Sir, – Losing the annual Offshore Europe oil conference is not quite the kick in the teeth that some would have everyone believe.
If it means the “Aberdeen Avarice” which has blighted the city during the folly of the fossil fuel years disappears, then so be it.
However, the way that Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce’s Russell Borthwick was complaining recently, it’s clear that everyone who wants the city’s status quo to continue is still living in dreamland. Has nobody awoken from their slumber yet?
Or realised that if the past is allowed to persist, Aberdeen will be under water due to the total collapse of the polar ice caps creating dramatic sea level rises?
Or will it be a case of even after that happens these people will still want to extract oil, as the world burns to a crisp around them?
Ian Beattie, Baker Street, Rosemount, Aberdeen.
Lord Woodside’s priority was city
Sir, – I refer to the tributes paid to the late Lord Hughes of Woodside.
For more than 20 years I shared a room in the House of Lords with Bob and I can confirm that his chairmanship of the British arm of the anti-apartheid movement placed him from time to time under great international political pressure which he withstood with vigour and integrity.
However his was a long political life and as he frequently said his priority was at all times to enhance and protect the interests of the electors of Aberdeen North.
Lord Kirkhill, Rubislaw Den North, Aberdeen.
Nuclear power is anything but clean
Sir, – In Monday’s P&J, Clark Cross states Hunterston B had “provided clean electricity for 46 years.”
Electricity per se is neither clean nor dirty. How it is made can produce pollution to a greater or lesser extent. Nuclear power is the most dangerous and polluting method of producing electricity available.
Nuclear power plants create high-level nuclear waste which is one of the most dangerous substances in the world. It remains radioactive for tens of thousand of years and has to be shielded indefinitely.
There is no way the word “clean” can be used in association with such a process.
Colin D Young, Newtonhill, Stonehaven.
God can’t just be put in a box
Sir, – I think James Campbell’s letter well described the Christian church and its clergy.
Like many folk I’ve searched for answers to life and death issues only to be confronted by a plethora of belief from assorted denominations, each one claiming their take was right and others were wrong.
It was curious they all wanted to contain God in their own little boxes, as if God were a Baptist or a Presbyterian or whatever, but as the writer JB Phillips famously observed in “Your God Is Too Small”, God refuses to live in anyone’s little box.
I don’t for a moment believe God to be the insanely jealous, blood-thirsty, egotistic, sacrifice-demanding tyrant described in the Bible, his wrath against us being such that he couldn’t bear to look on us without first nailing a man to a cross.
Mr Campbell says the clergy are at pains to tell us how bad we all are.
Sin must be the most frequently deployed word in their vocabularies, and if they didn’t have that to speak about they’d be stumped for something to say.
Listen to the next sermon you hear and see if I’m right! I think there are so
many good people out there, not church-going but kind, loving and caring, with a heart like God’s own heart.
Keith Fernie, Drakies Avenue, Inverness.