Renewables come at a heavy cost

I NOTE an excellent letter from Bill Eadie (Letters, August 31) on missing green energy jobs in Scotland.

Wind turbine jobs were created in Germany, Denmark and Spain, not Scotland and all 103 turbines for the Shetlands will be manufactured in Denmark. As Mr Eadie said, the Scottish Government promised a 28,000 green energy jobs bonanza but delivered a miniscule 1,700. Many suspect that the majority of the 1,700 jobs involve picking up and disposing of the numerous dead birds and bats.

South Korean firm CS Wind UK based in Machrihanish has received £3 million in grants for its turbine manufacturing factory and may be looking for more. The wind industry sucks in grants, constraint payments and subsidies and spits out unreliable expensive electricity.

Clark Cross,

Linlithgow.

Ferry disgrace

MAY I remind your readers that there is nothing new in Government meddling (“Design change work for lifeline ferries carried out in Romania”, The Herald, August 31).

It is some 45 years since the then Scottish Government, in cahoots with Calmac, managed to oust the profitable, unsubsidised, Western Ferries sailings from the Islay route where it had taken the lion’s share of the business from the taxpayer-subsidised Calmac. This was achieved by predatory pricing, obfuscation, further subsidy and the creation of every obstacle possible by successive governments. It also enabled Calmac to take over Western Ferries’ Kennacraig terminal. It was a disgrace.

Why the Government should, without a tendering process, award a design brief to an overseas company beggars belief. Surely the necessary skills are still available in Scotland, outwith CMAL, of course.

J Patrick Maclean,

Oban.

Beginnings of bowls

THE Scots Word of the Week

(The Herald, August 29) gave us various meanings of the word “trig”, but no mention of its relationship to the game of bowls.

In 1768 the Governors of Heriot’s Hospital granted the petition of the Gentlemen Bowlers in Edinburgh for a lease of 21 years of the bowling green behind Heriot’s Hospital and the inner garden to the east of it, commonly called “the Wilderness” which they were prepared to level and to lay down as two greens. In July of the next year the bowlers approached the town council for a seal of cause and on November 15, 1769 by charter or seal of cause the provost, magistrates and council erected a corporation or body corporate”.

New rules were presented to the magistrates for their approval, the society’s proceedings “being always consistent with the Laws of the land, customs of this City, and the trust reposed in the said Incorporation”. The trig is referred to in two of these rules which pre-date the first “Laws of the Game’ by some 80 years:

“(2) A right-handed bowler must keep his right foot on the trig when he plays, and a left-handed bowler his left foot.

“(15) The trig must be laid within four feet of the place where the block lay the last end.”

The trig is nowadays referred to as the mat and is the place from which bowls are delivered.

Sir Walter Scott was a member of the society and Burns played there as a guest on one of his visits to Edinburgh.

David Mcgill,

Edinburgh EH9.

A dead loss

THE moral of the Emperor’s New Clothes has clearly been missed at the Glasgow School of Art (“Stars of the future on show” Herald, Magazine, August 29).

There is no beauty in the photograph of a dead bird. It takes great skill and patience for wildlife photographers to capture stunning images of living birds. An osprey caught in mid flight with a freshly caught trout or a kingfisher captured semi submerged with a minnow in its beak.

Photographing a dead bird, however, must be altogether less demanding. It’s as bizarre as but less funny than the Monty Python dead parrot sketch.

There is a photograph of someone with pens strapped to their face with what looks like an elastic band. We are told “he creates an ink drawing augmented by terrific scratchy sound”. Beam me up! I could have gone online to explore further the works of the “artists” listed, but life’s too short. David Clark,

Tarbolton.