YOUR VIEWS: Art Deco hotel in Dalwhinnie in need of a name
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I am currently finishing a book about Art Deco in Scotland – but one building remains a mystery.
The Grampian Hotel in Dalwhinnie was a very elegant Art Deco roadhouse hotel built to accommodate motorists heading north on the A9.
It opened in July 1941, during the Second World War, and so it wasn’t written about at all in any of the architecture journals, or even in the national newspapers.
As a result, it has so far proven impossible for me to find out who designed it.
I have some ideas about whom it might have been including perhaps Alexander Cattanach, from Kingussie, who designed several Art Deco cinemas that had similar details.
The Edinburgh architects Reid & Forbes might be another possibility because there are similarities with some of the schools they designed, two of which were in Inverness.
But, really, I don’t know who was responsible and would love to find out.
I would greatly appreciate if any readers with information about the architect of the Grampian Hotel could please get in touch via the newspaper or directly with me at the supplied address.
Professor Bruce Peter
Professor of Design History
The Glasgow School of Art
167 Renfrew Street
Glasgow
G3 6RQ.
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Need for a sense of proportionality on holiday letting
As an operator of holiday let in Edinburgh and Kingussie I receive complaints over undue noise
Guests occasionally complain about undue noise from neighbouring properties rented by the university in one case to students and another by the local authority as affordable housing.
Does that mean student rentals and affordable housing rental should be curbed, that planning permission for schemes that cater for such demographics be refused?
I think not – there is a need to accommodate and the behaviour of a few cannot prevent supply for the vast majority that behave responsibly
Likewise I am sure there are a few – and in my experience it is a very few – of holiday let visitors that cause undue noise .
We now have licensing and a method of complaining if occurs and holding operators to account.
It is no place for planning to refuse permission for student accommodation or affordable housing accommodation because some might behave badly. It is no place for planning to refuse holiday let on such a basis either
This vilification of holiday let must now stop.
We are an area that in many ways that owes its existence to holiday let, to investment by Government in infrastructure and by private individuals in holiday accommodation.
We wish to be welcoming to visitors that are of huge help to local businesses, employment of cleaners, tradesmen and managers, the economy as a whole
We should be proud to be a holiday destination
Gordon Thomson
Gordonhall Farm
Kingussie.
* * *
Current policy in climate battle is a global failure
In their attacks on Neil Bryce both Roy Turnbull and Dermot Williamson argue that climate change is real and give their reasons (Strathy Letters, 11 January).
Let us assume they are right and that we are all going to hell in a climate handcart if we do not repent.
With their obvious expertise what would Roy Turnbull and Dermot Williamson suggest can be done to drag back those numerous nations which have been breaking their climate promises for years?
Reminder. COP28 was a disaster. COP28 merely called on countries ‘to contribute to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels’.
No ‘phase out’ no timescale, no compulsion and no penalties.
Most countries in the world are now ‘phasing up’ their consumption of fossil fuels.
Some recent headlines... India plans to double coal production, ignoring climate pledges; France drops renewables targets, Climatologist Jean-Marc Jancobici says wind, solar and hydroelectric power offer no miracle climate solution.
How many more COP conferences will it take Mr Turnbull and Mr Williamson for you and the world to admit that the current path of climate policy has failed spectacularly and is not being trod by numerous countries?
Clark Cross
Springfield Road
Linlithgow.
* * *
Starting to lose faith in weather warnings
Yet again the overstated warnings from the Met Office have literally amount to nothing. After the first 24 hour warning of frequent heavy snow showers throughout Sunday, not a flake fell in Aviemore from around 10am that day.
This left a measly one centimetre on the ground. I see the whole week is covered in warnings for snow from the Met Office which to be frank given the depths their forecasting I doubt for one minute will actually happen .
It is any wonder people get caught out as the Met Office seem to get their forecasts so wrong these days? Maybe it’s just an era of siding on caution. Certainly years ago the forecasts were much more accurate. Oh and it is not just Aviemore where they are so far out.
So whilst we are all still waiting for the so called bad weather to arrive , I feel pretty confident as an amateur forecaster that their will be no need to get those sledges out just yet.
Chris Barrett
Aviemore.
* * *
It was not all doom and gloom in 2023
While last year seemed to be one of doom and gloom in the world, including ongoing war in Ukraine, conflict in Gaza and the cost-of-living crisis, there was in fact much to celebrate.
Medically, we are seeing a pace of progress that has not been witnessed for a century. Artificial intelligence and 3D printing provide amazing opportunities, and thanks in part to Covid-19 and the vaccines devised to tackle this, there also is the opportunity to help eradicate certain types of cancer.
The rise of renewables also became unstoppable, and according to a report by the International Energy Agency, they will provide half the world’s electricity by 2030.
The year also saw the Amazon rainforest breathe a little easier, with rates of deforestation down more than half compared to last year. This follows efforts to halt tree loss, most notably in Brazil.
The list of endangered species continued to grow in 2023 but some creatures bounced back from the brink. Other notable successes include Scotland’s surging golden eagle population and the return of the bittern to England.
There were also notable wins for the LGBTQ community as a clutch of countries broke down some of the barriers to same-sex partnerships.
For example, Nepal registered its first gay marriage in November, becoming one of the first Asian nations to do so. Latvia, a laggard in relatively liberal Europe, also voted to legalise same-sex partnerships.
So, while for many of us last year may seem one to be despondent about, there were some notable positives to be celebrated.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh.
* * *
Turbine bird deaths put into perspective
Just two observations out of many possible ripostes following Charles Wardrop’s letter last week.
Yet again he makes two false statements (lies?) that ‘The case for future abnormal climate dangers is not proven’ and ‘There is no evidence at all that de-carbonisation could help to stabilise the world’s climate’
Some other correspondents have repeatedly given the lie to these allegations, providing chapter and verse for any who wish to check.
Mr Wardrop also urges us to ‘remember the windmill’s avian wildlife slaughter’ but if he has any interest at all in protecting birds, then he is aiming at the wrong target.
The estimated number of birds killed in the UK by windmills is between 10,000 and 100,000.
This may seem a lot, but pales into insignificance alongside the 27 to 55 million annually believed to by killed by cats in the UK!
So cat-lovers beware, you may be Mr Wardrop’s next target.
Jim MacEwan
Nethy Bridge.
* * *
Fear and urgency is leading to rash and drastic C02 actions
Correspondents Dermot Williamson and Roy Turnbull’s irate reactions, accompanied by a blizzard of carefully selected but predictably alarmist statistics directed against climate realists unfortunately betrays a mindset that is closed to open debate (Strathy, January 11).
Dermot, who alludes to some some form of scientific background related to CO2 research clearly believes that, to use the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change terminology, ‘The science is settled’.
He clearly chooses to overlook the fact that such statements are fundamentally flawed because true science is a process of perpetual enquiry and can therefore never be settled.
This view is exemplified in a recent book entitled ‘Not the End of the World’ by Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist and University of Oxford senior researcher.
She says that once she began to look ‘beyond the newspaper headlines’ her ‘perspective flipped’ and many of her previous forebodings and anxieties relating to climate change were replaced by pragmatic optimism.
I cannot claim to be a scientist but I have studied this issue in considerable detail over the years. I once actually shared some of your alarmist correspondent’s views until I reached some conclusions broadly similar to those of Ritchie.
May I respectfully point out that the 97 per cent scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming has been exposed as a seriously flawed representation.
A ‘citizen science’ project examined 11,944 abstracts of papers relating to global climate change with positions ranging from ‘explicit endorsement’ to ‘explicit rejection’ and found that only 984 (8.2 per cent) actually agreed with the AGW.
In conclusion perhaps Dermot and Roy might wish to reflect on the wise words of the late Swedish physician/ statistician Hans Rosling, co- author of ‘Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think’ who pointed out that ‘fear plus urgency makes for stupid, drastic decisions with unpredictable side effects, climate change needs systematic analysis, incremental action and careful evaluation’ and that ‘exaggeration undermines the credibility of well founded data’.
Neil J Bryce.
Kelso.
* * *
Look Down Under for harbinger for climate peril for rest of world
Since the vast majority of scientists and world independent agencies, like the UN now accept that climate change is a reality and has been greatly accelerated by human activity, why is acceptance not acknowledged by all?
Although every continent is now affected, Australia is becoming the most climatically difficult continent for human and wildlife habitation.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on climate change (IPCC) has warned that the annual water flow into Australia’s vast Murray-Darling river basin, (an area the size of Spain and France) providing 85 per cent of water used for irrigation, will fall by over 25 per cent in the next decade.
The future is not good for Australian farmers. By 2050 there will be around nine billion people on planet Earth. Feeding all will require a doubling of global food production.
However with global water an increasing scarcity, when 1.8 billion people will be living in countries suffering from severe water deprivation, this is just not possible.
The latest IPCC report states clearly that by 2030 harvests could be halved in some countries.
The fact is the pleasant and clean image of Australia has been tarnished by it becoming the world’s worst emitter of greenhouse gas per head of population, due to it continuing to burn great quantities of coal.
Again the UN report of the IPCC states that Australia emits almost as much greenhouse gas as Italy and France, which have over three times the population.
Furthermore as carbon increases in the atmosphere the acidity in the oceans increase which is now known to have risen by 30 per cent.
Apparently this is the most significant change in the chemistry of our seas for 20 million years, making it difficult for plankton to survive, on which almost all marine life depends.
With humans altering the ocean’s ecosystem, dreadful consequences will result for all life on earth.
Grant Frazer
Newtonmore.
