Scotsman letters
Planning language
Words fail me too (Letters, 19 June). The Government has taken its eye off the ball. There is a much more important language than Gaelic or Scots that must be made official so they can pursue their dream of covering Scotland with wind farms – planning language. I doubt SNP MSPs had any idea how, for example, the word “localised” would be used when they passed National Planning Framework 4, based on the manifesto of the Scottish Greens, voted for by 8 per cent of the electorate.
The Government voted for the two National Parks and National Scenic areas to be protected from wind farms but “Where impacts are localised and/or appropriate design mitigation has been applied, they will generally be considered to be acceptable.”
It seems “localised” in the dictionary means “restrict or assign to a particular place”. Developer language “for planning purposes” means you can insist the effect of 18, 180m high turbines along the Moorfoot Scarp in view of Midlothian, parts of East Lothian and South Edinburgh, including the castle, are localised. It is said significant effects of Torfichen wind farm would reach to Gorebridge 5.6km away, about three and a half miles! Locally three wind farms have already been refused on wider landscape grounds.
Surely the opposite of localised is “widespread”, as used by Nature Scot in their representation “widespread visibility of the turbines from many areas of East Lothian and Midlothian… and would result in adverse cumulative landscape and visual impacts”.
Why should a minority party decide the shape of Scotland to come? Why no strategic plan instead of landowners deciding where wind farms should go? Now the pact has ceased, and the New National Park has been scrapped, this has to be looked at again.
All governments make mistakes but, as we have seen lately, it is how and if they rectify them by which they are judged by the electorate.
Celia Hobbs, Penicuik, Midlothian
Green dreams
Scotsman writer Paul Wilson will certainly not feature on the Green brigade’s Christmas Card list (“Mighty growth from Scotland’s Acorn could prove elusive”, Perspective, 19 June).
He strips away the green film to reveal hard, indisputable facts not the green fiction politicians and those of a green persuasion would have us believe. Soaring electricity costs are costing jobs and are not being replaced by the green jobs so beloved and promised by clueless politicians and their followers.
So where is the cheap electricity we were promised? In the last year wind and solar could only provide 35.8 per cent of our electricity while gas was 29.9, nuclear 14, Drax using trees to produce electricity was 7.3, and imports from Europe totalling 11.5 per cent kept the lights on. The Scottish Government, keen to “lead the world”, said they would achieve net zero by 2045. Yes and pigs can fly. China has set its net zero target as 2060 and India 2070. Both huge maybes.
As Paul Wilson says, the green jobs bonanza that politicians promised for decades has failed to materialise and the UK is shedding jobs by the thousands. At least the Scottish people can show their anger in May 2026 and throw out the green charlatan MSPs and their hoards of mega-expensive climate advisors.
Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian
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