Sir, – Has WWF Scotland stopped looking after wildlife in favour of supporting wind turbines and protesting about climate change?
There are enough people, organisations, pressure groups and propaganda machines already doing this.
Lang Banks, since he took over as director of WWF Scotland, has been firing off press releases and newspaper articles on a monotonous basis.
The latest of many was that wind power output in January was 48% of Scotland’s total electricity consumption (February 8).
What he is not saying is that on wind-free days, no homes would be supplied from wind generation.
What he is not saying is that the rest was supported by coal, gas and nuclear which is needed when the wind does not blow.
What he is not saying is that wind electricity is much more expensive.
What he is not saying is that Scotland has a miniscule 0.13% of global emissions and the whole point of expensive, intermittent turbines was to reduce CO2 but this has not happened.
Does WWF now stand for world wind fantasy?
Clark Cross. 138 Springfield Road, Linlithgow.
Skills gap holds back Scotland
Sir, – According to Scottish Secretary David Mundell, the final Scotland Bill negotiations concern the SNP’s ability to bring in immigrants, because, in essence, every person resident in the country attracts more per capita revenue and it seems while our own people can’t be trained to do the jobs, the UK government will still pick up the tab for their benefits.
What a poverty of ideas. In Scotland the 160,000 on unemployment benefit, that is, fit and available to work, will soon be joined by council, steel and oil workers. This equates to 2.2 people per vacancy.
We don’t need more workers, we need workers who have the skills, brains and motivation to do the jobs on offer and an ambitious combination of welfare reform, training, life coaching and housing reform to help them.
Our education systems should produce fewer event managers and media graduates and more plumbers, nurses, engineers, doctors and teachers.
A quick-fix immigration option will make the cost and lack of housing worse.
Birthrates will lower because couples cannot afford a family home.
A recent government report estimated that one in every two new houses will be required for immigrants.
I am not against immigration and supported a Kenyan family to stay in Scotland.
We are not “too wee, too poor”, we’re “too untrained, too unimaginative and too entitled”.
Allan Sutherland. 1 Willow Row, Stonehaven.
Handouts pay for tax freeze
Sir, – No matter how many sums our councils do, they cannot continue to cope with the council tax freeze or worse, a reduction, without services suffering.
The SNP claims the freeze/reduction is fully funded or costed as are free prescriptions for all and university education.
The reality is someone somewhere is suffering for this populist strategy.
Just look at the state of the NHS, the exodus of GPs and the slump in student numbers.
Angus Councillor Iain Gaul claims the “brouhaha” over the council tax freeze is down to politics.
I sincerely hope that his own stance is also down to politics. The thought that our leader believes fairy stories is actually quite frightening.
Alan Shepherd. 38 Manor Street, Forfar.
Audacity of Labour Party
Sir, – As one of the former Labour voters who now back the SNP mentioned by Dr Arthur (February 5), I have to admire his cheek when he applauds Scottish Labour’s plan to raise income tax while condemning the SNP for passing on Tory austerity cuts.
Remind me again, is this the same Labour which abstained in Westminster when the Tory austerity cuts were debated?
The same Labour that worked with other unionist parties in the Smith Commission to ensure that any Scottish Government would have their tax-raising powers severely curtailed?
These restricted powers now mean that any tax rise must apply across all tax payers even the poorest, while the HMRC would charge for collection and the block grant would be reduced. Oh yes, and the so-called £100 rebate would be subject to tax.
When the SNP put forward a similar penny on income tax plan which was subsequently withdrawn, Gordon Brown said: “There is hardly a nurse, teacher, policeman or council worker in Scotland who won’t be paying this tax increase. These are the people the SNP claimed it wanted to help and instead they will be hit the hardest.”
Heaven help Labour when they are reduced to this kind of dishonest posturing and if this the best they can come up with in order to win an election.
George White. 2 Cupar Road, Auchtermuchty.
Evolution a flawed theory
Sir, – Keith Lawrie (February 4) in stating that 65 million years ago an asteroid strike on Earth destroyed 80% of animal and plant life is engaging in the logical fallacy of begging the question.
Presumably Keith is of the opinion that dinosaurs were wiped out in that asteroid strike.
Perhaps he can explain how DNA, red blood cells, and soft tissue which according to scientists can survive less than one million years, have been discovered by Dr Mary Schweitzer in a dinosaur unearthed in 2000 in Montana, USA?
In trying to solve this dilemma, Ms Schweitzer proposed that iron might help preserve dinosaur soft tissue, both by helping to cross-link and stabilise the proteins, as well as by acting as an antioxidant.
However, her idea that iron generated free hydroxyl (OH) radicals (called the Fenton Reaction) caused preservation of the proteins is unscientific, as free radicals are far more likely to help degrade proteins and other organic matter.
Indeed, the reaction is used to destroy organic compounds.
Perhaps Keith has a better answer?
Keith clearly denies the existence of the creator but even evolutionary scientists admit the self-replicating ribonucleic acid hypothesis, their best explanation of creation, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Does Keith recognise that unless he can offer sound explanations for the origin of the fine-tuned for life universe and life in its diversity that his worldview is based on faith?
Will Brooks. 162 Largo Road Leven.
Social value of Christianity
Sir, – Kevin Lawrie must really get with it. Most Christians these days do not take the story of creation in the Old Testament literally.
We believe in a creator God, as do the Muslims and Jews, but after the creation which, as Kevin Lawrie says, happened long before the date mooted in scripture, modern Christians go along quite happily with Darwin and his theory of evolution.
In general, Christians have always devoted more of their attention to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ than to the Old Testament.
It is more important to us to live our lives according to these high principles than to argue the wheres and wherefores of Biblical history.
Nobody could possibly say that Christ’s teachings are bad and not worth following.
As to our children’s education, we cannot give equal weighting to the teachings of other religions with that of Christianity.
Christianity is a fundamental part of our Western civilisation. Its teachings underpin much of our culture, our laws, our courts, our sense of social responsibility and caring for others. Our schools cannot ignore Christianity without depriving our children of their heritage and the chance to understand how our society developed into what it is today.
Science has played an increasing role in this development, but it is by no means the whole story.
George K. McMillan. 5 Mount Tabor Avenue, Perth.
Education needs tax cash
Sir, – Scottish Labour’s tax proposal of one penny extra per pound of annual incomes above £20,000, and coupled with a £100 rebate for people with lower incomes seems fair to me. This pensioner is willing to pay the extra tax so that we can avoid lowering Scotland’s education standards.
This is just the sort of choice the Holyrood parliament was set up to debate.
Andrew Dundas. 34 Ross Avenue, Perth.