Readers' letters: Sunak's green stance will ease fears of cas-strapped UK citizens

He said also that to heat our homes more time and help will be given to transition from gas boilers to heat pumps. Heat pumps will only need to be installed when an existing boiler needs replaced and the poorest households will never have to switch at all.

With the risk of seeming naive I cannot help comparing more favourably the Prime Minister’s delay of green targets to the authoritarian, uncompromising pursuit of net zero by Scotland’s SNP/Green politicians. To them, to be seen as leaders of the world in saving the planet is a first priority and how their constituents, battling severe cost of living and other problems, comply with their diktats is immaterial.

Sally Gordon-Walker, Edinburgh

Dose of realism

The complaints of those who, with or without special interests, express anger at the PM’s policy of delaying some net zero provisions resemble criticisms of turkeys for not voting for Christmas.

No-one else in the UK, or planet Earth, can expect to benefit from our policy of net zero. We in Britain can’t afford net zero and yield only a negligible output of greenhouse gases as a proportion of the global total.

Other nations will not really be dismayed by our changed stance on combating adverse climate developments.

There is no evidence to support decarbonisation as a means of influencing climate.

The PM's policy revisions are, therefore, realistic.

Charles Wardrop, Perth, Perth & Kinross

‘Expert’ advice

When oh when will the incumbents at Holyrood get it through their heads that the principal responsibility of this devolved government is to look after the welfare of Scotland and its people, not to go jet-setting to New York to lecture the world on global warming, and to criticise the UK Government for having the wisdom not to bankrupt our economy and our hardworking people by imposing short-term net-zero targets?

The issue of climate change and its currently understood contributing factors should surely be a responsibility of the United Nations. Those countries of the world contributing most pollution could not care less about the actions of the Scottish devolved government, nor even the UK Government.

As an illustration of the short-sightedness of the SNP towards the banning of fossil-fueled cars, I drive a 20 year-old Mini-Cooper. If I want to replace that this year by a Mini-Cooper electric model, I have to find £37,000 to do it. I’m a pensioner and life is tough enough without being forced to comply with the ideas of climate change “experts”.

It seems to me that the people dreaming up such virtue-signalling ideas in Holyrood are paid so much and are so comfortably off, that they totally disregard the economic effect of their policies on our people and communities. I heard on the BBC Today programme yet another climate-change “expert” advocating that the UK should “lead the world” on action to reduce fossil fuel emission. He seemed to ignore the practical economic consequences for ordinary working people and pensioners.

I became thoroughly disillusioned with the views of “experts” during the Covid lockdown and can do without hearing any more from such people on matters of short-term altruism on global issues, preferring to wait to see the realities of emerging technology to counter such problems as the world may experience.

Derek Farmer, Anstruther, Fife

Not so bad

I notice that a frequent subject on your letters pages is the shortcomings of Scotland’s public transport services, with many complaining about the problems with ferries, buses and trains.

Take heart! A recent transport survey just showed that TfW, or Transport for Wales, is the most complained about transport service in the whole of the British Isles, with abjectly unreliable and unpunctual rail services and decimated bus services, and even our bridges can’t be relied on, let alone ferries.

Rejoice in Scotland’s transport services, which are a masterpiece of soulless efficiency in comparison to ours!

Ian McNicholas, Ebbw Vale, Wales

Compelling drama

I was interested to read that STV chiefs want Taggart to make a comeback (Scotsman, 21 September). However, I have a suggestion for a new never-ending absolute money-spinner instead.

The scene will be set in Scotland during the period from 2007 to date. The backdrop will be Holyrood featuring the day-to-day governance of Scotland. The protagonist will be Scotland’s very own private eye equivalent of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade and the programme eponymously titled “Hardie”.

Imagine the opening scene. A room where Hardie, a grey haired, worldly, intense and intelligent looking man sits reading The Times, with a colleague working on a laptop at a desk. Hardie curses as the phone rings and gruffly answers. He announces to his colleague, in what will become a catchphrase for the programme: “There’s been a cock-up!" Each episode will open with the catchphrase, may last up to 13 years and the number of episodes will be limitless.

Fraser MacGregor, Edinburgh

Eco-Luddites

So because ​Howard Lewis of Edinburgh’s granny was run down in 1931, trams are ergo bad? (Letters, 21 September). This encapsulates the supposed joined-up thinking from eco-Luddites who oppose any clean fuel or clean transport method that comes up and then start finding reasons.

And anyone who talks about a “first-class bus service” clearly is living in fairyland. There’s never been such a thing since the advent of motor cars on easy HP terms resulted in inner city roads being so flooded with school run soccer mums with their cotton-wool kids and neds in loud pratmobiles as to make bus timetables more of an aspiration.

The real problem with the trams was it was the wrong solution to the right problem. Go to Newcastle and see how its wonderful Metro system – part underground, part overground, swift, efficient, punctual and scrupulously clean despite being packed at peak times – shows how to get the best of both worlds and regain space for pedestrians at ground level.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

False history

I am delighted to note the removal of the plaque at the base of the Melville Monument. I fully agree with Sir Tom Devine who argues: “The plaque was based on nothing other than scapegoating, prejudice and false history.”

Henry Dundas was a scoundrel. A heavy drinker, a womaniser and a man who shamelessly used his considerable powers of patronage to help his friends, particularly fellow-Scots. However, to continue to place all of the blame on Dundas for the delay in the abolition of the slave trade is I think unfair and ignores the reality of the tumultuous years of the early 1790s.

Those attacking Henry Dundas have to address the question as to how a slave-supporting Parliament at that time was ever going to vote for abolition. Britain was then at war with revolutionary France and was faced with the real prospect of invasion. Furthermore, the British establishment was terrified that the success of the French Revolution might inspire similar uprisings in the UK. The country was in turmoil and it fell to Dundas to try to restore order at home and to meet the French threat.

Dundas knew perfectly well that Parliament was packed with members who had strong vested interests in the slave trade. It would take years for the force of the moral argument against the vile trade to have any chance of success. During the debate in 1792 he proposed a gradual path to abolition stating that “My opinion has been always against the slave trade”. Indeed, it was Dundas who had taken on the case of the West Indian slave Joseph Knight in 1777 which successfully established that there was no slavery in Scotland. Dundas concluded his remarks in the Court of Session by stating: "Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.” It is quite wrong to argue that Dundas was fighting a rear-guard action against abolition.

Eric Melvin, Edinburgh

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