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Letters: If national park body really wants climate change action, it should stop blocking green energy

Should wind turbines be allowed within and around the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park boundary?
Should wind turbines be allowed within and around the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park boundary?

GORDON Watson’s Agenda piece ("National parks have key role in net zero journey", The Herald, September 28) was right to stress the need for urgent action on climate change.

He is right too to point out that the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park is the “perfect place to take forward the innovation and scale of investment required to make a real difference”. However, if the park is serious about this, it is going to take a lot more than repeating noble sentiments about “nature-based solutions”, “reversing biodiversity loss”, “sustainable transport” and “active travel”. The problem is the park doesn’t have the financial resources to deliver much on any of these noble aims, which would perhaps explain the lack of detail about how they are going to be realised.

However, there is nothing preventing the park from using its planning system to encourage green energy investment within its own boundaries now. It could also refrain from objecting to green energy developments outside the park, but near its boundary. I am thinking here of onshore wind and pumped storage, both of which are essential ingredients in the country’s scramble to free itself from reliance on fossil fuel. There are a number of suitable sites for these technologies both within and around the park’s boundaries and I would be brave enough to suggest that none of them would cause the conservation sky to fall in. And in taking such a bold step, the national park would be setting an example that others might care to follow.
John Urquhart, Helensburgh

Power cuts could be worse this time

IN the past we have had prolonged power cuts. The three-day week of 1973/4 comes to mind. But our dependence on electricity was much less then. Now it powers and organises everything, and our survival depends on a continuous supply. In today’s world a series of prolonged power outages would have significant effects.

No computers. The internet would cease. No communication. No online banking. No benefit payments. No lottery. No TV or radio. Airports would close and hospitals would have problems. Electric cars would be unable to charge and others unable to refuel. Buses and trains would stop.

Landline and mobile phone coverage would eventually fail. Supermarkets would close and panic buying would start. Water and sewerage – now computerised – would fail.

No light and no heat.

The grid might require a restart that could take weeks.

And in nine months the birth rate will sharply increase.

As we dispense with continuous fossil and nuclear power, let us hope that wind and sun and water live up to their green energy promise.
Malcolm Parkin, Kinross

We must stop assisted suicide

YOU'D have to have a heart of stone not to sympathise with Hilda Butler in her account of her husband's suffering and death (Letters, September 29). As a result of that experience she pleads for us to support Liam McArthur's members' bill on assisted dying.

But, by her own account, her husband did experience "assisted dying". She informs us that "a dedicated multidisciplinary team in the community did everything they could for him, unstintingly and with great compassion".

What Mr McArthur’s bill is actually calling for is something quite different: assisted suicide. Your article ("Dignitas backs proposals for assisted dying", The Herald, September 26) outlining the contribution of the pressure group Dignitas to the consultation on the bill correctly uses the term "physician-assisted suicide". Suicide – deliberately killing oneself – and dying a natural death are different categories of human experience.

The bill proposes that medics take practical steps to aid and abet people to kill themselves. As a society we judge that killing is morally wrong. Aiding and abetting killing is therefore also morally wrong. To involve others – whether healthcare professionals or family or the personnel in an "end of life" clinic – in deliberately ending life is immoral, and in this country currently illegal.

We run a serious societal risk if we legislate for physicians to participate in immoral and dangerous practices. The McArthur bill puts the whole relationship of trust between the medical profession and the public in jeopardy. It is understandable and right to reduce the personal distress that people experience as they face death. This bill unfortunately introduces a much more widespread form of distress to our whole society.
David Kennedy, Glasgow

The sound and the fury

THE inaugural concert of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's new season took place in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Saturday evening. Wonderful performances of Benjamin Britten and Igor Stravinsky were marred by the world premiere performance of David Fennessy's The Riot Act ("RSNO gets it all Rite", The Herald, October 3). This was excruciating.

I say that, not because the music was avant garde, or "difficult", or dissonant, or tuneless (though all of that is true), but because it was painfully, and I mean painfully, loud. The Battle of George Square which took place on January 31, 1919, a police baton charge into a demonstration of striking workers, was re-enacted with tenor Mark Le Brocq reading, or singing, the Riot Act, while the RSNO recreated the riot, a formidable battery of percussion giving it laldy, augmented by four shrieking police whistles scattered about the choir stalls. It was agony.

But this is not a music crit; it is a complaint about a violation of health and safety. I had to cover my ears. In his introduction before the performance, the composer had extolled our rights of freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech. It crossed my mind to stand up during the performance and exercise such rights with my own personal demonstration against noise pollution. But I would not have been heard. People might have thought I was part of the performance. There was a further irony in the juxtaposition of The Riot Act with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring which, at its first performance in Paris in 1913, caused a riot. After the Fennessy, the Stravinsky sounded like Eine kleine Nachtmusik.
Dr Hamish Maclaren, Stirling

Gentile touch

IT was a sobering thought to learn ("Mexicans are going crazy for the House of Commons whisky", The Herald, October 1) that Mr Buchanan aimed to develop a whisky for the non-Jewish tipplers (... "that would appeal to the more gentile English palate). L'chaim, or maybe not.
Mark Bratchpiece, Motherwell


Letters should not exceed 500 words. We reserve the right to edit submissions.