Letters to The National, December 23: Openness on transportation of uranium in the Highlands is essential

As a campaigning group formed in 2013, HANT (Highlands Against Nuclear Transport) has been calling for greater transparency and openness from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in relation to transport of nuclear materials from Dounreay by rail, sea, road and air

The mantra response of the NDA and DSRL (Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd) is that all transport meets strict regulatory requirements and details cannot be divulged on security grounds

HANT has consistently argued that all communities along the routes being used should be informed of the risks and be fully briefed on emergency plans in place to deal with accidents.

In early meetings with senior NDA staff, HANT was informed that communities are not informed because “then everyone would be against the transports”!

In the light of this latest example of a blatant disregard for public concern and safety this position is the only responsible way to deal with the toxic legacy of the nuclear industry

Tor Justad, vice chairman, HANT
Strathpeffer, Ross-shire

The Council Tax is so unfair it makes the poll tax look reasonable

THE Council Tax is the most aggressive tax ever inflicted on the people of this country. It is totally a property tax unlike the hated Community Charge ('poll tax') which in many ways was fairer.

I live in a three-bedroomed detached bungalow and am now a widow. All my family have grown up and left. I have little savings. I have two empty bedrooms (box rooms) which are part of my property. Although I now have less income coming in weekly my Council Tax banding remains the same which is Band E.

I get a single person discount which everyone in my position is entitled to. I do not qualify (unlike the drug addict) for Council Tax Benefit because I have a small private works pension along with my State Pension.

Exactly a quarter of my monthly state pension goes towards my Council Tax. If my home was an ex-council property with the same amount of bedrooms it would have a lower banding and I would be paying around £40 a month less for exactly the same services.

My neighbours (a family of four) who live in exactly the same kind of property are all in top professional employment (and also have their own family business) pay a monthly total of only £30 more than I pay.

How on earth can this Tory tax which was designed to help the richest families be fair? Do my two empty box rooms amount to nothing more than another form of bedroom tax? I have to pay up or get out, which is not an option for me as a pensioner. The (I’m all right, Jack) supporters of this despicable tax seem to imagine that if a pensioner lives in a private bungalow then they must be wealthy.

It’s about time that these clowns joined the real world but then again if they think this way then they obviously must be Tories or Blue Socialists who reaped the rewards for 13 years when Blair/Brown increased it by 60 per cent.

Louise McArdle
Lanarkshire

SO everyone seems to be jumping on the band wagon, scrap the council tax and bring in a local income tax – tax the rich! The sound is reminiscent of pitchfork-wielding villagers in a Frankenstein movie. It is the same attitude that will scare away higher earners.

It is also the same attitude that scares away foreign investors who may look to come and create new business here. They look at the taxation that their senior management will face.

Meanwhile the middle will be squeezed further and we will soon be living in a society where the harder you work, the more you will lose.

There is a better way to raise the money that councils receive and that’s empty industrial properties that lie empty for years on end because they are owned by pension funds that have them as over-inflated assets on their books.

If you have ever tried to take on an office or an industrial space you would know that the rental costs and terms are pretty horrendous and can easily kill off any venture before it starts.

Then there are the dilapidations they charge at the end of the lease where you even have to fix the roof because of the ageing of the building.

Local councils should look to charge more for an empty industrial property than they do for an occupied one. This would encourage the property owner to take on leases at lower rates which would give our economy a huge kickstart. Lower taxes on occupied properties and lower rents would give businesses a competitive edge and would encourage more businesses to start up in Scotland.

Our economy has always been undermined by Westminster because they do not want Scotland to be strong enough to survive on its own, they need us to perform just enough to not be a burden, but that little bit hesitant of cutting the strings to the butcher’s apron. Poverty is a terrible thing and we need to eliminate it, but with all the hard talk of taxing the rich, where does the hard talk of social responsibility come in? If some people actually took responsibility for their own actions it could save more than the revenue hoped to achieve though tax increases.

Simply by stopping littering, fly-tipping, vandalism, anti-social behaviour and many more areas where individuals have the ability to waste millions without any consequences. Why should the tax payer have to pick up the cost of irresponsibility, especially when this is not exclusively a poverty issue but rather an issue surrounding being decent citizen.

Bold initiatives are needed but we don’t need to resort to punishing those that are fortunate enough to earn a bit above the average salary. We need to think out the box in a way that will grow our economy and as a result increase our tax revenue while reducing our spending.

Mark Breingan
Cumbernauld

DAVID Mundell, the Scotland secretary, has been unusually vocal recently with various statements released, all attacks on the SNP Government — no surprise there. One has to wonder, though, why he has sought such a high profile at this time. Is it a result of too much Christmas cheer at the Scotland Office’s yuletide bash?

Has he just realised that David Cameron can’t replace him in a Cabinet reshuffle, no matter how feeble his performance may be?

Has Santa granted his Christmas wish early and grown him a pair?

Or is it pure relief that the liar Alistair Carmichael’s trial passed without him being called to say what he knew and when?

Whatever the reason he is breaking HL Mencken’s advice, which all would be politicians should follow: “Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool, after he speaks it is seldom necessary to assume it”.

James Mills
Johnstone

Timing of negative McIlvanney comments was ‘crass and insensitive’

MR Stuart (Letters, December 21) is quite wrong in his assumption that the offence caused by him was in commenting harshly and without any respect on Willie McIlvanney’s abilities as a writer.

What was truly offensive was the timing of those remarks, which came not two years before or two years after McIlvanney’s funeral, but a mere two days later.

In order to get his thoughts into print and into the public domain after those two days, Mr Stuart must have written them the day before at the latest. There was nothing admirable, brave or outspoken about this, it was, quite simply, crass and insensitive.

Furthermore, not only did he rubbish McIlvanney as a writer but he did so in a way that also impugned his integrity as a man. Willie was not a robot or some distant celeb guarded and protected from all contact with his public, he was a very accessible human being. He had a family and a great many friends who were and are in shock at his very recent death and are still grieving over their loss.

Common decency, for someone who possessed it, should have dictated delaying any criticism of him until some time had passed, if only for their sake. I am sure once those who loved McIlvanney have recovered they will be happy to debate his worth as a writer and as a man with Mr Stuart.

Until that time I suggest Mr Stuart looks deep into his own character in order to locate some minute amount of integrity and dignity that will enable him refrain from further public comments for the moment, thus enabling McIlvanney rest in peace and his family and friends to recover — as I shall be doing from now on.

Meg Henderson
Address Supplied

Meg Henderson hardly needed to exert much effort to dismantle the dated and flimsy critical points Colin Stuart makes about William McIlvanney’s work (Letters, December 19).

I’m certain her letter was chosen from many finding Mr Stuart’s comments in poor taste. I’m amazed, then, that he continues to defend the view that the timing of these comments is “neither here nor there” (Letters, December 21).

In this I’m reminded of the last lines of Norman MacCaig’s critique of distanced intellectualism in his poem An Academic: “I would like to give you a present of weather, a transfusion of pain”.

Alex MacMillan
Dunbar

I THINK I owe some of your correspondents an explanation (Letters, December 19: ‘Unionists baying for an increase in taxes is just howling mad reaction’). They appear to be both irritated and somewhat confused by my occasional letters to The National, neither of which was my intention. One letter writer wants to portray me as a Labour supporter, the other as a Conservative. Neither is right.

After 40 years of voting, I now vote for the combination of leader and policies that is the most convincing, whichever party that might be. My letters are not intended to be for a particular party. Nor importantly, am I against anyone, however they voted in the referendum, and whoever they vote for in elections.

What I believe is that now more than ever, we need to recognise all that is common between us and how interdependent we are. So I find myself against any ideology that focuses on differences, real or imagined, in pursuit of separation.

Also, given the way the SNP dominate Scotland just now, I feel it important that ordinary people try however we can, to hold them to account when they fail to properly deliver the public services upon which we all depend.

I think Scotland in the UK is a great country and do not want to see it undone. Apart from that I suspect there is much that your correspondents and I would agree on.

Keith Howell
West Linton, Peeblesshire

I DO not feel that I know enough to make an informed decision as to whether we should stay in or leave the European Union and I am keen to hear both sides of the argument.

As far as I can see, no one is offering clear information regarding what it means for us to be a member now and in the future. What are the implications regarding cost, sovereignty, trade, business, defence and immigration?

All we hear about is whether David Cameron will be successful or not in his negotiations regarding some trivial and unlikely amendments to the constitution. So far, that seems to be the extent of the “debate”.

Jim Raeside
Pitlochry

The Long Letter: The military’s spin doctors never been in more demand

MICHAEL Gray’s examination (Military language denies our humanity, The National, December 22) of how the public are kept informed, or otherwise, of military action could not be more timely.

With the news that our troops are once again to be deployed in Afghanistan, the arts of the military spin doctor have never been in more demand. For our political masters in Westminster their ability to continue to prosecute war in far-off lands is based more on we the public’s perception of what is happening on the ground and in the air than what is actually happening, or not happening, on the ground and in the air.

This is the case for all of the publics of all of the democratic societies whose governments signed up to these wars to a greater or lesser degree, for a greater or a lesser amount of time.

Modern generalship in modern democracies involves not just the management of troops on the battlefield but the management of the media back home.

The Vietnam War moved from the battlefield to be lost on the televisions in millions of American homes in the 1960s and 1970s. War has now moved on to the computer, the tablet and the mobile phone as well. Moreover we now have the images and the messages spun by almost all of the protagonists. In a sense, we the public, if not standing on the battlefield are being battled over by both sides for our approval or otherwise.

We should not be surprised then that today many Western democracies are developing career paths for journalists that will take them all the way to the top of the military hierarchy. Indeed the US already has press officers with two stars and possibly more on their collars. Press officers are now a normal part of the complement of military headquarters staff, even in HQs at the operational level.

Earlier this year, the British Army stood up a new formation, the 77th Brigade, to conduct media operations “behind enemy lines”.

Yet, ostensibly at least, we live in a democracy where decisions are taken to go to war by democratically elected politicians. Of course these politicians are accountable to electorates but the information we are fed is never quite the truth.

After all, in a wartime situation to provide accurate information to Mr and Mrs in the street is to provide information to adversaries. So when the time comes to hold our politicians to account for their conduct in military matters we do so on information that is at best, incomplete and at worst false or as the case of Chilcot and Iraq, too late to matter.

This is why the extensive coverage of the on-going wars in The National, many of which the UK is involved in and even more that the UK supply, needs to continue to allow us in Scotland at least to make our judgements on news that has a degree of detail and more than a modicum of objectivity.

Media management in war is not new, it’s just that our wars, and as I say they are ‘our’ wars, seem never-ending and with it the constant flow of distorted and conflicting information. When Napoleon went on campaign his carefully drafted daily press releases were often as important as his carefully drafted orders to his marshals.

These ‘bulletins’ as they were called, were as much for international consumption as for the heavily censored press back in Paris, and during his career he drafted thousands of them. The term soon emerged “to lie like a bulletin”, I am tempted to apply the sobriquet to certain of our media outlets, I’m glad to say The National is not one of them.

Bill Ramsay
Glasgow