that it is the very nature of nationalism to be personal and therefore seemingly abusive, she reveals a failure to see the reality of the situation. Every day, The Scotsman prints rude and nasty online comments attacking the Scottish Government and the First Minister in particular, far more than from independence supporters. One assumes the really nasty ones are cut out.

The reality is that both sides of the discussion need to modify their language, and both sides need to rein in their spleen. However, bleating about one side being more abusive than the other, and that only the opposing views are toxic, is completely pointless, and reveals an inability of the opposition to do anything other than oppose, unthinkingly.

Brian Bannatyne Scott, Edinburgh

Rebel yells

So a conspicuous minority of Nicola Sturgeon's own nationalist supporters, seemingly not content with abusing BBC correspondent, Sarah Smith, on social media, turn on their leader herself. Her crime? Praising the Olympic gold-winning GB women's curling team.

Presumably Sturgeon did so because they were Scottish but the GB affiliation alone was clearly unacceptable to the more fanatical “cybernats”, resulting in Sturgeon being pilloried in social media. What kind of place has Scotland become since nationalist dogma dominated Scottish politics?

Martin Redfern, Melrose, Scottish Borders

Olympic flags

Why can we not celebrate the win by the women curlers at the Winter Olympics without it leading to arguments about whether they are British or Scottish? I remember watching Allan Wells in Moscow in 1980 as a teenager and celebrating his success. I knew he was Scottish but as he was wearing the Union flag on his sportswear because he was representing GB (we didn’t have Team GB back then). Later at the Commonwealth Games, he would represent Scotland. It was simple and was not contentious.

Move on 40 years and now it is impossible for some people in Scotland to accept that sportspeople are representing GB rather than Scotland. I even saw a journalist tweet about “Team Scotland” at the Olympics.

These were sportspeople who had chosen to represent GB, wore the colours of GB and draped themselves in the Union Flag. It is disrespectful to the curlers for individuals to try to claim their victory for Scotland. We do not know how they feel about their nationality but it is not anyone’s place to try to manipulate their success to suit a political agenda.

Jane Lax, Aberlour, Moray

Energy resilience

The recent severe storms have highlighted our vulnerability when the power fails. It isn’t just the lights that go off – increasingly it’s virtually everything else too. Heating, cooking, freezers, internet, recharging mobile phones and indeed electric cars, all need that precious “juice” down the wires to function.

The risks involved were brought home to me recently when, hallelujah, we were connected to the fast fibre broadband network.However, the engineers disconnected our “copper wire” telephone landline at the same time. Calls go via the internet now. When that’s off, due to a power cut, the advice was “use your mobile in an emergency”. But in our hilly rural area none of the networks offer a signal inside the house. In a real emergency, that’s a problem.

Which got me thinking. I get it that electric power is better for us when striving towards “net zero”, but isn’t a dependency on one power source making us increasingly vulnerable? If climate change means a more volatile environment, damage to the network, outages, and disruption, we are faced with widespread multiple systems failures and all that means. Talk to the good folks in Aberdeenshire to find out how that feels.

If you want to darken this risk assessment further, think about a well-orchestrated cyber-attack on our country. Take down the grid and you will cause as much mayhem as several well placed bombs.

So, my response? I’m being as energy resilient as I can – electricity, yes, but gas, and a log burner too, amongst other things. Not ideal, I know, but a more robust way of getting by. I’ll save my carbon in other ways.

David Henry, Thankerton, South Lanarkshire

Russian threat

I worked and lived in Russia and Ukraine in the period from 1994 to 2008.

The current median wage in Russia today is approx £14,000. The current pension paid is £140 per month. Meanwhile, under Putin's rule, a large number of billionaire oligarchs has been created, benefitting from the "privatisation” of former state-owned assets.

It seems to me that the best way to deter Mr Putin, is to move against the oligarchs by freezing their assets and revoking their visas. That would create a backlash against the current Kremlin policies.

If we look at the recent history of Russian adventurism, dating from the war in Chechnya, the unlawful annexation of Crimea, the poisonings of people on the streets of the UK, the cyber-crime interventions, etc it is clear that this behaviour must be resolutely stopped, and every act of appeasement or of closed eyes to atrocities will simply embolden the Kremlin to go ever further.

It is time to act.

Derek Farmer, Anstruther, Fife

Putin’s tactics

Putin does not need to invade Ukraine. If a third of Ukraine breaks away to become a separate independent state then Russia can tell the West that if they do not interfere then neither will he.

Having a Russian army nearby on manoeuvres will help the West to make up its mind.

Andrew Burnett, Milnathort, Perth and Kinross

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