Readers' letters: Storm shows electricity infrastructure not fit for purpose

Thousands across the Highlands were left without power for days, cut off from heat, water and communication. In a country pushing mandatory electrification of transport and heating this is not just a failure of resilience – it is a failure of leadership.

Many rural homes rely on private water supplies powered by electric pumps. When the grid fails, so does access to drinking water. With petrol and diesel vehicles to be replaced with EVs and wood-burning stoves – often the only back-up heat source – under threat, residents face freezing homes, no way to cook food, no transport, and no way to reach help.

The phasing out of landlines has made matters worse. When mobile masts go down remote and rural communities are left unable to call emergency services. This is not theoretical. It happened – and it will happen again.

Meanwhile, SSEN’s controversial overhead transmission line proposals are being pushed forward despite warnings of more frequent and increasingly extreme weather events.

To propose even more overhead infrastructure is not just short-sighted – it is dangerously wrong-headed. It’s time to go back to the drawing board.

SSEN’s proposals endanger communities and workers alike. If these massive transmission lines go down in future storms the consequences will be catastrophic. If we continue down this path, people will die – not from the climate changing but from the failure to adapt to and prepare for it.

Lyndsey Ward, Communities B4 power Companies, Beauly, Highland

Political goal

The fifth leader since the start of 2023, like those before him, is gone. Intractable issues have not been addressed and the situation has not been turned around. There is widespread disquiet and protests on the streets.

Perhaps President Macron should now consider appointing Steven Gerrard to form the next French government.

George Rennie, Inverness, Highland

Diversity deals

For how much longer are we to support, through our taxes, the Scottish administration’s annual payments to the Stonewall lobbying organisation? In the year ended 31 March 2024, this amounted to £109,695, including a membership fee for the Stonewall ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme. Since 2022 we have, additionally, paid over £400,000 for staffing costs to promote ‘LGBTQ+ equality’. Stonewall charges the taxpayer to enable government and other services to implement Stonewall policies. That seems topsy-turvy.

Recently, a number of institutions, including Holyrood and Police Scotland, have withdrawn from the ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme, which advocates the elimination of ‘gendered’ terms such as ‘mother’ from public discourse. Now we learn that the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) remains a member, and has, since 2021, paid Stonewall £15,270 for its training and advice. The SPS continues to house biological males in accommodation described as ‘women’s’ prisons or wings. While Mr Swinney’s administration has painfully slowly redrawn guidance on ‘gender’ to comply with the Supreme Court ruling for some services, including schools, other public services drag their heels, and his own government continues to fund Stonewall.

Why are we paying for partisan ‘training’ of public servants and others that flies in the face of reason – over ‘gendered language’, for example – and of the Supreme Court ruling? The ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme that has us shelling out money that could be better spent is as clear a case as I have seen in a long time of the emperor’s new clothes.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Look inwards

My mother-in-law is in a wheelchair and on Sunday I was at Homelands in Lundin Links in my native Fife which was opened by the late Menzies Campbell, the person I first voted for at the 1992 general election and again in 1997.

The reason I joined the SNP in 2005 was not simply because I believe in Scottish independence but because the late Alex Salmond was, in my opinion, an excellent constituency MP who got things done I was a constituent of both.

Maybe if Robert I G Scott wants a “broader political view” (Letters, 8 October) then he might persuade both the Tories and Labour Party to stop demonising those of us who support Scottish independence.

The Conservative and Unionist Party are so obsessed with the Union that they seem to want to bring about Scottish independence. What else explains announcing “English Votes for English Laws” no sooner than the independence referendum result was announced? What else explains the Brexit referendum or electing Boris Johnson, and if you thought that was bad, Liz Truss as party leader and Prime Minister?

The Labour Party made all sorts of promises to replace the Tories but is withdrawing the winter fuel payment and going in hard on inheritance tax for farmers really vote winners?

Both Alex Salmond and Menzies Campbell never forgot who they were elected to serve – not the Union or independence, but their constituents regardless of how they voted.

So maybe instead of blaming the SNP, Scottish Government and First Minister their opponents could actually focus on why they are doing so badly in elections. It has nothing to do with the SNP or Scottish Liberal Democrats, does it?

Peter Ovenstone, Peterhead, Aberdeenshire

Do the maths

In his letter, Robert I G Scott questions readers’ understanding of Scottish finances should independence ever be achieved. There is a very simple way to decide what might happen. Travel back to the time of devolution when the country’s administration was transferred to the incoming government from the Secretary of State for Scotland. What was the Scottish national debt then compared to now? As it was given a clean balance sheet, it should be showing a healthy profit.

Charles Lowson, Fareham, Hants

Split the right

It gladdened my heart when desperate-to-be-Tory-leader Robert Jenrick made his comments about his perceived lack of white faces in an area of Birmingham. It was as if the penny had only just dropped with him, although having his finger on the pulse of the nation was never his forte, that playing the race card might just work, as it has for Reform,. His triumphalist ovation at the Tory conference appeared to confirm this.

With Jenrick attempting to steal a march on the repugnant Reform, it’s conceivable that votes will be split between these two far-right parties, creating in turn a more tolerant and humane government for the majority of decent people in the UK?

Well done Robert. Keep up the bad work.

D Mitchell, Doune, Perthshire

Set in stone

The so-called Stone of Destiny, which is about to go back on display in Perth (your report, 7 October), is a fake foisted on Edward I. It is Perthshire sandstone, whereas the real one was black, polished and with Egyptian hieroglyphics on it.

The proof it is a fake is that in the1327 Treaty of Northampton which ended the Wars of Independence, the Scots did not ask for it back.

Colin McAllister, St Andrews, Fife

Palestine plan

The current peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, taking place in Egypt and Qatar, are, in fact dealing with unfinished business, dating from 1948. The formation of the Jewish homeland, Israel, spelt, for the people of Palestine, their Nakba, catastrophe, which has never been resolved.

The new Jewish homeland, which was rightly welcomed by the world, still reeling from the horror of the Holocaust, was founded in the state of Palestine.

The Palestinian population were forcibly removed, many of them massacred, and scattered throughout the Middle East, and beyond.

The Palestinian dream of a homeland has never died. In fact, the genocide in Gaza has only strengthened it. The majority of peace-loving Israelis, ‘kidnapped’ by their unpopular far-right government, would welcome a Palestinian homeland in Gaza and the West Bank.

More than 140 countries, including the UK, have recognised the state of Palestine. A Palestinian state would be welcomed by the world, as the Jewish state was back in 1947. Israel has a choice, either perpetual war, or a harmonious peace with their neighbours. We must all hope for the latter.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Powering down

Martin O’Gorman (Letters, 8 October) highlights the deficiencies of the SNP energy plan. However, one topic that John Swinney refuses to address is that the proposed three-fold increase in wind capacity to 60GW will only result in massive capital debt bills to the Scottish consumer but will still mean no electricity when the wind fails to blow.

Does this mean that the SNP are happy for Scottish homes to face days of darkness over the winter under dunkelflaute weather conditions or has the First Minister reached a deal with Ed Miliband that English gas turbine output will always come to the rescue of Scotland?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

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