SNP ignoring communities

SIR, – Your report on Nicola Sturgeon’s vow to push ahead with wind power growth (P&J 16/5/2019) says as much about her dismissive attitude towards small communities in rural Scotland as it does about her party’s

long-standing love-affair with onshore wind. Her denigration of public concerns re the aesthetics of massive, industrial-scale developments in the Scottish countryside is typical of her failure to understand rural perspectives.

The SNP-Green alliance will stop at nothing to press on with these developments regardless of their effect on the countryside. Over the last decade and more, the SNP have used their powers to skew planning policy in favour of the developers and have regularly overruled planning decisions made by democratically elected councils. It is clear the urban-centric socalled SNP ‘government’ espouses without question the values of its power base in the central belt – to the detriment of the north-east in particular.

Sturgeon’s pretence that rural communities are ‘coming together to do what’s right’ belies a ‘get them tellt’ attitude which pervades this SNP administration. The SNP’s unswerving belief in this process of centralisation – shown in many

areas including law enforcement, fire service and education

– ignores the rights of our communities, undermines local democracy and shows the SNP is incapable of understanding the interests of the wider community. It has become clear Sturgeon’s mantra, regarding the devolution of powers to Holyrood, stops at Holyrood. The only way to change this? Elect a party which will show respect for the values of north-east communities and return a Scottish Conservative government led by Ruth Davidson in 2021.

David E Johnston, High Street,

Laurencekirk