Up for discussion today are nuclear technology, Forth Ports and wind turbines, climate research and overweight patients.
What if the ash had been nuclear fallout? Sir,-Can we just put aside our concerns regarding the costs/benefits of wind turbines and the cost of drugs to our society?
Knife crimes? Let’s put that aside for a short time. Let’s forget for a moment about global warming while there is still a globe to warm or otherwise. Let’s focus on the China/America/Russia idea of “locking down” nuclear weapons. Not going to happen, I know, too much to lose, but it’s a good idea and a good omen if only we can follow on from it.
Britain has just been closed to air traffic as volcanic ash passes and disperses overhead. This gives us a dynamic example of how a nuclear explosion and fallout will behave, and our lack of control over it.
Are we confident it will not happen? An explosion in a country hundreds of miles away as it did in Chernobyl. Bearing in mind Chernobyl was not an act of aggression but an accident, I ask you to consider what would happen if there was retaliation against a perceived aggressor.
Two uncontrollable nuclear clouds? And so it goes on.
I’m afraid that if we ask a country not to have nuclear weapons, or even nuclear power stations, we must be prepared to do without ourselves.
We do not need nuclear power in Scotland. We have water, we have mountains, we have three coastlines, we have coal. We do not need nuclear missiles in Scotland, after all, we are only a forward line for an attack on the USA. What protection does it afford us?
By the time the aggressors have blown up Scotland, America will have prepared itself for a serious fight and will have agreed to negotiations. It will be too late for us to negotiate, we will be dead or dying a slow horrible death, just as if the present volcanic dust cloud had been nuclear fallout.
A nuclear-free future is not going to happen, but I will vote for the party who rids Scotland of the menace of nuclear. Then the people of Scotland can proudly ask other to follow suit.
Ben Gallacher.Pitalpin Court,Dundee.
So out of touch
Sir,-Forth Ports Authority are so out of touch it is a wonder they are a viable organisation. Their attempts to get either a biomass plant or wind turbines located at Dundee are pathetic, but the Dundee public are not so easily fooled.
I ask myself why don’t they propose large wind turbines at Leith or at Edinburgh Castle?
I and the many other readers who have protested about their activities through your pages do not do so lightly, there are far better alternatives that are greener, more productive, less visually environmentally damaging, non-polluting and less costly.
In the past I have extolled the power available in the Tay in the past, and have the information on how it could be used.
These alternatives would certainly benefit the city by providing a new renewables industry employing many hundreds of skilled and unskilled workers and bringing much currency both foreign and domestic into the City.
There would be nothing in it financially or benefits in kind for the Forth Ports Authority or the local politicians and public authority personnel who support their projects.
John Cruickshank.Meadowview Drive,Inchture.
Look forward to some arrests
Sir,-Christopher Hemsley made an expensive mistake when he caught 40 crayfish, which he thought were an alien species. He was fined £4000.
PC John Shaw from Cumbria Constabulary said, “This case demonstrates how seriously police and the criminal justice system takes the issue of wildlife crime. We are fortunate to live in a beautiful country with precious, natural habitats and will deal robustly with anyone who decides to try and spoil it.”
I look forward to the imminent arrest and conviction of those who have allowed our countryside to be despoiled by the unwelcome, highly subsidised and useless wind turbines.
Clark Cross.138 Springfield Road.Linlithgow.
No excuse to close debate
Sir,-The House of Lords inquiry has decided that the scientists at the Climate Research Unit behaved liked a bunch of eccentric boffins rather than conspirators.
Well, that is one way of looking at the emails outed by the Climategate whistleblower but they certainly seemed to me to indicate nefarious activity. As the House of Commons select committee said in the first inquiry, at the very least the “culture of withholding information” must end.
Some scientists and most members of the bien pensant believe with a conviction worthy of a medieval saint that sinful man is warming the planet. However there is clear evidence for an alternative theory and the findings of this inquiry must not be used as an excuse for again closing down the climate-change debate.
(Dr) John Cameron.10 Howard Place,St Andrews.
Wrong to gag the doctors
Sir,-I can concur with the story in The Courier (April 16) about doctors under pressure to say nothing to overweight patients. My wife went for an operation, and was told she would be in for five days. In the event, she was allowed home after 48 hours. The consultant said because she was slim and fit.
The consultant told her some are kept in longer because they are overweight and this causes complications, including infection. He told my wife that whenever he broached the subject of being overweight, he faced a tirade at times. It seems people do not like the truth.
Is this one reason we have a weight problem, with all its resultant illness?
Obesity is now costing billions a year. Joint problems, cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, are results of this preventable problem.
If it were genetic, it seems we have undergone some mutation as we did not have this issue years ago.
The NHS reckons it will be unable to cope in the years to come. Surely it is up to doctors to be free to tell patients the truth, and to know they will have the support of us who want to save the NHS.
By the way my wife is slim and fit because she exercises and eats properly. Not because she is lucky with her weight. Being healthy is a choice, except for those who fall ill through no fault of their own. Unlike those who become ill also through choice.
John Montgomery.24 March Crescent,Cellardyke.