Now we must all hold the victors to account

NOW that the pantomime season is over (no, the other one), it is up to the press and the public to hold whoever is getting into government truly to account. All these promises, billions of pounds, thousands of police, doctors and nurses, tens of thousands of homes, millions or billions of trees, multiple “new” hospitals, oh and £350m a week that we don’t have to pay the EU.

Let’s just make sure that their false promises come back to haunt them. Steve Barnet, Gargunnock.

POSSIBLY one of the most unsavoury aspects of political discourse over the past 20 years or so has been the way the performance of our public services, especially health and education, has been shamelessly exploited by opportunistic and hypocritical politicians. Yet over the past few months, in the run-up to this very dark December election, this contagion has contaminated debate with unsurpassed levels of toxicity.

Fair and constructive criticism is of course an essential element in holding the government of the day to account, but what we have witnessed in recent months has reached new heights, or rather depths, of dishonesty and mendacity, as almost every leading opposition politician has feverishly attempted to outdo each other in levels of hysteria and humbug when attacking the Scottish Government’s record over policing, health and education and other services. If you believed a quarter of what is claimed by some of them, we would appear to have the worst public services not just in the UK but in the whole world.

Of course a cursory glance south of the Border immediately exposes the hypocrisy of people speaking on behalf of the very parties responsible for grim austerity and savage cuts which have had a devastating effect on policing, health, social care and education across the UK, but you will certainly find in many areas of England and Wales what a real crisis looks like.

Likewise, a quick reminder of the record of recent or current Labour or Labour/tory local council administrations in Scotland should make many of them blush with shame, though it probably won’t. They seem to have forgotten, or would like us to forget, who was responsible for burdening our councils with many billions of PFI / PPP debt and who was responsible for squandering millions on vanity projects or fighting equal pay for female council staff.

According to some, everything was perfect in a past age before Police Scotland was set up (no mistakes, no cover-ups, no bad appointments abuses of power or botched investigations etc) and you could be forgiven for thinking that our hospitals rarely if ever experienced long waiting lists, staff shortages, health risks, medical mistakes or tragic errors in the past. Yet this hasn’t stopped some unscrupulous opportunists from exploiting almost every tragic death, especially of children, or health concern, especially in our new hospitals, with a nauseous display of sanctimonious humbug.

Of course there are problems, failings and mistakes in all our services, but shrill wailing from the rooftops over every problem that arises only serves to hide the truth and distort the reality, often making it more difficult to rectify matters when they do go wrong, as they inevitably will.

John Hodgart, Ardossan.

MARY Thomas (Letters, December 10), in response to my letter of December 9, really should have paid attention. I have never said that I have been dissatisfied with the service from the NHS, indeed, I had a minor operation at Stracathro and the service was absolutely wonderful. My point is that the SNP is happy through bad management to waste millions at taxpayer’s expense, for example, a new hospital lying empty and GP practices closing or being taken over by the NHS. The SNP regime’s abysmal mismanagement of most aspects of Scottish life and the control it tries to exert over us has resulted in massive debt which Derek Mackay is totally incapable of controlling.

Ms Thomas, in common with other nationalist correspondents, irresponsibly and unbelievably refuse to believe the truth that the SNP is incapable of managing Scotland prudently. They constantly refuse to accept statistics from bodies such as IFS, Pisa, the Scottish Police

Authority and more – even their own Andrew Wilson, in their misguided belief that once Nicola Sturgeon leads them to independence they will have reached the promised land.

Douglas Cowe, Newmachar.

IRRESPECTIVE of who won the General Election, we still have an SNP administration in Holyrood. During the campaign, Nicola Sturgeon focused principally on the constitution; no change there then. Yet the everyday realities of Ms Sturgeon’s overlooked day job – managing Scotland’s hard-pressed public services – continue.

During the campaign for example, we learned that, in many areas, Scotland’s education system continues to drop down the world rankings under the SNP. Hospital waiting time targets are widely missed, to a shocking extent for cancer patients. The obesity inequality gap grows for Scottish children, our arts funding is deemed to be in need of a major overhaul and Calmac is suing the SNP administration over a ferry routes dispute. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Ms Sturgeon made an early new year’s resolution and decided to concentrate on the job we employ her to carry out, instead of relentlessly indulging her UK break-up dreams?

Martin Redfern, Edinburgh EH10.

Letters to the Editor, which should not exceed 500 words, must include a full address (not for publication) and contact number for verification. Email letters@theherald.co.uk, or post to Letters, The Herald, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB. We may edit submissions.

THE recent article on your Environment page by Martin Williams (“Fears waste system will not be ready for Scottish landfill ban”, The Herald, December 9) returns to the topic of our letter in August where we predicted correctly that the Scottish Government would put back the date of the ban’s implementation to 2025 and advised against punitive tax measures in the interim which the Government appears to be going ahead with; whilst suggesting the Government shows strategic leadership and ensures Energy from Waste facilities are constructed in time and in the right place, which it is once again leaving to local authorities even though some only require a very small proportion of the overall capacity of an average Scottish plant.

The Scottish Environmental Services Association (Sesa) makes the correct point that the 2025 deadline will be breached unless plans are implemented now for new plant.

Cosla states that improvements in recycling and waste management will be impossible if local authorities do not have funding. This is somewhat disingenuous given (as we stated in our earlier letter) local authorities were given significant funding through the Strategic Waste Fund (from 2001) to put in place recycling schemes.

In fact the fund, which was originally to run from 2001 to 2020, was and remains the single “gamechanger” in terms of household recycling across the local authority sector in Scotland. The fund – which was new money – eventually reached a pot of nearly £133 million per year. Approximately half of this was spent annually on recycling schemes up to 2007/8.

The newly-elected government halted the ring-fencing of the funding, meaning councils no longer needed to spend it on recycling projects and, worse, divided up the remaining unspent half amongst the 32 local authorities, so that the block grant included more or less an additional £133m per year for recycling services.

Finally, between 2008-11 the Government created the Zero Waste Fund (£80m) which was a further grant to all local authorities to enhance their recycling services.

All of this funding was in addition to the block grant to councils which incorporates funding for waste and recycling collections and disposal.

Local authority finance managers will argue about whether or not the full amounts of the original Strategic Waste Fund could ever be identified in the block grant. What is unarguable is that local government was given significant additional funding for waste and recycling services but chose in many instances not to spend it on those services; and then to cut the frequency of services or start charging for them.

What is also unarguable is the fact that Government has had the opportunity to introduce policies which would both assist it in meeting its own targets and simultaneously help local government finance.

It has still the opportunity with the introduction of extended producer responsibility where the packaging industry and retailers could be required to pay for local authority recycling collections in full and for the policing of the system. This would help improve recycling rates and its quality and educate the public at the same time.

Had a long-term strategic view of waste been taken a decade and half or so ago when funds were plentiful the landscape of both recycling and of residual waste management would today have been significantly different.

Colin Clark, Inverness; John G Cunningham, Falkirk; Chris Ewing, Fife.

SINCE the SNP came to power in 2007 I have looked on in horror at the exponential rise of waste incineration, which is nothing less than the apotheosis of environmental vandalism.

When the SNP took the helm, less than 150ktpa (kilotonnes per annum) of Scotland’s municipal waste was incinerated. That figure has now risen to 1.25 million ktpa; more than eight times higher. There are plans, some at an advanced

There will be a ban on biodegradable municipal waste going to landfill from January 1, 2021.

stage, for a further 1.75 million ktpa capacity.

Most of what is burnt is plastic and paper. Burning one tonne of plastic emits three tonnes of co2 as each carbon atom combines with two heavy oxygen atoms. Burning a tonne of paper emits 1.5 tonnes of co2.

But that is only part of the story. Incineration companies claim to be efficient because they recover energy. In fact waste incineration recovers one-tenth of the energy used to make the products in our rubbish. The energy used to make one tonne of the products in our rubbish generates the tonnes of CO2.

Claims that waste incineration is necessary to avoid European landfill fines are bogus. Such fines only apply to the biodegradable portion of municipal waste, that is, kitchen scraps and garden waste. Obviously these can be easily segregated and dealt with by composting or anaerobic digestion.

The SNP talks about a “climate crisis”. Indeed. It is doing its best to create it.

Michael Gallagher, Coupar Angus.