Sir, Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s water and land manager, David Harley, refutes the claim by the farmer at Easter Rhynd that his agency’s intervention prevented the farmer and his father from maintaining flood defences and thus was responsible for recent flooding.
It is not just from this farmer that complaints about adverse government interference have been coming. Farmers in the Carse of Gowrie are not happy with the way the work of the traditional farmers’ organisation for keeping the carse drained was impeded by government officials only to see the drainage system deteriorating since.
Dredgers used to work regularly on the waters of the Tay, but are seldom if ever seen now. Apparently, government restrictions have made the commercial exploitation of gravel and sand deposits uneconomic and the sand companies have closed down.
We all know what has happened on the Somerset Levels. Dredging was severely restricted, fields were deliberately flooded in the interests of wildlife conservation and landowners were no longer allowed to deposit silt from ditches and water courses on banks to bolster flood defences. Is this silt the “unsuitable materials” of which Mr Harley writes?
It would seem that our benighted rulers have become so obsessed with conservation that their restrictions and expensive schemes have become counter-productive, destroying the good work of centuries of sensible land management and, in the process, actually harming the wildlife they are supposed to be conserving as with the reports of the drowning of badgers, voles and other wild creatures in Somerset.
I cannot understand what harm is being done by using the silt from drainage to build flood defences. Nor can I understand how it can help the environment, or our carbon footprint, transporting the silt some distance across country to deposit it somewhere apparently considered safe, meanwhile using more resources and fuel to bring in “suitable materials” for flood defences!
George K McMillan. 5 Mount Tabor Avenue, Perth.
Legacy they can’t deny
Sir, With so much talk on the independence vote, what is clear is that no matter the outcome of the vote, there is one clear legacy that this Scottish Government can lay claim to and that is the complete desecration of the Scottish countryside and scenery with the many wind turbines now lining our skylines.
These ugly constructions have provided so much money for their builders, most of whom are foreign suppliers, and there has been little economic benefit to the Scottish public. Can anyone tell me how much their utility bill has decreased by?
These constructions are, of course, supported by many local councils and now we have another trying to desecrate another Scottish monument on the Sidlaws. When will this stop? If the council does turn it down an appeal to the government will get it the stamp of approval.
The Scottish Government talks about European countries with wind farms but what they don’t say is that many of these countries are dismantling them because they are not cost effective.
The clear losers here will be the Scottish public and the many generations to come.
Alastair Mclean. 4 Fletcher Place, Crieff.
Based on a false premise
Sir, Further to the recent letter from my former colleague Sandy Kennedy on the subject of the single police force and the effect it is having on day-to-day policing, things are even grimmer than the picture he has painted.
The rural areas are being systematically robbed of resources. There are now no traffic officers based in Fife, they start and finish duty in Stirling. In addition nearly new vehicles that had been based in Fife, purchased by Fife Constabulary, have been spirited away to Glasgow and replaced by worn-out rubbish from Strathclyde.
Police officers are regularly being ferried about all over the country, working far from their home stations in areas and among a population they do not know. All the drivel about specialist officers being readily available is just that. The forces managed perfectly well before and if specialist help was needed it was easily obtained under the mutual aid scheme.
This entire exercise was based on a false premise, put about by the English-trained import Chief Constable House, that there was duplication and that money could be saved by an amalgamation of the forces.
That statement was utter rubbish. The Scottish Police forces did not do the same thing eight times over, they did it in eight different locations with variations to suit local need and with local accountability. All of that has been swept away in what has, in effect, been a Strathclyde take over. No money will have been saved, nor was ever likely to be saved, as a result of the single force coming in to being.
It is a mystery to me why local politicians and indeed newspapers did not see the current shambles coming. Resources were always going to be drawn in to the central belt and that is what is now happening.
George Thomson. 44 Viewforth Place, Pittenweem.
What about the Proms?
Sir, Never mind the transitional difficulties that would result in passport control arrangements, pensions and in sharing the pound following Scottish independence; more importantly, wouldn’t Rule Britannia be ruled out of the Last Night of the Proms?
James Martin. 32 Foulford Road, Cowdenbeath.