Grim detail

In your March 14 issue, an article on the well-attended wind farm meeting held by the Lammermuir SOS group contained a statement by Andy Black, director of Belltown Power, which has lodged the controversial application to develop a windfarm on top of our precious central Lammermuir skyline.

He said that, as part of the consultation process, his company wrote to 11,000 households.

Residents need to be aware that the letter was written a full year before the full details of the application were published in November 2023.

Now, for the first time, the final application has revealed the brutal nature of the access route being proposed to transport the component parts of the vast turbines.

As Belltown Power is unable to link into existing windfarm infrastructure on the south side of the Lammermuirs, it considered four alternative access routes from the A1 before deciding on an 18.5-kilometre route to enable HGVs and site servicing traffic to reach the development site on Newlands Hill, 6km south of Gifford.

This will necessitate the construction of 3.5km of haul roads through farmland.

All along the route, trees, hedges and stone dykes will be removed and Belltown’s proposals contain no coherent plan for habitat loss compensation, reinstatement or enhancement.

The grim detail of the route means the roads we use daily will be subject to huge increases in traffic during the stated 18-month construction period.

The route is popular for cyclists, horseriders and walkers, along with locals heading out to work and the shops in their cars.

In the access and transport document on the Newlands Hill website, Belltown states that there could be a major/ moderate and significant effect on users of the Stenton to Gifford road and the Gifford to Duns road and, it dares say, no significant effect on residents along the route!

Once aware of the route,

county residents are extremely unhappy at the prospect of 200 construction traffic journeys each day for 5.5 days a week, between 7am and 7pm during peak construction time.

This represents a lorry or service vehicle every seven minutes along our Hillfoots Trail, which runs from Stenton to Gifford.

This will seriously affect the residents of Garvald and Stenton, and endanger all local road users, including school buses, as this small, two-way, single-carriageway B road is barely wide enough for two cars to pass in certain places, let alone two HGVs.

The dire state of local roads around the village of Innerwick, besieged by windfarms, is testament to what would happen should the Newlands Hill development go ahead.

It would be naïve to think that the massive costs associated with this development would mean the site would remain at 17 turbines.

If consent is granted, the access route would not represent one-off use; it would likely be consistently used for many years to come to service the ongoing viral expansion of windfarms. The very use of the words “energy hub” attached to the Newlands Hill application suggests it will become the centre for further applications.

The hassle and inconvenience to our daily lives will be long lasting and, for some, the impact on wellbeing cannot be underestimated.

As such, the spectre of a Newlands Hill development is not a price worth paying.

Now the full details of the application are known, balanced decisions can be taken.

Those who wish to object can do so by sending an email to the Energy Consents Unit at representations@gov.scot

with a name and address and quoting the reference number for the application, ECU00004603.

Hugo Straker

Garvald

Transport truth

Whilst I make no comment on whether North Berwick is indeed the best place to live in the UK, I was appalled by the wholly inaccurate information provided on the public transport available in The Sunday Times supplement.

Apparently, to travel south by rail all you have to do is drive to Berwick-upon-Tweed and catch a train to London Euston.

We all know that trains from Berwick go to Kings Cross and always have done.

But there was no mention that Dunbar has LNER, CrossCountry and TransPennine Express trains to all sorts of destinations.

Equally, the bus information from North Berwick to Edinburgh omitted any mention of the X5 express bus, only the 124. No doubt some non-local trainee was handed the job of finding out about public transport in the area. Harry L. Barker Chair, East Lothian Community Rail Partnership Chair, RELBUS

Flat residents

Regarding your article last week about the licensing of a property for short-term lets in our block on Balfour Street, North Berwick, your readers may have gained the impression I am the only permanent resident in the block.

In fact, I am one member of a family of three that stay in one of the flats.

Secondly, two of the other flats have permanent residents.

These are the two flats on the ground floor that have their own entrance from the street.

It remains the case that we are the only permanent residents in the stair itself.

We would be delighted to have the other flats occupied by permanent residents. Neil McIlwraith Balfour Street North Berwick

Point scoring

Tim Jackson catalogues those instances where the SNP might not meet his, or others’, expectations, in this case in relation to failure to prosecute “benefit cheats” (letters, March 21).

The SNP’s former leader once expressed crisp dislike of Mr Jackson’s party; Courier readers might be more inclined to Voltaire’s position: “I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it”.

But broader perspectives see Mr Jackson’s benefits fraud allegations differently.

By a country mile, the UK’s largest single benefit budget item is the state pension – £109.7bn, roughly equal to all other benefits combined, and almost fraud-free.

The Sentencing Council for Scotland published research on fraud (2022): 57 per cent was cyber (or online) fraud, which increased by 149 per cent from 2019 to 2020.

Three other frauds were “white collar” fraud (financial crime committed by people in authority in business or organisations); “romance fraud”, where vulnerable victims are duped into fake relationships; and benefit fraud.

The Sentencing Council’s guidelines feature a test case where two convicted women were repaying benefit fraud debts at £13 or £15 per week.

Would the high cost of more such prosecutions really represent value for taxpayers’ money?

Fraud is unquestionably a crime but addiction to drugs, alcohol or other substances is not.

Using the stubbornly high figures for drugs and alcoholrelated deaths as sticks with which to beat the SNP government shows, at the very least, a lack of compassion for the poverty, vulnerability and human misery underlying these statistics.

Would decent Scottish Tories really wish to weaponise abject suffering to score political points?

Ultimately, that judgement is made by voters.

They recognise the widening gulf between rich and poor; the Westminster Public Accounts Committee found no “compelling examples” that levelling-up was working; Brexit’s economic harms are increasing.

This is all the legacy of Westminster, where the SNP has never held power. Tories and Labour have first-pastthe-post sewn up.

The UK has fallen to 10th on the World Happiness Index 2024. Quantifiably happier than the UK are small independent countries including Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Ireland.

As Winnie Ewing might have said: “Stop the world; Scotland wants to move up that happiness list”.

Dr Geraldine Prince Victoria Road North Berwick

Dismayed

Sickened as I am at Labour’s failure to get in-step with overwhelming public opinion in Scotland over Gaza, I was more sickened and dismayed to see that they are now promoting Tony Blair’s old pal and consistent supporter of the invasion of Iraq, Douglas Alexander, in my area.

Either Scottish Labour take the people of Scotland for fools and think we will not remember that Douglas Alexander was highly and repeatedly promoted by Blair and enthusiastically voted in favour of the Iraq invasion. . . or they think we won’t care.

As someone so inside the Blair machine, Alexander must have known more than anyone just how dodgy the whole thing was from the start.

But at a time when the horrors of Gaza are front and centre for decent, caring people, Scottish Labour thinks it’s OK to rehabilitate this man. They have no shame. Amanda Baker

Wallyford