Sir, – This week has seen no less than three highly-paid salmon farming cheerleaders grace your columns on consecutive days.
On Monday we saw Martin Jaffa, writing in your guest column, characteristically sniping ad hominem at the new Scottish director of Wildfish Rachel Mulrenan. Dr Jaffa’s doctorate concerned research into the habits of yeasts, though nowadays he is assumed to be more interested in dough.
Next up on Tuesday was our very own Tavish Scott with a front-page headline outlining the aquaculture industry’s cunning plan to single-handedly halt population decline in West Highland and island communities by spending – wait for it – someone else’s money, in this instance that of the Crown Estates, to which organisation his industry pays rent of approximately £10 million per anum to use (some might say abuse) the seabed.
It is perhaps worth mentioning here that the seabed in question is used by the said industry as an open sewer, on which, under every single open net cage, a pile of ordure builds daily, that is to say, every day stock is present in the cage.
Also of interest to your readers, particularly those of our large and mighty agricultural community, might be the fact that just less than a quarter of all fish enclosed in those cages will die before harvest from one disease, infestation, or another.
Were this happening in the context of terrestrial stock rearing, well, I’m sure your paper’s excellent farming team might have something to say about that.
Finally, Wednesday was the turn of Canadian Ian Roberts, at the head of your letters column (boring old scientific facts, etc) waxing lyrical about a number of totally discredited Canadian government and aquaculture industry-sponsored reports to support the industry view that there is no significant statistical connection between salmon farming and anything whatsoever that is in any way, well, not very good.
Quite why Mr Roberts omitted to mention that he is director of communications for MOWI Scotland, Ireland and Canada escapes me, but he must speak with singular authority on Canadian aquaculture matters, since on October 4 last year he was elected chairman of the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAA), which he also forgot to mention.
Three days in a row must be pure coincidence, surely? Perhaps they thought no one would notice.
They need to think again, and about so very many things.
Niall McKillop, NFP (former regional chair, Salmon and Trout Association Scotland, now Wildfish), Badabrie, Banavie, Fort William.
Scotland’s Honours hidden at Kinneff
Sir, – The recent letter from John Barton regarding the Honours of Scotland gives an account of them through time. However he has not detailed the most important time – from 1651 to 1660.
As Cromwell’s army proceeded north into Scotland it was of the utmost importance that the Honours should be removed to a safe place.
It was Dunnottar Castle where they were moved to but, as the marauders got closer to seizing the castle and the Honours, it was evident they would have to be moved once again.
Six miles down the coast was the church at Kinneff and there the minister James Grainger and his wife Christian Fletcher decided to remove the Honours from Dunnottar and conceal them in the church.
There are two versions of the story but both tell that Christian smuggled them out of the castle.
There they hid the Honours for nine years until the restitution of Charles ll.
The Old Church at Kinneff is preserved as a monument to this deed and in the church, which is open every day, there is a detailed description of this cunning, brave deed.
In 1661 the Scottish Parliament awarded Christian 2000 merks in recognition of her service, but this amount was never paid.
Antony Peters, Kinneff Old Church Preservation Trust, Greenbraes Crescent, Gourdon, Montrose.
Put Rishi and Boris in Ukraine trenches
Sir, – It’s bad enough that Britain is sending tanks to Ukraine. Training the crews to operate a tank is hard enough, especially with the language barrier, but what takes longer is to train them in manoeuvre warfare combined with infantry and artillery.
Then there’s maintenance. A basic British Army technician has 18 months’ training and an artificer has a further two years of it.
Western armies have one tank type, but Ukraine will have the complexity of at least three Western tanks plus vast numbers of ex-Soviet models.
But now it gets worse – Rishi Sunak has asked the defence secretary to look into sending British jets too and we haven’t been told what victory or the end game looks like. Does it include retaking Crimea?
It’s easy to send other people’s children to die in war. I suggest that Sunak and Boris Johnson go and lead the charge themselves.
Geoff Moore, Braeface Park, Alness.
Labour would turn oil and gas taps off
Sir, – In an interview on Radio 4 last week with Nick Robinson it was very clear what the future holds for the UK oil and gas industry if Labour becomes the government at the next election.
Ed Miliband, shadow secretary for climate change, revealed that a Labour government would not be supporting any further extraction of fossil fuels from the North Sea nor the granting of any further licences.
He was upset that Shell had made such “indecent profits’’ – “war profits’’ as he claimed they were – caused by the rising cost of oil since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Mind you, I think it was Russia who cut off the supply of oil into Europe, not Shell.
It would appear that Mr Miliband, Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP and the Green Party do not believe in North Sea oil and gas, but are willing to import large amounts from elsewhere in the world, which is absolutely crazy and damaging to our environment.
Ken Watmough, Broomhill Terrace, Aberdeen.
Nuclear war risk in Ukraine escalating
Sir, – I would like to thank Ivan W Reid for his letter calling for negotiations between all parties in the war in Ukraine.
This war would never have happened if the Minsk agreements sponsored by France and Germany had been adhered to, something that President Zelensky had been elected to do.
Or if the March 2022 Russia–Ukraine peace negotiations facilitated by Turkey had not been scuppered in April by then prime minister Boris Johnston who persuaded President Zelensky not to sign.
What can come of this conflict if either party actually starts winning?
If Russia starts winning how will the West respond? We have a president in the White House already humiliated by losing the war in Afghanistan. What will happen to the ethnic Ukrainians many of whom are in exile in Europe already?
What if Ukraine starts winning and, in particular, if Russia’s naval base in the Crimea is threatened (which it has held since the 19th Century and was on lease from Ukraine until 2040), and-or if Ukraine becomes officially part of Nato?
Under such circumstances President Putin has said that if Russia’s security is threatened, which it then would be, the nuclear option is on the table.
The dates that Russian President #Putin is expected to launch an ‘unstoppable’ nuclear Satan-2 missile have been revealed.https://t.co/E70KPcV7va
— The Independent (@Independent) February 10, 2023
This is not a war of swords and spears as both sides have thousands of nuclear weapons which could annihilate the world’s population several times over within minutes.
If Russia or even Nato used one nuclear weapon, how would their adversaries reply?
The Russian invasion is rightly condemned, and has led to appalling consequences, but this conflict has deeper roots.
There was firstly the breaking of the agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev for Nato not to move beyond Germany.
While a coup in Ukraine in 2014 openly supported by the United States against a Russian-supporting leader resulted in a civil war between Russian-supported forces in the East and the then Ukrainian government.
This conflict was building up in intensity prior to the Russian invasion. How would the US or UK have responded if a similar situation was happening on their borders?
We need not only to urgently move away from military conflict towards a process of negotiation but also to develop co-operative relations among nations based on the United Nation’s founding charter.
The suffering of the Ukrainian people has already been appalling, what follows could be much worse.
Jonathan Russell, Springbank Place, Aberdeen.
Massive oil company profits merit respect
Sir, – Publication of oil company results in the last few days seems to have triggered in mainstream and social media a frenzy of claims of exploitation by the so-called oil giants and cries for even more stringent taxation.
Few people understand the unpredictable route from bidding for a block licence through to exploration drilling, to first oil and beyond.
Add to that the boom and bust volatilities in hydrocarbon prices over last 20 years that have made it difficult to keep and maintain assets, let alone make reasonable profit.
Hydrocarbon reservoir appraisal processes are hi-tech and prediction is improving, although it is still speculative and, despite large financial investment, many come to nothing, particularly in the now very mature North Sea.
To produce a profit like BP’s for 2022-23 of around £23 billion, which for this year is a quoted return on capital expenditure (ROCE) of I believe 7.2 %, means a prodigious investment of approximately £320bn would have been needed (that equates to the GDP of Chile).
That would provide the manpower (60,000 staff, plus contractors), materials, construction, drilling, extraction, transportation and production to realise the pre-tax profit of £28bn.
I worked before retiral in oil and gas, but also in wider industry, the NHS and in further education. My career experience in oil and gas was, for me, the best in terms of efficiency, health, safety and fairness.
The working conditions and risks involved in hydrocarbon extraction in remote sometimes hostile and dangerous environments is often overlooked.
Six close colleagues died way too prematurely in four separate aircraft incidents during my career in the North Sea oil industry.
While BP’s chief executive officer’s annual salary package of £4.5m may be seen as an obscene amount, let’s give it some perspective. It pales into insignificance alongside Cristiano Ronaldo’s $200m salary with Saudi Arabian Football Club Al Nassr.
The hypocrisy of many of the journalists, union leaders, politicians, protest groups and others on the anti-hydrocarbon bandwagon is that I am sure that they are themselves consumers and there is a very good chance their pension funds will hold shares and benefit from dividends in major energy companies as a significant part of investment portfolios.
In conclusion, it is not a vice for any responsible company to produce a profit, it’s essential and a virtue for society. Profit drives industry, jobs, our economy, tax system and pensions. Generating a taxable profit should be applauded and respected, not sneered at.
William Morgan Midstocket, Aberdeen.
Giving alcoholics alcohol is illogical
Sir, – When the Scottish Government decided to impose a minimum price on alcohol, it hoped to reduce the sales and consumption, which has failed.
Now it is announced that alcoholics will be given alcohol to try to cure their addiction. Where is the logic in this scheme?
Are they going to give gamblers casino chips to cure their addiction?
An addiction can not be cured by feeding it, these unfortunate people need more help and encouragement not more means to carry on.
Don McKay, Provost Hogg Court, Torry.
Gullible Scots need to open their eyes
Sir, – It’s more than a little concerning that even after 15 years of SNP toxic failure there are people in Scotland (Douglas Black, letters, February 7) who, like lemmings to the sea follow the SNP.
They cannot help spouting their usual insults and manufactured grievances towards the UK – Europe’s number one destination for millions of migrants from around the world.
With failure and rank hypocrisy being SNP specialities, it’s weird why any true Scot could be so gullible and easily charmed by Nicola Sturgeon, or her sidekick Patrick Harvie.
Their joint capabilities amount to nothing more than squandering taxpayers’ money bribing the public for votes, teaching wokery to schoolchildren and leading Scotland down the road of Venezuela-style rack and ruin. Our hard working taxpayers deserve more.
George Emslie, Bridge Of Don, Aberdeen.
Litter laziness costing money
Sir, – Following on from a recent letter asking whether there were still Aberdeen City Wardens whose responsibilities included litter fines.
I would suggest these wardens should patrol near our secondary schools at lunchtime as the litter around Oldmachar Academy is disgraceful.
I don’t suggest issuing fines, but instead to educate these children to put their litter in a bin – usually only yards away.
The Asda carpark is littered with paper bags and pizza boxes every day. Is it so uncool to be seen putting your litter in a bin?
Their laziness is costing the taxpayer – their own parents – money that councils can ill afford.
K.B., Bridge of Don.
Excellent hospital care
Sir, – I was recently discharged from Ward 108, ARI.
My week’s stay in hospital was made very comfortable by the excellent medical, nursing and other staff, who excelled in giving me and fellow patients the best of care.
Considering the meals have to be delivered to hundreds of patients at approximately the same time, the food was hot and the menu had plenty of choices.
A special mention must go to Brian, the ward’s pharmacist, who spent time with each patient inquiring if their pain relief was adequate.
Brian covered so many miles a day with his down-to-earth and caring attitude.
He is a loyal Dons season ticket holder and loves the team. Here’s hoping he gets some joy soon.
E.N., Westhill.
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