Letters: ‘Bleak vision of a landscape straddled by dead turbines’

It is only logical to apply the same argument to on-shore wind turbines. Land owners who opt for wind turbines, and the companies which operate them, should have a significant percentage of their subsidies held back to cover their subsequent removal and disposal – it won’t be long before Scottish Government thinking catches up with its people, to realise that the turbines generate nothing efficiently except subsidies.

Unless the money is taken from the subsidy junkies up front, it will have magically disappeared when the time comes, and turbine owners will be asking for even more public money to remove the damned things... or Scotland will be left with thousands of giant, dead turbines straddling our landscape like the rotting Martian fighting machines in the last scene of The War of the Worlds.

There is a Greenish future for Scotland’s power needs, but it lies in our lochs and the waters around our coast; when will Parliament wake up to what its voters have known for years? Why does Holyrood always have to play “catch-up”?

David Fiddimore, Calton Road, Edinburgh

Social work input is very little use

I HAVE to thank Ruth Stark for explaining the role of the social worker in assisting the court in criminal cases, and for revealing the thinking of her profession (News, December 10). Two words were notable by their absence from her article: “justice” and “fairness”.

If someone raids your home, threatens to kill you and your spouse in your home and cuts you on the face with a knife, most people would think it only fair and just that they should be punished by a custodial sentence. For these serious offences taken together I believe most people would still expect custody, even if the offender was only 16.

Another word, which was used once but seemed entirely out of place was “deter”. The essence of deterrence is not simply that the penalty should dissuade the offender, but that it also deters other potential offenders.

As long as the social work profession follows a debased form of utilitarianism which focuses solely on the needs of the offender and completely ignores any idea of justice for the victims or the wider interests of society, the profession’s input to the criminal justice system will continue to be very largely worse than useless.

Otto Inglis, Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh

Novel idea breaks Virgin territory

Virgin Media is to be congratulated for being quick off the blocks to bid for the contract to upgrade Edinburgh’s broadband infrastructure (News, December 10).

But the article failed to mention the many thousands of Edinburgh residents in the west of the city who, despite £10.7 million delivered from Westminster, still can’t access broadband capable even of supporting video streaming.

Perhaps we can pair this bid with the new Virgin flights out of the Capital’s airport. If we mount one of the WiFi boxes proposed for lampposts on the new planes then at least rural west Edinburgh residents would get a decent broadband signal six times a day!

Mike Crockart, MP for Edinburgh West

Sri Lanka is a very bad role model

Alex Orr harps on about small countries and how wonderful they are, as if we will magically become like them if we opt for independence (Letters, December 11).

He quotes Sri Lanka as a country Scotland could emulate as a force for good in the world.

But small countries are not all good and Sri Lanka is most certainly not. It has recently ended a murderous and vicious civil war where it committed appalling atrocities and war crimes on the Tamil minority.

Is this his vision for an independent Scotland?

Donald McBride, Craigleith Hill Crescent, Edinburgh

Sympathy is for family, not DJs

Phil Cowan’s letter (December 12) is misplaced. My sympathy lies with the children, that no longer have a mother.

The DJs are the continuing evidence of a morally bankrupt media.

Ordinary people, going about their daily work, should not be abused for a pathetic increase in ratings.

A Keith, Braids, Edinburgh