Letter: Stirring proposal

BRIAN Monteith's article (18 April) pointing out that the SNP's call for the closure of 80 per cent of our electric generating capacity by 2020 will inevitably cause blackouts, fuel poverty and the death of tens of thousands of pensioners, has stirred some response (Letters, 19 April).

It should have stirred more.

There is a close relationship between electricity production and GNP; so is the SNP policy to destroy 80 per cent of our national wealth? By comparison, all the other "issues" and promises of all the five "main" parties put together sink to the significance of discussing deckchair arranging on the Titanic. Not that Labour, Conservatives and Lib-Dems have much grasp of reality - their more "moderate" policy is merely to destroy 58 per cent of our electricity by 2020 - something they unanimously voted for in the world's most draconian law to prevent the "catastrophic global warming" we all saw last winter.

The only party to truly oppose this lunacy is Ukip, which is fully committed to allowing the building of as much inexpensive nuclear power as there are customers and which has denounced "catastrophic warming" for the fraud on the electorate it clearly is. Perhaps it is a coincidence that Ukip has been effectively banned from BBC coverage as not being one of the five main parties.

Mr Hegarty's letter denounces Monteith's case claiming that closing 80 per cent of our electicity will not cause harm because: "The actual intention is that renewable sources will produce the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scotland's annual electricity consumption by 2020".

The current 20 per cent renewables consist of 10 per cent hydro, which cannot be increased because all the good sites are taken, and 10 per cent windmills, anything else being too small to count. So we are to believe windmills (which depend on 1 billion a year subsidy in Scotland) can be increased 900 per cent over the next nine years? Even if it could, wind varies terribly. Last December it sank as low as 0.2 per cent. To keep the lights on then would require a 45,000 per cent increase in windmills - by 2020.

This may be SNP policy (and to a lesser extent that of the Lab, Con, Dems) but does anybody seriously suggest it is sensible?

Neil Craig

Woodlands Road, Glasgow