Readers' Letters: Ssshh! Don't make historic library an events venue

Plans, reported in Scotland on Sunday, for the National Library of Scotland to become an “events venue” are to be resisted.The head librarian aka CEO is quoted as planning on opening up the site to host weddings and large events, inspired by the Central Library in New York.

The National Library of Scotland in no way resembles a city’s central library. It is a copyright library, a national institution providing citizens with a time machine to explore a kaleidoscope of evidence across the wide gamut of Scottish cultural life from the now to the medieval past.

The staff are unfailingly helpful and informed, something I have noted in some 30 years of using the library, they reflect standards of public service others would do well to emulate. Yet I have detected recently they are labouring with cutbacks and the merging of departments. Far from nurturing this human resource they are now to be thrust into the hospitality business. I note the process is already underway and the library is closing early on two days in June for “events”.

Bosses at The National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh want the institution to become a destination of choice for weddings and other events (Picture: Neil Hanna/AFP via Getty Images)

It would be helpful if the authors, now successful, who rightly laud the NLS as a place that nurtured their fledgling talents would take up the cudgels and oppose this barbarian plan. They could join the budding writers of the future, the students, book groups, those visitors researching family histories, academics and the simply curious citizens anxious to find something out, all of whom use the library as a matchless venue of cultural value, in resisting the attempt to turn it into yet another Edinburgh events venue.

Douglas Macleod, Edinburgh

Nightmare goes on

It beggars belief that Rachel Reeves suggests that the UK might offer support to our “ally”, Israel, in its ongoing missile bombardment of Iran (your report, 27 June). Even Donald Trump has distanced himself from.this attack.

Most Israelis are appalled by this unprovoked aggression, scary in its pinpoint accuracy, with deep uncertainty in its longterm consequences. How many enemies does Israel actually need?

The aggressor-in-chief is Benjamin Netanyahu, whose precarious personal position is contained by keeping Israel in a perpetual state of war. He stands accused of war crimes and corruption.

Hypocritically, Netanyahu urges the regime change of Iran's equally loathsome government. Arguably, regime change is required in Israel itself, by democratic means. The USA alone has the ultimate leverage to provide that outcome, though Europe has a part to play.

Meanwhile, for the people of Palestine, the nightmare continues.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Iran dilemma

The current Israel/Iran situation raises an interesting point for the SNP and Scottish Greens. The SNP leader in Westminster, Stephen Flynn, has recently intimated that an independent Scotland would have suspended diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Scottish Greens are well known for not being supportive of Israel either. This produces a difficult dilemma for both parties. Assuming they are not in the Israeli camp in the current war ( and how likely is that?) this puts them on the side of Iran. There is really no viable middle ground given such antipathy towards anything Israeli.

This implies that both these Scottish parties, despite their well-versed opposition to absolutely anything nuclear, would therefore be happy to see a nuclear-armed Iran. If this is not the case then they must support Israel in its actions to prevent this.

This ably demonstrates how neither Scottish party really considers where their policies can lead, a position most Scots understand very well given the last 18 years of SNP rule with much help from the Greens included.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Nuclear nod

I can assure Frances McKie (Letters, 16 June) that an enormous amount of research on the safe long-term disposal of nuclear waste has been done since the Flowers Report of 1976.

Much has been done on corrosion, not by the waste, because it isn't, but by nature – if old iron is left outside it will rust. The results of the research have shown that by using the right kinds of containers it will be possible to store the waste until well after it has gone cold.

As for mining uranium in Orkney, it never happened, despite preparatory work for it getting strong support from the EU. Orkney has instead benefited enormously from the oil industry, and no doubt has played a significant role in helping it to generate massive amounts of greenhouse gas, a far more dangerous pollutant than nuclear waste ever has been or is likely to be for the foreseeable future.

Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen

Great Acorns

On 11 June the BBC News website reported that to date the UK Government has pledged £17.8 billion towards the construction of the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk. The project is being funded by UK Treasury borrowing. As a consequential of this borrowing a total of £1.513bn will be included within future Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures as this country's “share” of the total amount being borrowed.

This is despite the fact that no nuclear power stations are being built in Scotland. Indeed, Scotland already produces a surplus of electricity and people living in the north east will soon be treated to the sight of massive pylons being constructed throughout their area to carry this surplus power to our southern neighbours.

On 12June the UK Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, stated that a total of £200 million would be allocated to fund the proposed Acorn carbon capture project at St Fergus. While this very long overdue announcement is to be welcomed, it pales into absolute insignificance when compared to the £21.7bn over 25 years to support carbon capture projects in the North East and North West of England. As these projects are being funded through UK Treasury borrowing, Scotland will also be given an allocated “share” of the consequential debt for them when its future GERS figures are published.

The combined funding bill for these projects in England totals (so far) £39.5bn. Scottish taxpayers – present and future – will be required to pay their share of the money borrowed to build them. It has to be asked if people living in Scotland consider £200m for the Acorn Project at St Fergus has been a fair deal when placed against the many billions already set aside for carbon capture in North East and North West England?

On last week's BBC Scotland Debate Night show the subject of the UK Government's Spending Review was discussed. Scottish actor Brian Cox said, “For Starmer, everything is about England”. Given the situation related to the Acorn Project it is difficult not to concur with that particular opinion.

Jim Finlayson, Banchory, Aberdeenshire

Planet in pain

Dictatorships and authoritarian governments are becoming increasingly repressive and democracy is failing, with incompetent politicians increasingly relying on evasion and lies. Excessive greed and poverty are running rampant and hatred and aggression plague the planet, with wars being waged everywhere.

The Earth is in distress, with extreme weather conditions becoming more prevalent, much of which is due to human activity. Has mankind outlived its welcome on this or any other planet?

John Marsh, Firthmuir of Boysack, Arbroath

Brexit tale

SNP MSP Stephen Gethins continues with his regular condemnation of Brexit and fulsome praise for the EU (Perspective, 14 June).

Taking full advantage of Brexit was thrown off course by Covid, Boris Johnson’s self-destruction and Putin’s War, so it is too soon to opine that it “has left us poorer”, and nonsense that we are “less secure and outside the European mainstream”; he ignores the EU’s own economic problems. Then prime minister Theresa May wanted to include “the defence sector”, our “security links” and our better intelligence services in her Brexit talks in early 2017, but the EU reacted like a spoilt child at the notion that the UK would even consider putting them on the table to the potential disadvantage of the EU; so she caved in.

Professor Gethins implies he foresaw Putin’s threat back in 2004 – but what did he or any other politician, academic, diplomat or military attache say or do then? Precious little in public that I recall; and his former leader Alex Salmond was happy to broadcast his show on Russia Today from 2017.

Of course the Europeans should “share the burden of continental security” but it is they who have fallen well short of meeting even Nato’s 2 per cent of GDP target, and it is primarily the EU which continues to finance Putin’s War by even now paying greater sums to buy his oil and gas than it gives to Ukraine in aid!

No doubt we can learn from our neighbours (including England?) on free education, a national health service and valuing human rights and the rule of law – but in all of these such learning is a two-way process. And is the no-weapons non-nuclear SNP really a “reliable part” of European defence?

If we are “hobbled” outside the EU, Prof Gethins should at least acknowledge that it was François Hollande’s and Angela Merkel’s policies and thin-gruel offers to David Cameron which caused Brexit (and incidentally strengthened Russia) rather than the more substantive EU-wide reforms advocated by the then Dutch prime minister and now Nato leader, Mark Rutte.

Finally, to state “the UK stepped back as the rest of Europe stepped up” is a gross insult to the UK and to our then prime minister Boris Johnson, who was the first, foremost and consistent advocate of supporting Ukraine immediately after Putin’s invasion.

It is certain EU members who are at best equivocal about or, astoundingly, even firm supporters of Putin’s Russia.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

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