Why don’t we get say in power projects affecting areas like Highlands?

Helen Crawford brings a beacon of light to thousands across rural Scotland – not just here in the Highlands. She deserves our appreciation, not a crass put-down by the head of the local authority.

Ever since SSEN’s bombshell proposals in spring 2023, communities have been reeling from the tsunami of developments put forward; woefully inadequate public consultations; indecent haste of proposals; massively increased scale of substations; salami-slicing of applications, and the flood of new battery-storage units. This piecemeal approach is not only immoral, it is confusing and stressful for those expected to live in the shadow of this industrial onslaught.

(Image: PA)

Communities need a just planning system that allows fully funded scrutiny of major developments by independent experts. All too often, rural citizens have to spend hours of their own time and thousands of their own pounds just trying to understand complex planning applications and striving for a fair deal in the planning process.

Highlanders have had enough. Many are distressed as they fear devalued homes and being trapped where they no longer want to live. They cannot escape from this disproportionate industrialisation even if they wanted to. Some report mental health issues as the seemingly unstoppable Big Energy juggernaut thunders through their communities.

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They feel their elected representatives have abandoned them and thrown them under Big Energy’s gravy train. Rural Scotland is being colonised by Big Energy and it would appear that the strategy is to keep communities in the dark as to the extent of the industrialisation that is coming at them so that they are ill prepared when planning applications go in. They see that SSE and SSEN have not had a refusal by the Scottish Government for at least 15 years and wonder who is calling the shots in Holyrood.

It is time we were given the information and the assistance we need to protect not only where we live but our businesses and natural world from unnecessary and further major development before it’s just too late.
Lyndsey Ward
Spokeswoman for Communities B4 Power Companies
Beauly

SCOTLAND is leading the way in renewable energy generation, propelled by its expanding onshore and offshore wind capacity. As electricity demand continues to soar, the rollout of renewables must continue. The 2024 election manifesto unveiled by the Scottish National Party last Wednesday is a step in the right direction – but there is room for improvement.

The SNP’s commitment to an immediate emergency budget to “deliver meaningful investment in economic growth, including green energy” is welcome. The party also pledge to establish a Four Nations Climate Response Group to agree climate plans across the UK that deliver on net-zero targets.

The promise to ban new coal licences is laudable, but the SNP’s stance on oil and gas is more ambivalent. The party believes in taking an evidence-based approach to future extraction, with decisions made on a rigorously evidence-led, case-by-case basis. The manifesto also lacks detailed plans to expand renewable installations and there’s hardly any mention of wind energy.

Scotland has already come a long way in combating climate change, with renewable power generation exceeding the nation’s overall electricity demand for the first time in 2022. Trailblazing technologies like ground-level wind power generation can add unprecedented capacity to onshore wind. This new source of untapped energy should be a significant factor in Scotland’s future climate policy.
Vijay Madlani
CEO at wind-tech company Katrick Technologies
Glasgow

GETTING electricity from windmills is not the fresh and clean joy that many imagine. It is an industry, and comes with industrial downsides aplenty. Overhead cables, tall pylons and huge sub-stations. Plus earthworks, concrete and access roads.

The windmills themselves are just part of the package. Landscapes are ruined.

Is it a coincidence that those who support wind power tend to live in towns, where they will never see – or worse, have to live with – the destruction of our beautiful country?
Malcolm Parkin
Kinross

THIS week I received both my postal voting papers and a plea from the LibDem candidate to vote for her. The reason I should vote for the LibDem candidate is apparently that she is passionate about local issues – such as healthcare and potholes in the roads.

If she is so concerned about potholes, she should have been using her position as a local councillor to deal with the issue. If she is so concerned about health issues, that is a Scottish Government matter and she should be seeking to become an MSP rather than an MP.

What I have failed to see in any of the manifestos issued by the LibDems, the Tories or Labour is any mention of the level of funding they are likely to offer any of the devolved governments – but it will certainly be less than we ought to have.

If the Scottish LibDems, the Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Labour are so keen to have the word “Scottish” in their titles, why are they so shy about promoting the interests of Scotland – interests that would be best served by Scotland being an independent country able to raise its own revenues and decide on its own priorities?

Then they might actually be able to live up to the name of their organisations and not be subservient to a much bigger bully south of the Border.
Ian Lawson
Milngavie

TONY Blair has admitted that devolution did what it was intended to do – keep Scotland imprisoned within the failing UK.

Blair introduced devolution under pressure from the European Commission to rectify the UK’s glaring democratic deficit where power was grotesquely centralised in Westminster.

Sleekit Blair crafted a devolution settlement that looked like more democracy but kept Scotland firmly tethered to Westminster. If the Scottish dog tries to run from its colonial master, Westminster tugs on the leash to bring it back into line either with a Section 35 order or by removing any of the limited powers it granted to its colony.

Power devolved is power retained. That’s why devolution has been a dead end.

The UK remains highly centralised. Power resides in a London parliament whose members are elected every five years via the unrepresentative first-past-the-post voting system – a system used by just one other European state: Belarus. There’s no effective separation of powers, just the executive comprised of the Crown and the Government that has carte blanche to do whatever it wants.

Devolution is a UK mini-me, based on UK parliamentary sovereignty, but with weaker powers. Scottish independence-supporting parties haven’t articulated a different constitutional approach for an independent Scotland from that of parliamentary sovereignty, when Scotland’s constitutional basis is popular sovereignty.

Popular sovereignty devolves power to the regions and municipalities and applies the principle of subsidiarity – anything that can be done at a lower level shouldn’t be done at a higher one.

It means trusting the people to know what’s in their best interests. Direct political rights – referendums and initiatives – are how they exercise their sovereignty.

Decentralised direct democracy would fit an independent Scotland like a glove and return power to the people. It’s the key that can free us from the failing UK.
Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh

AT last, BBC Scotland programme The Nine – along with the terribly dated format of Seven Days with its panel of “media experts” – scheduled at the ridiculously late time of 11pm on a Sunday night has been put out of its misery and rescheduled for half an hour at 7pm.

At its previous time slot, The Nine was competing with much more interesting and investigative programmes on other channels – apart from its obvious Westminster/BBC-centric bias!
Jim Park
Edinburgh

IT is ironic that one of our greatest gurus of better health, Dr Michael Mosley, should die of (effectively) heat stroke. I am sure he was in a holiday bubble and thought himself safe from his environment.

The same psychology that saw such an expert on self-help healthcare ignore public weather warnings – not carry water and his mobile phone and leave his friends when he felt ill then try to cross the island – is something I saw routinely on mountain rescue.

In long discussions with fellow team members – on rescues or in bothies – we came to climate-related conclusions. These were that modern societies think they are immune to nature due to technological advances.

Primitive societies would never ignore the global warnings that so-called advanced societies think they can ignore. Add to that the protective bubble so-called civilisation envelopes us in – the cult of individual greed, the political system that rewards lavish devotion to endless economic expansion – and we too will expire just beyond the apparent safety of our holiday resorts.
Bruce Wilkinson
via email

I AM only ashamed to be Scottish when excessive alcohol is involved, leading to outbreaks of grotesque tartanry, shouty singing and, sometimes, violence – although good behaviour can, mostly, be expected in Germany.

Radio Scotland’s phone-in last Thursday was concerned with drunkenness at Scottish airports – where you can buy booze from early morning – with the predictable results of rowdiness, unpleasantness, delays, anger from other passengers, risk to safety, etc. This is entirely driven by the greediness of retailers and airport management and should be much more tightly controlled.

There may be a connection between the reputation of the Scots and the Irish for drunkenness – ie both nations having had their economies and cultures ridden roughshod over by another country – historical sociologists (if such exist) can tell us – but the main problem is that a national reputation for drunkenness aka “enjoying a drink” IS NOT FUNNY ANYMORE.
David Roche
Blairgowrie