It’s madness to axe cheap, efficient gas
IT APPEARS that Call Me Dave and his disciples such as Amber Rudd will wholeheartedly embrace the recommendations of the Climate Change Summit and choose to close gas-fired power stations — efficient stations that are cheap and quick to build.
Enemies of Britain must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of the economic collapse of this country. It’s just not power stations facing the axe, but also gas-fired central heating boilers and ovens.
I wonder what Pembrokeshire Conservative MP Stephen Crabb will make of it all. He recently opened the new 2,000 MW gas-fired power station in his area. Will the welcoming words of his opening speech come back to haunt him?
What will he tell his constituents when the relatively new and efficient gas-fired power station has to face early redundancy?
Will the expensive gas terminal at Milford Haven see job losses and closure? Will Amber Rudd’s Department of Energy become a rudderless ship or will she have the sense to steer a safer course?
If you care for your country and the next generation, it’s essential you lobby your political representatives against these outrageous policies. Arm yourself with the facts. Learn about the power industry and how we’re all being exploited by everything from wind farms to smart meters.
DAVE HASKELL, author, 21st Century Electricity,
Cardigan, Ceredigion.
Why wait to scrap tax?
A MAnSIon tax aimed at both the upper classes and middle classes is fine, but why will we have to wait another several years before getting rid of the dreadful council tax?
In the meantime, it will be allowed to balloon out of control. Even now the council is thinking of defying the SnP government by reversing the freeze and forcing people in band D to pay over £200 more a year towards council tax. We should get rid of it right now. ALLAn DAmiEn GooDwin, inverness.
Uncivil servants
I CouLDn’T believe my eyes when I read that some councils had carried out a survey and ascertained that residents would pay more council tax to protect services. Where have those people been hiding the past few years?
We denounced the MPs and Lords who abused the system, who lined their pockets with taxpayer money to claim for teabags, duck moats etc. I read recently that fifty pence in the pound of all council tax money raised went to council pensions. How is that protecting services?
The council fat cats who authorise these increases aren’t interested in the hoi polloi — no, their main concern is their own burgeoning salary/expenses.
We seem to be living in a country, be that Scotland or the united Kingdom, where the taxpayer is fair game to be ripped off by the very people or services we employ. BryAn wriGHt, Greenock,
renfrewshire.
Time for a change
IT’S that time of year again when local councils all over Scotland are calling for an increase in taxes from our diminishing band of hardpressed taxpayers. Are we not the most over-governed and over-taxed country in the world?
To continue to hammer hardworking, aspirational, diligent people; to continue to squander public money on dubious projects and even more dubious public sector fat cat ‘workers’; to continue with our overgenerous world-beating welfare benefits system on workshy freeloaders is not the answer.
Surely the time has come to devise a more streamlined system of government where we only have people of integrity, honesty and common sense in power.
only then will we see lower taxes and with that a more successful and thriving Scotland. GEorGE EmSLiE, Bridge of Don,
Aberdeen.
Trade can end poverty
AS A uganda-born British citizen, I might be forgiven for thinking that the ‘wooden bowls and earthenware jars with food still inside them’ that have been found in a dig near Peterborough (Mail) aren’t ‘extraordinary archaeological discoveries’, but valued domestic implements that the povertystricken majority of Africa’s one billion people are using today.
By these standards much of Africa is still trapped in the Bronze Age in development terms.
other prevailing Bronze Age conditions in Africa, which would have afflicted the people of Peterborough thousands of years ago, include dehumanising poverty, violent tribal rivalries, disease, famine and lack of sanitation. Despite the £500 billion which Britain and other Western donor countries have given Africa in development aid in the past 60 years, according to World Bank reports, Bronze Age living conditions are driving hundreds of thousands of men, women and children a year to take risky journeys in search of a better life in Europe.
More than 5,000 of them died in the Mediterranean last year alone, and 4,000 are camped in Calais, waiting to come here.
British leaders should reflect on the history of this country and recognise that Bronze Age living conditions near Peterborough and elsewhere weren’t improved though aid, but trade. The same strategy must be applied in Africa if we are to tackle the poverty that is the root cause of African migration and threatens to overwhelm this country in the next decade.
SAm AKAKi, London w3.
My devo nightmare
AS THE oil price collapses to less than $30 a barrel, the run on the new Scottish coinage has cost taxpayers billions of groats in trying to support the new currency, launched on March 24, 2016.
Interest rates in the newly independent Scotland have rocketed to 10 per cent to try to support the currency, yet inflation continues to grow toward 20 per cent. Cutting public sector salaries by 20 per cent, mirroring what happened in Ireland in 2008 when the Celtic Tiger collapsed, has caused anguish, not helped by the raising of VAT to 25 per cent to match norway, Denmark and Iceland.
no, wait a minute, we voted ‘no’. Phew!
miCHELLE SmytHE, Edinburgh.
Duke’s hazard warning
WITH the craze for unearthing possible offences committed by soldiers in the heat of battle (Mail), the Duke of Wellington made an interesting comment following the Battle of Waterloo.
He said: ‘I recommend to you to leave the Battle of Waterloo as it is. If it is to be a history, it must be the truth . . . but if a true history is written, what will become of the reputation of half of those who have acquired reputation, and who deserve it for their gallantry, but who, if their mistakes and casual misconduct were made public, would not be so well thought of?’
D. PArry, Dorchester, Dorset.
Trim back on beards
I HATE the fashion for beards; very few men can get away with it. I understand that having to shave every day must be a bind, but do they not realise how much older a beard makes them look?
Since Gary Lineker has taken to wearing a beard, he looks at least ten years older.
Watching TV, I’m appalled at how many celebrities have succumbed to this trend. It doesn’t do them any favours and I hope the fashion soon comes to an end.
G. HArt, Chelmsford, Essex.