YOUR VIEWS: In full agreement over retaining Aultmore House name
I agree with John Kirk when he said he was horrified to learn that Aultmore House, Nethy Bridge is being called Tomintoul House (Strathy 5th September). I felt exactly the same.
Ault is gaelic for stream or small river, mor is Gaelic for big. What could be more fitting, a stunning big house close to Aultmore burn?
It makes more sense than changing it to Tomintoul House, the same name as a village 14 miles away!
The new owners can't be as passionate about Aultmore as local residents, or it wouldn't have entered their heads to change the name.
For myself and I'm sure many others, it will always be Aultmore.
Sandra Irvine
Nethy Bridge.
* * *
Streets are being taken over in UK by new invaders
“Take me to your leader…”I hope you like the play on words from the film ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’.
To understand it, go into your street and count the number of plastic-recycling bins. In the Scotland there are as many bins as there are people - i.e. over five million. They are now the dominant Scots race.
When you look at the policies of government and local authorities, you have to wonder where they come from - how far they are willing to go.
A number of years ago it was decided to have a policy to tackle the problem of the stuff we throw away.
The policy on waste was reduce, re-use, recycle and energy from waste (EfW).
To encourage this the government introduced the landfill tax, system, so if you put any waste into a landfill site you had to pay the appropriate fee.
These monies would then be used to promote and support the policy, allegedly. The EfW element has since been stopped due to the climate change lobby and lack of infrastructure in the UK.
Although we do burn other stuff in six EfW plants in Scotland.
So, how does it work? Waste is either household (domestic) or commercial (business). Household waste is collected primarily by the local authorities and commercial waste is collected mostly by private companies.
If the council collect household waste from the kerbside and put it into the landfill site it costs them money, in landfill tax fees.
The current rates vary between the low rate of £3.30 per tonne and £103.70 per tonne.
The lower rate – for inactive waste - is for rock and soils, or natural waste and the other rate for everything else. Here is the theory.
If you or the council have a tonne of household waste to dispose of, it will cost, say, £103.70.
If you can get someone else to take it away for you, let us say for £50.00, you have hypothetically saved £53.70.
But that does not take into consideration any processing costs, so that is why the public are being asked to separate their different waste streams, in an effort to make savings, hence the new bins.
With all the comments in the press about wind farms being visible from space and all the restrictions that they have to comply with, I find it hard to accept that the millions and millions of plastic waste bins throughout Scotland and the rest of the UK are not subject to restrictions regarding their placement.
Try putting a sign out on the pavement.
The pavement police will be on to you!I can hear the council saying that they are subject to planning for new builds.
Great, so it will only take at least 100 years for everyone everywhere else to come into line…
It’s time to re-think Scotland’s waste strategy, before the bins get AI and take over the world.
Lots more useful filtered information can be found at www.sepa.org.uk .
Mark Duncan
Aviemore.
* * *
Highland Council planning chief is happy to help out
I am vice-chair of The Highland Council’s South Planning Committee and I was concerned when I read Mr Garth Armstrong's letter of 7th September about a planning application on Golf Course Road in Grantown which he thought the council had approved incorrectly.
The reference he gave is not in a format I recognise so I searched all applications on that road over the last five years and can find only one, 23/02944/FUL ... for which no objections were received and so it was approved by officers.
However if Mr Armstrong would like to contact me or his local councillors I'm sure we can give further advice and guidance on whichever application it is which concerns him.
I'd also be interested to hear more about those 18th Century planning guidelines which he says ‘were clear and robustly enforced’in his correspondence.
Councillor Paul Oldham
Nairn.
* * *
Council Tax set to rise?
Former First Minister Humza Yousaf announced a freeze on Council Tax at the SNP conference in October 2023.
The chickens have quickly come home to roost as councils rebel and say that Council Tax needs to go up by at least 11 per cent in 2025/26 to plug a £400 million black hole.
Margaret Thatcher was right when she tried to ensure that all those working paid towards the expenses of their local council.
What she got wrong was that people on low income would have paid the same as people on high incomes.
Houses with one resident are entitled to a discount of 25 per cent.
Where there are more than two wage earners in a house then they should contribute something.
We pay politicians and those running the councils huge salaries so why can they not come up with a realistic solution?
Clark Cross
Linlithgow.
* * *
‘Heartbreaking’ to see fall of manufacturning
In last week's Strathy Letters (5th September), Alastair Redman makes a very strong, convincing case for supporting our national industries whenever realistically possible.
Messrs Ferguson Marine's proposed bid for a contract to build more ferries is bound to be received with widespread scepticism given the ongoing Clyde ferries travails.
However, how much of that current fiasco is their fault and how much can be blamed on our so often misguided politicians, who evidently have kept altering the boats' designs in major ways during construction in the perceived interest of a ‘greener’ character. An impartial enquiry (if feasible) is needed to seek apportionment of blame between politicos and the shipbuilders. Lessons must be learned therefrom.
After all, we see constantly the utter, nationally self-destructive shambles our politicians are making of governmental reactions to the unproven climate threats purposefully drummed up as threats to the planet's future.
As a youngster growing up in in Glasgow, I used to be intensely proud of our manufacturing industries but was then near-heartbroken by their decline.
That seems to have been due to multifactorial management and labour problems weakening competitiveness.
These problems may have lessened but are now crazily compounded by net zero policies, complete own goals, devoid of benefit.
The rising costs of power for domestic and manufacturing activities obviously hit the competitiveness of heavy industries even more than those in the Highlands but costs rising because of net zero are impairing all manufacturing in Scotland.
Net zero policies are futile and damaging our nation to no purpose.
The benefits of international, diverse competition are obvious but we do well to support ‘home’ industry for the stimulation and maintenance of our wellbeing and prosperity.
Charles Wardrop
Perth.
* * *
Changing perceptions on use of hearing aids
Hearing aids can bring life-changing benefits for millions of people with hearing loss.
But new research from RNID, the charity supporting people who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus, has revealed the depth of stigma that surrounds them in UK society.
47 per cent of the public said hearing aids haven't been accepted by society in the way that glasses have, and 11 per cent said they would even prefer to live with hearing loss than wear hearing aids. Shockingly, our research found that more than one in three people (34 per cent) would try to hide hearing aids if they needed them.
At RNID, we want to challenge these damaging perceptions. Hearing aids in the UK – whether accessed through the NHS or bought privately – are all digital.
They contain advanced technology to make listening easier, allowing you to enjoy everyday sounds, keep up with conversations, and even stream phone calls or podcasts directly to your ears through Bluetooth.
Hearing aids benefit people of all ages and backgrounds, and research shows that they have a massive positive impact on your health and wellbeing - including potentially reducing the risk of dementia in later life.
It’s essential that we leave negative attitudes behind.
Franki Oliver
Audiology Manager at RNID
