Readers' Letters: Swinney's stance on Chinese wind factory makes no sense

The SNP cites the potential economic and industrial benefits to the area that will be lost if this project is cancelled.

Is this not just hypocritical, as the SNP seem happy to cut back, if not axe, the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen? Surely that is even more significant to Scotland's wealth and future energy provision.

The SNP just cannot help itself when it sees a glimmer of opportunity to attack Westminster, while it is blithely ignorant of the damage it is doing to our economy all by itself. The obsession with net zero has blinded the SNP to the paucity of its own arguments.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Rural sacrifices

I’m not sure what planet the UK government is orbiting with its insulting offer of £250 off electricity bills for ten years in exchange for households hosting vast new transmission infrastructure. This is not compensation – it is contempt. Peanuts for the peasants.

Communities across rural Scotland are at the end of their tether, facing multiple applications, public inquiries, appeals and re‑applications from developers who simply refuse to take “no” for an answer.

Do they really believe a 10 per cent discount on electricity bills can offset the distress, financial hardship and permanent industrialisation being forced through? Two-hundred and fifty pounds a year will not make unsellable homes sellable again. It will not help older residents trapped in properties they can no longer manage or afford to heat. It will not undo the destruction of businesses, habitats and amenity for the benefit of multinational shareholders.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure itself brings its own misery: fizzing pylons the height of the Kelpies atop one another, humming, illuminated substations, potential chronic sleep disturbance.

Balblair substation near Beauly, a small example, has already had a noise abatement notice, yet we are expected to believe that far larger installations will somehow be harmless.

Developers have dodged accountability by removing entire environmental assessment topics from their planning applications – topics they could never mitigate. Population and Human Health, Air Quality and Climate, Electric and Magnetic Fields, Radio Frequency Interference, Major Accidents and Disasters: all quietly dropped, all nodded through. Who, exactly, is protecting the public?

This transmission infrastructure is not for local benefit. It is being built to enable yet more onshore wind development in remote areas – turbines we do not need or want. Over‑deployment of wind in rural Scotland is reckless and expensive. If energy security were truly the goal, generation would be built where power is actually required and if need is actually proven, then an offshore grid would avoid widespread opposition and inevitable legal challenges that the outdated proposed onshore infrastructure will attract

The UK government’s own website lists the developments eligible for this pittance. Out of 43 projects, Wales has one, England ten, and Scotland 32. SSEN (boasting shareholders like BlackRock): 20. Spanish-owned ScottishPower: 12

The imbalance is staggering. Scotland is being treated as an industrial sacrifice zone, encouraged by a Scottish government that has waved through Big Energy projects, overwhelmed planning authorities and abandoned rural communities to a never‑ending conveyor belt of applications, appeals and inquiries.

This is not a balanced or fair energy strategy. It is industrial abuse of rural Scotland, driven by multinational investors and rubber‑stamped by governments far removed from the people they are sacrificing.

Michael Shanks MP is delusional if he thinks this miserly offer will silence communities. It won’t. It simply proves how little value Westminster – and Holyrood, which has apparently backed this industrial sprawl – places on rural lives. Shanks, spouting nonsense from his over‑privileged bubble, has no grasp of the reality facing the people he expects to swallow his insult.

Lyndsey Ward, Communities B4 Power Companies, Beauly

Not appy

Has anyone noticed the similarities between ScotRail and the SNP geniuses at Holyrood?

The SNP are forever bringing forward new ideas and plans which never reach fruition, or more likely fall apart leaving a devastating mess in their wake.

ScotRail, having a perfectly functioning app, decide to push the boundaries of science and space travel (well, Stow to Edinburgh and back) and bring in a new app – ill-thought out and leaving their customers in a multitude of glitches rendering it absolutely useless, causing extra workload for their staff and queues the length of Leith Walk at stations as passengers attempt to get their tickets from a staff member. Has Scotrail never heard the terms “let sleeping dogs lie” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

As with the Scottish NHS app, that’s another bungled piece of rubbish – did nobody think to give the folks from Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto) a call? One of their trainees would have been able to get both of these up and running in a day or two, I have no doubt.

I would urge all passengers not to use the new app. Get on the train and buy your ticket there, all staff are aware that the app is a kipper, and they will save you money.

David Millar, Lauder, Scottish Borders

Burning issue

So the PM calls a Cobra emergency meeting to discuss the drought. The decision is to ban the sale of small outdoor BBQs.

Why not a decision to build several desalination plants as a priority to prevent future water shortages? The people would understand if some budgets had to be cut to find the money

Alastair Paisley, Juniper Green, Edinburgh

Off track

I am sure there are many technical reasons (eg security, maintenance, cleaning, removing overhead wires during crane operations) why Iain Masterton's suggestion (Letters, 12 August) for temporarily repositioning trams to be based at Newhaven via the South Suburban rail line would not represent a cost-effective solution to the current tram disruption.

However, given the railway line passing underneath Leith Walk at Croall Place is no longer connected to the national rail network, having been disconnected at its junction at Piershill a number of years ago, the rail movement element of the somewhat convoluted transit could not operate.

Jim Nisbet, Edinburgh

Spin class

The latest Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures elicit the response from Finance Secretary Jenny Gilruth that the Scottish government “is delivering sustainable finances”.

What is “sustainable” about a rise in public spending of £5.7 billion to £123.6bn, or indeed, the rise in social protection spending of £2.1bn to £36.5bn when income tax receipts raised just a further £1.5bn? Spending per person was £2,720 higher than the rate per person in the rest of the UK.

It is not necessary to be a top financial guru to realise that independence is simply not an option economically and no amount of spin (remember the oil forecasts in 2014 Independence White Paper!) will prove it otherwise.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh

Levers needed

The publication of the latest GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue for Scotland) figures has triggered a now rather tired feeding frenzy. A black hole in Scotland’s finances is heralded by unionist politicians as validating the continuation of the Union.

However, GERS is a measure of the public finances under the current constitutional settlement, hardly a ringing endorsement for how the economy has been managed on the UK’s watch. Indeed, major economic levers required to stimulate economic growth are still currently reserved to Westminster.

Contrast this with our near neighbour, the Republic of Ireland, which is projected to run a budget surplus of £7.6bn this year, despite having considerably less in the way of natural resources than Scotland.

The point of independence is not to do everything in the same way as it has been done within the current constitutional framework, but to move away from this one-size-fits-all fiscal straitjacket to a tailored approach that prioritises stimulating economic growth.

Alex Orr, Edinburgh

Blindingly daft?

After all the warnings, Wednesday’s eclipse turned out to be no different to all the other partial eclipses, so bright I had to stare at it with my unprotected peepers in order to see the difference!

Neither I nor any of the neighbours – equally not following protocol – as a result were rendered blind, nor was the neighbourhood overrun with triffids or even Peter Gabriel's giant hogweeds seeking revenge.

The 2026 eclipse was a metaphor for the absurdity of health and safety zealotry and a generation of anxiety addicts.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Rhyme time

I enjoy trying to keep my aged mind alert each day with The Scotsman's puzzles page. Wednesday's Word Search theme was Cockney rhyming slang terms. I note that "Bayne & Ducket" was omitted.

Fraser MacGregor, Edinburgh

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