Triage nation

George Herraghty seems to be suggesting we follow the French and get the tractors out over “green” issues (Letters, 12 February). Agreeing to allow solar panels on Cumbrae against all logic is just an example. What is the point of the Site of Special Scientific Interest tag when government just overrides them.

An article by Ilona Amos the same day highlights the situation in Moray, where a disproportionate number of wind turbines are planned at a site designated as being of outstanding beauty. Visitscotland will have to do a reprint of their brochures, no doubt, as it is quite clear that our Scottish Government is not going to be content until there is not a vista to be had across our land that does not contain turbines. Government are like obsessed lemmings pressing on regardless, obsessed over the arbitrary date that has been set for so-called net zero.

Surely it is time for a bit of triaging in Government so it gets priorities right. If we had a Department of Common Sense this would surely decide the fixing of our NHS was, without doubt, number one on the list. The expenses involved in promoting and subsiding, for example, alternative home heating systems should instead be funnelled to our hospitals to give us the sort of NHS that is needed. We are cutting the numbers of police and firefighters, school budgets seem to be increasingly stretched – where is the logic?

Were Scotland to be 100 per cent net zero this is not going to save the planet. Scotland is such a tiny part of the whole and such will only make the Green lobby feel so muttering to themselves ,“Didn’ t we do well ?”

James C Orr

Pathhead, Midlothian