Today’s letters to The Courier.
Sir, – Yet again Perth and Kinross Council have proved just how far removed they are from reality concerning the problems facing all retailers in the city centre.
In the last week we have had two front pages highlighting the challenges faced by us all articles that do little to encourage consumer spending. Having just been granted city status, surely they should be doing everything in their power to encourage people to visit Perth?
As a retailer, I think free parking on a Saturday afternoon is an excellent idea. Instead, this council are prepared to pay someone £31,000 to tackle the problems in the city centre. They could save this money by just listening to what we, the retailers, have to say and actually acting on it.
Yes, the council offered free parking in the run-up to Christmas last year, but three hours between 3pm and 6pm on a Thursday afternoon was hardly going to address the issue. That’s the time when most mums pick up their children from school and if you are elderly you are not going to be out shopping as darkness falls.
Why it takes six months to analyse these figures is beyond me; between the atrocious weather and the lack of people about, I’m pretty sure hardly any parking revenue was lost at this time.
In fact, our council, in their infinite wisdom, decided to increase parking charges in the city centre. We have a parking meter outside our shop. It now costs £2 an hour to park in our street. The end result is that when people see the price they get back in their cars and drive off.
Until the council address the issues surrounding the parking in Perth, they are unlikely to attract new businesses and the shoppers that we all need.
Laura Wilson,Rose Terrace,Perth.
Police cordon at hospital smoking areas
Sir, – I must suggest a solution, in part if not wholly, to the cigarette fumes accessing the maternity unit problem at the new Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy. Simply send the unit back to Dunfermline or relocate it at Glenrothes or Cupar or St Andrews or Randolph Wemyss or wherever. These locations have a much smaller footfall than the new hospital and probably fewer smokers.
Place a police cordon round the legal or illegal smoking area currently being used. This will protect smokers from the abusive tirades of passing professors, consultants, doctors, midwives, charge nurses, nurses, auxiliaries, pharmacologists, pharmacists, path lab people, porters and WVS ladies with trolleys and compliant members of the public who believe that sensible rules should be followed. Chaplains are OK. This area could also be used as a drug treatment area, with regular issues of methadone.
Sadly, some people will be too lazy to walk to any smoking shelter. Ninewells manages without one, I believe, but Western General in Edinburgh has one. Amazing how no-one thought of this when the new Vic was designed.
Patients, staff and visitors should be simply told: no smoking final.
Dish out and enforce fixed penalty notices for anti-social behaviour. Deny treatment.
A close friend of mine, a chain smoker, managed two weeks in Ninewells without a fag and continued thus for a few days after discharge, before succumbing. It can be done.
A. T. Geddie,Carleton Ave,Glenrothes.
Ill wind that blows no good
Sir, – Jim Crumley’s very apt comparison between Shelley’s Ozymandias and the folly of wind turbines, and the damage they inflict on our land and seas, does not sufficiently stress that they are, additionally, a failed experiment in terms of power generation.
From more than 3,500 already installed in the UK, typically, only some one to two per cent of our electricity is derived, compared with more than 95 per cent from coal, gas and nuclear power stations.
Much of this latter generating capacity, soon to be closed down, cannot be replaced by wind power. Offshore turbines, many times more costly, are of very suspect reliability and durability. It’s all a ”token greenery” stunt, which has failed. Falls in CO2 output have not been realised.
Politicians’ ”targets” for renewable-sourced power and for notional reductions in CO2 output are now legally-binding but, in reality, meaningless in practice and financially ruinous.
The answers are to abandon these useless targets, end installations of windmills and, instead, use the resources to build up traditional means of power production, while developing shale-gas power stations, as these have, during the past decade, dramatically reduced costs in North America.
For the future, R&D into better means of electricity generation justifies huge investment.
Dr Charles Wardrop,Viewlands Rd West,Perth.
A job well done, Donald
Sir, – Donald Trump has to be congratulated for the £100 million he spent on his new golf course, which is great for Scotland and also for providing jobs in the Aberdeen area.
I can also understand his objection to the nearby windfarm but there is no way he will intimidate Alex Salmond, nor should he.
While windfarms are not easy on the eye, the residents of Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disaster areas would wish that was their only concern.
John Connor,David Henderson Court,Dunfermline.
Why Fanta was crowded out
Sir, – In response to Barbara Bayne’s letter in Tuesday’s Courier on bottles being thrown at a bus at T in the Park when her great-nephew’s tin of Fanta was confiscated can I shed light on the reason why?
There’s always a fair amount of rubbish around the main entrance and the area where the bus drop-off points are so the guilty people who have thrown the bottles at the bus would have found their ammunition pretty easily.
This is exactly the reason why his tin of Fanta was confiscated so it wasn’t thrown in the crowd, landing on someone’s head.
Gail Russell,Elm Grove,Cupar.
Get involved: to have your say on these or any other topics, email your letter to letters@thecourier.co.uk or send to Letters Editor, The Courier, 80 Kingsway East, Dundee DD4 8SL. Letters should be accompanied by an address and a daytime telephone number.