Today’s letters to The Courier.
Sir, – Every week we are informed of the increasingly shambolic state of the criminal justice system in Tayside.
Last week we had the Joint Police Board try to tell us that despite a group of serving police officers calling for an investigation into Tayside Police there was no substance to the allegations. The board’s investigation took only 12 days to reach this conclusion and was held in secret.
This week we have a man who was held in prison for weeks despite evidence that he was elsewhere when the crime was committed. Having spent two weeks in custody awaiting trial the Crown Office wrote to Dundee Sheriff Court informing them that he had no case to answer.
This man was then illegally imprisoned for another two weeks and had the indignity of being brought into court handcuffed to a court security officer. This is outrageous.
If this could happen to a person who has no evidence against him, it could happen to any one of us. Like the investigation into Tayside Police the attempt to ascertain how this travesty was allowed to happen and who was responsible drew a blank.
The statement offered by the Crown Office was careful to avoid accepting responsibility for this breakdown of the criminal justice system: ”It is the duty of the Crown to keep cases under review and continue to make full and careful consideration of the facts and circumstances of the case including the available admissible evidence.”
Yet, by the Crown Office’s own admission, it completely failed in its duty and its explanation is completely contradictory to the facts.
I intend to contact my MP Stuart Hosie to ask him to find out how this complete breakdown happened and to ensure it does not happen again.
Robert Alexander.Bothy Starforth,Panmure,Carnoustie.
Water always runs downhill
Sir, – Such a fuss is being caused by windfarms both on land and at sea that surely other methods of generating the power we need seem to be getting ignored.
I was involved in the whisky industry for quite a few years whilst the manufacturing of the amber nectar was more of a hands-on science.
A huge amount of power was achieved by a very simple water wheel which turned by drivebelts just about every turnable thing in the still. I think that the same principle was used by the many factories in this neck of the woods.
Water always runs downhill and the one thing which we have plenty of is H2O the Tay which runs by our door, so to speak, must have untold billions of power potential units going to waste every minute of every day. How about installing paddle wheels between a couple of the arches of the bridges to see what we could gain?
Oh, and before anyone picks up on the tide flowing the opposite way the unit could have a reverse drive maybe that is taking it a bit too far.
The wind only blows sometimes, but water always runs doonhill!
J Smith.44 Glamis Road,Kirriemuir.
Puzzled by agency advert
Sir, – I was surprised to see in ”Situations Vacant” that what is basically a housing association has spread its empire by launching a ”social enterprise recruitment agency.”
I am puzzled by this. Is this agency a social enterprise, or is it finding people to work in social enterprises?
Is there public money, or government grants involved in this? How much money is already being distributed to Dundee organisations to train up for work in Dundee and then help them to find work? And how many people have they actually settled in jobs?
Looking at the jobs advertised, I see a ”care home manager” in Dundee can earn £38,000 plus a bonus. This is a pretty responsible job, but a senior charge nurse in the NHS earns that amount care on the cheap once again?
But I see at the bottom of the pile, as usual, are the care assistants, the ones who do all the dirty jobs no-one else will do. And what are they being offered? £6.08 an hour less than the cost of two pints of beer the national UK minimum wage.
Sadly, there will be some really good people who will work for this money, because they are desperate.
So, is this what a social enterprise recruitment agency does? Find desperate people to do the very, very important job of caring for the elderly and infirm, for the same money as you would get for sweeping the floor and a lot less than the rate for sweeping the street?
Any organisation doing this should feel thoroughly ashamed of itself.
I’ll be watching closely.
K MacDougall.Logie Avenue,Dundee.
Others just ignore targets
Sir, – Andrew Llanwarne of Friends of the Earth and James Christie chastise Dr Lindsay for daring to question global warming (Letters, September 4).
Volcanoes spew out more CO2 than mankind. Palm trees swayed on the green shores of Antarctica 50 million years ago.
The UK is the only country in the world to have agreed to legally binding targets for reducing CO2. Scotland has only 0.15% of global emissions.
India and China are opening up two to three coal-fired power plants every month. Germany is building 23 coal-fired power plants after closing nuclear. Their 22,200 wind turbines cannot cope.
What can we do to ”save the planet” when others in the world ignore emission targets and instead prosper by growing their economies?
Clark Cross.138 Springfield Road,Linlithgow.
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.