YOUR VIEWS: Wind farms are defiling the UK’s timeless beauty
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Wind turbines (windmills) were adopted without pilot studies and against the advice of Sir David Mackay, Cambridge University’s engineering professor.
They were marketed as Green.
They have been foisted on us, defiling our land, damaging its timeless beauty and impairing tourism.
Considering their foreign manufacture demanding steel, water, concrete and energy in vast amounts, their transport, installation, servicing, lubricating oil use and demolition, they are anything but Green.
The non-recyclable blades demand landfill. They kill avian wildlife and damage human health.
Their wind-dependent electricity generation is intermittent.
Constant fossil fuelled backup is essential.They last less than 20 years.The costs are vast.
Our country is ‘broke’.
Dermot Williamson’s defence of the UK’s windmills (Badenoch and Strathspey letters, April 20th) as a contribution to the offsetting of global adverse climate changes is mistaken.
Windmills’ purported benefit in lessening carbon dioxide (CO2) output is dwarfed by the many nations, including China and India, whose policies debar significant decarbonisation.
These release most of the planet’s man-made CO2.
Aileen Jackson’s plea for petitions (Strathy, April 13) is entirely in the right.
Charles Wardrop
Viewlands Road West
Perth.
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Developers are taking liberties in Kingussie...
I am furious about these road works in Kingussie High Street.
This is the second closure in one month.
Something needs to be done about these developers.
Nobody asked me for permission or even notified me it was occurring.
I had to go on a diversion using Spey Street, adding 90 seconds to my journey and all because the houses apparently need water.
For goodness sake it’s affordable housing – they didn’t have water in the 1800s!
Whatever next? They will be wanting drainage and electricity soon.
Gordon Thomson
The Star Hotel
High Street
Kingussie.
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Wellbeing of the population is at heart of matter
In making the case for independence, Business for Scotland and its sister campaign organisation Believe in Scotland, have long promoted ‘Wellbeing Economics’.
Both companies are led by the highly respected economist, campaigner and chief executive, Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp.
This form of economics is practised in Scandinavian countries, including Finland and Estonia along with New Zealand and many other small independent nations, all of whom are successful.
So what is Wellbeing Economics?
It is in essence where economic growth encompasses quality of life, fairness, happiness and health.
Since the focus of any national economy should be to serve the needs of its people, economic success should be more equally shared resulting in better growth, employment and greater revenue to governments.
The immense resources and many talents of Scotland must be utilised fully for the benefit of all the people who live, love, work and play in Scotland.
This is the very ethos of a Wellbeing Economy.
The disastrous economic impact of Brexit followed by the Covid pandemic has definitely shown that the UK government’s austerity policy has failed.
With economic growth non-existent, society is harmed resulting in further poverty and susceptible to an economic crisis.
As MacIntyre-Kemp writes: “You cannot have a thriving economy without a thriving society and you cannot have a thriving society without a thriving economy.”
Grant Frazer
Cruachan
Glen Road
Newtonmore.
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Conspicuous by Strathy absence
What! No political broadcast on behalf of the SNP from your Newtonmore correspondent in last week’s paper.
A. Moore
Elgin.
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The Deposit Return Scheme needs to be binned permanently
Humza Yousaf, the fledgling First Minister, has gone against the wishes of Green Circular Economy minister Lorna Slater and delayed the Deposit Return Scheme until 1 March 2024.
Ms Slater refused to listen to informed warnings and was adamant that the scheme would be bulldozed through on 16 August 2023.
Will she now resign and give up her ministerial salary of £94,821 and go back to £64,470 or are her green beliefs financially flexible?
The Deposit Return Scheme should be binned especially since local authorities already provide excellent bottle recycling facilities for both glass and plastic bottles.
The Greens must be removed from ministerial positions.
Readers may have seen that Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker, two Just Stop Oil activists, have been jailed for three years and two years seven months respectively after a jury convicted them of public nuisance by scaling a bridge over the M25:
They should serve the full sentence with no reduction. The stance that the jury and judge took is welcome and must be a template for future eco-demonstrations.
These people deserve no sympathy since they are not eco-warriors but eco-cowards who are afraid to demonstrate in China, India, Russia, North Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Zimbabwe, the oil and gas rich nations where the real problem is and who have no intention of reducing their consumption of fossil fuels.
Clark Cross
138 Springfield Road
Linlithgow.
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Give home to moggy
I am writing to encourage your readers to consider a moggy when thinking about giving a cat a new home.
Our latest survey revealed 38 per cent of cats acquired in 2022 (or 600,000 cats) were pedigrees, such as Ragdolls or Scottish Folds, while 47 per cent (or 750,000 cats) were moggies (cats produced through non-selective breeding such as a domestic short or longhair).
This is the narrowest gap that we have seen between pedigrees and moggies in memory.
As a result, Cats Protection is celebrating moggies this spring and encouraging would-be owners to look past a breed or current social media led trends.
Moggies have just as much personality and affection to share as pedigrees, they also tend to be less expensive both at the outset and over the course of their lifetime.
There are thousands of moggies needing new homes across Cats Protection’s network of branches and centres who are all vet-checked, microchipped, neutered if old enough, and arrive in their new homes with four weeks’ free insurance.
More details on the Strathspey branch are at https://www.cats.org.uk/Strathspey
Further details of the benefits of welcoming a moggy into your life can be found at www.cats.org.uk/morethanjustamoggy; we also have lots of good advice about acquiring a pedigree cat including some potential pitfalls at www.cats.org.uk/pedigrees.
Dr Kit Sturgess
Chair of Trustees
Cats Protection.
