Thatcher’s ghost haunts the Green movement - Readers' Letters

The end of BiFab feels like the return of Thatcher. A flashback to a darker time when the very breath of Scotland’s beating industrial body was choked out of us. Factory closure followed factory closure and the sheer weight of industrial collapse crushed all opposition. Back then it was the free market, now it’s the Green movement. Pious principle may have replaced price as the catalyst for change but the impact on working-class communities is the same.

Are wind turbines and other green energy initiatives cost-effective?

As Fifers have discovered, the global green marketplace is no friendlier to the worker than the carbon economy before. At least when the mining industry expired and power privatisation arrived, severance payments were made with pensions topped up. I suspect that many of the modern redundancy terms would’ve made even Maggie blush.

Where are the pay-packets coming from for the new electric cars, replacement gas boilers and soaring electricity costs? We can’t all work as Green lobbyists or government bureaucrats. A golden Saudi Arabian dawn of wind energy was promised but all the Fife workers tasted was sand kicked in their faces.

It’s no better across the river Forth in East Lothian, where this Green reign of terror will deliver three monster substations to connect the wind farms to the grid. Rendering once productive land useless and threatening the last great hope of a modern Cruise/Ferry terminal.

The blind faith race to wind power has no pause for thought as it transforms Scotland into one giant pin cushion. However, more than a voodoo doll is needed to ward off a dramatic fall in sustainable base load: just one long cold windless winter will bring this country to its knees.

A reboot of our thinking on clean/reliable/safe electricity production would lead logically to the commissioning of both Torness B and Hunterston C. An industrial strategy, if we had one, would identify nuclear power as the forgotten means to securing high-tech Scottish jobs and apprenticeships in the future.

Calum Miller

Polwarth Terrace, Prestonpans

Heavy weather

Gordon Brown and Labour “heavyweights” only bring “near federalism” up when they know that support for Scottish self-government is gaining ground. They have had six years to incorporate the 2014 last-minute Vow promise into their election manifesto.

HM Treasury figures show that the consequences of no -eal Brexit in Scotland is a reduction of nine per cent of our wealth and even with a free trade deal it’s six per cent of our GDP. Federalism would not prevent Scotland crashing out of Europe against our democratic wishes and with their veto small countries in Europe have more say on the negotiations than the Scottish Government, whose views have been consistently ignored by Boris Johnson.

More devolution would not have saved BiFab as our competitors can circumvent state aid rules by raising third-party finance via their National Investment Banks and grant guarantees.

Federalism is a non-starter simply because England doesn’t want it and Westminster is already a parliament for England with Scottish MPs banned from voting on English matters whereas English MPs can legislate for Scotland with Tories planning to bypass our Scottish Parliament’s priorities with their UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Mary Thomas

Watson Crescent, Edinburgh

Red alert

Labour, both at Scottish and UK level, appear to be advocating a multi-choice constitutional referendum. The choices will include it seems the opportunity of breaking up the UK. After Labour’s humiliation in the last UK general election I ventured that the party hierarchy had lost it and were being guided by activists, not voters, and confusing the two and hence the thrashing. Nothing seems to have changed.

Any real Labour voter in Scotland would have told the party that no matter how appealing their policies appear on paper, more devolution, however dressed up, is a non-starter. Who would be attracted back to the Labour fold by a maxi-devolution stand? In Scotland, voters have the freedom to choose the full shebang, the SNP. It is ludicrous to think otherwise. Richard Leonard is a Jeremy Corbyn man and this is reflected in the party’s present dithering stance.

What is required is clear and unequivocal opposition to any more creeping nationalism. Take a stand and be firm and resolute. If they were to lose – and they cannot be in a much worse position than they are at present – then they would go down respected and admired, with all guns blazing and flags flying. They would be real Labour again.

Alexander McKay

New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh

Strictly speaking

On Sunday, JJ from Dunfermline was knocked out of Strictly. And Nicola Sturgeon still hasn't insisted the votes of the people of Scotland are being ignored, nor yet demanded indyef2! What? The SNP leader missing a wholly puerile reason to manufacture a grievance? Unheard of.

Martin Redfern

Melrose, Roxburghshire

Cultural deficit

It is deemed internationally essential to attempt to protect endangered languages and their attendant cultures, and efforts are being made world-wide to prevent their deaths.

I think it behoves us to do what we can for Gaelic which falls within this description, and is one of our Scottish languages (Scots is also one). The argument that it’s not being, or never was, spoken in one’s area does, I think, miss the point. When a language disappears, a culture dies, and the world is the poorer.

H A N McKenzie

Grange Loan, Edinburgh

Lack of respect

Is it possible for the SNP to drag themselves any lower with the rhetoric used towards the royal family, in particular the Earl and Countess of Strathearn (Scotsman, 8 December).

I can see in my mind’s eye, in true Janey Godley style, the First Minister’s head shaking with fury as she uttered the defeatist words: “We are not going to tell them they cannot come to Scotland.”

I am no royalist, far from it, but I was brought up to show respect to others through my deeds and words. Sadly this most basic form of common decency is non-existent in the SNP.

It would have been more prudent to have made no comment at all than the drivel expounded by Martin Docherty-Hughes MP: “It will take more than wearing a tartan scarf to protect the Earl of Strathearn from the chilly reception this trip has had from the Scots”. Once again, speaking for “the people of Scotland”.

Perhaps they might be better addressing the issue of the SNP government’s shocking treatment of the hospitality industry, lower funded than by any other UK government, while sitting on a billion pounds of Covid-19 finance given to them by the UK Government for such purposes amongst many others. But no, better to produce a Covid politeness booklet, yet another money-wasting, patronising piece of nonsense.

Judging by the content I have seen, it doesn’t look like we are going to be treated like “grown-ups” any time soon.

David Millar

West High Street, Lauder

Royal tour

I understand theroyals wish to try to be “relevant” but their charm offensive taking them around the country is not only irresponsible but also thoroughly conceited.

The best way they could have contributed to fighting this pandemic would be to have stayed at home like the rest of us.

D Mitchell

Coates Place, Edinburgh

The borrowers

I was very concerned read Scott Macnab’s article regarding Holyrood’s finance and constitution committee’s latest report (Scotsman, 7 Dcember).

It quotes Bruce Crawford as saying: “However, without its own borrowing powers to fund day-to-day spending, the Scottish Government is largely constrained …” Surely day-to-day spending is the last thing any organisation from a household to a government should be borrowing for?

Government borrowing should be to invest in infrastructure, or similar, to grow the economy while day-to-day expenditure should be covered by the Barnett consequentials or income tax, over which the Scottish Government has control.

If the Scottish Government cannot fund day-to-day expenditure it should either raise taxes or cut expenditure, perhaps like the proposed Scottish Government offices in European capitals?

W A Cant

Fowlis, Dundee

Bad comparison

If we have two islands of equal area but one has a much greater population than the other we would of course expect the former to have a much greater problem of infection spread than the latter – the population density effect.

On the other hand, if they have the same population numbers but the first has this scattered in isolated crofts whereas the second has the whole concentrated in a single village then the second would have the greater problem – the population dispersal effect.

Compared with Scotland, England has by far the greater problem arising from a combination of both effects.

Infection rates per capita may be useful for monitoring the progress of control within a defined area but should not be used unqualified for comparing the success of control measures in different areas.

When the wellbeing and even the lives of so many people are involved, to use this and the even more questionable comparison of total numbers for countries of hugely different population size for purely political point-scoring as per Leah Gunn Barrett ( Letters, 7 December) I find particularly abhorrent.

Dr A McCormick

Kirkland Road, Terregles, Dumfries