Scotland Matters Letters

I HAVE come to the conclusion the SNP and Green Party alliance is a complete and utter disaster. The SNP have signed their own suicide note. Nobody in their right mind would vote for these people. With policy after policy either being sidelined or written off, they are showing themselves to be totally incompetent and completely out of their depth. The latest news that house sales with gas boilers are to be banned is insane. I am almost ashamed to admit that I voted for these people until I realised that they are arrogant and don’t listen to the public at large. The real tragedy is that they don’t know they are incompetent – they don’t have the common sense to realise this. It is surely time to boot them out – they have been in power for too long now and have achieved nothing. Sorry folks – you would need to be two sandwiches short of a picnic to vote for this lot.

On Sunday I attended the Women Won’t Wheesht event at Duthie Park. I had heard that the event, where women gather to speak about their rights, was coming to Aberdeen and the organisers were looking for stewards so I volunteered. I have such good memories of Duthie Park from when my children were young, however, after Sunday I am sad to say they have been tarnished. One of the organisers was assaulted by a trans activist before we started. But we decided to go ahead as the police were now on hand. What followed were uplifting speeches, songs and poems from the women – though some men were in attendance too. Women spoke about losing their jobs for believing in biological sex. We also heard from anguished parents and others who had great concerns about women’s rights to dignity, safety and privacy which should be guaranteed under the Equalities Act. Meantime the stewards formed a protective ring while the trans activists advanced on our group with signs such as “nerf the terf” and shouts of “Nazi” and “Pmeists” hurled at us. I was saddened to see these mainly young men try to shout down and intimidate women who simply wanted to gather and speak To find out that their protest had been organised by a Green Party candidate was staggering. What has happened to our tolerant city when women are shouted down and bullied for simply wanting to speak? I thought Aberdeen was better. T. Lamb, Aberdeen.

HONESTLY, I despair. How many more dark clouds are heading Scotland’s way under this unfit-to-govern SNP/Green alliance? A quick look at its track record for Scotland does not bode well. In no chronological order we’ve had the continuing ferries fiasco; the useless minimum alcohol pricing; the dangerous linked smoke alarm law, the despicable child questionnaires; the idiotic Deposit Return Scheme; the Covid lockdowns which led to the disastrous introduction of Covid passports; the Named Person stupidity; allowing ticketless concessionary travel on buses, which only gives bus companies a licence to print money; the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe; GP shortages and longer hospital waiting times among may others. Now we have a new First Minister, who was a disaster in his previous posts as transport, justice and health secretary, pushing through a boiler scheme which will serve no useful purpose other than to raise the cost of living further. Scotland really has to get rid of this bunch of incompetents, the sooner the better. Scotland deserves a lot better. James Simpson, Erskine.

The Met Office has forecast that by 2070 winters will be between 1C and 4.5C warm-er and up to 30 per cent wetter and summers between 1C and 6C warmer and up to 60 per cent wetter, drier, and without rapid, globally concerted efforts to reduce emissions, the recent changes observed in UK climate are set to increase. But how much of these changes can mankind avoid, how much is outwith our control and therefore how much effort and money should we be investing in resilience measures to mitigate the impact? The data analysis Statista service takes a more realistic view: “The global temperature increase is estimated to reach a median of 2.7 degrees Celsius in 2100. In the best-case scenario, where all announced net-zero targets, long-term targets, and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are fully implemented, the global temperature is still expected to rise by 1.8 degrees Celsius, when compared to the pre-industrial average”. In other words, irrespective of human efforts, two-thirds of climate change ie temperature rise, will be “non-anthropogenic”, which means not caused by. and can’t be controlled by, mankind-therefore it will happen anyway. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we pay more attention to an excellent report by the OECD entitled “Strengthening resilience for a changing climate”. For example, coastal erosion, flood, wind, water supply and the impact of drought on famine, loss of arable land overseas and the inevitable mass migration to more temperate countries? To pick one local example, should almost £200 million be invested in the Acorn carbon capture project, whose commercial viability is very much in doubt, or used to augment the £1 billion the UK government spends annually on flood and coastal erosion risk management which they say can” protect hundreds of thousands more properties as well as avoid £32 billion of wider economic damages. And where does all this leave Patrick Harvie’s plan to somehow find and spend £33 billion on replacing our current heating systems? Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.

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