West End Girls

years. The SNP have to keep on board, of course, the party that sustains them in power at Holyrood, the Greens. That is why an inherently unreliable source of energy, one that will always need a reliable fossil or nuclear back-up, is now the new messiah.

What is required to relieve fuel poverty are policies that put people, and not ideology, first. Middle-class tub thumpers, with a minuscule electoral mandate, as fervent as any religious cultists, moving from one ‘’cause’’ to the next, should not be designing or deciding our energy policy. A pragmatic approach is required: a mixed supply of all available resources, including most significantly, nuclear and fracking, is the answer. There is need for wind farms, as a small and inherently unreliable part of that mixed bag, but it is most decidedly not the answer.

It should be remembered, also, that Scotland and the UK account for an infinitesimal amount of the world’s pollution. May I correct Kirsty Mcluckie? (Real Homes, 3 December) Mary Walker lived in Drumsheugh House, where she died in 1870. The house was demolished to create Drumsheugh Gardens. She was the last of the Walker family who owned the lands of Coates and Drumsheughanddevelopedthearea whichnowcomprisesmelville Street and Crescent, Walker Street, Chester Street. Manor Place, Coates Crescent etc . She would own the feu of 5 Melville Street but did not live there. (See my publication,”women of the West End”, written to accompany the exhibition of the same name displayed in St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral for the Fringe Festival of 2016.)

SANDRA MARWICK Manor Place, Edinburgh