THERE has been much correspondence recently on the benefits of building a bridge across the North Channel between Scotland and Ireland but little comment about the difficulties in the construction of such a bridge.
There are many long bridges in the world but there has never been a bridge built across such a wide, deep and stormy channel for the very good reason that it is totally impractical with current technology.
The pretty sketches produced lately to illustrate a possible bridge show what is basically a longer Queensferry Crossing but the Irish Sea is absolutely nothing like the Firth of Forth.
For a start, over about half the length of the proposed site the water is over a thousand feet deep so would need supporting towers at least 1400 feet high to carry the road deck and to clear the shipping channel. No contractor would risk attempting to build the 30 or so towers required in such exposed and stormy seas.
Secondly, there has been vague talk of floating sections of roadway to remove the need for towers in the deepest parts.
This Channel is notorious for its rough seas, and waves of more than 30 feet are common in winter (this is the channel where the Princess Victoria ferry was lost in a winter storm). A floating deck would be impassable much of the time, and uncomfortable all the time, even if it survived, and anyway would be a major hazard to shipping in this important navigational route.
The bridge is just a pipe dream, but for a tiny fraction of the proposed costs, better access roads, terminals and bigger ferries could be built.
James Duncan
Edinburgh
DESPITE David Crines’s visionary eloquence (Letters, September 7), I must admit to doubts regarding the feasibility of a bridge linking Scotland and Ireland. Such a bridge may well be technically feasible in itself, but has sufficient thought been given to the road system which it would require?
Around Aberdeen, the construction of the Western Peripheral Route has resulted in years of disruption on the roads and, as can be seen now that the project is approaching completion, a radical transformation of the entire landscape; and the Aberdeen area already had the road system required for a major population centre. In Galloway – never mind Kintyre – a road-building programme on the scale which a Scotland-to-Ireland bridge would require would alter the entire areas, and the communities to which they are home, out of recognition.
Perhaps this will be regarded as a price worth paying; I cannot predict. But this seems to me to be a problem of a greater magnitude than the building of the actual bridge.
Derrick McClure
Aberdeen
READ MORE: Letters: Scottish-Irish bridge could be just the beginning
SARAH Glynn is absolutely correct in saying that the accusations of anti-Semitism directed at Jeremy Corbyn have one aim only – to destroy him and support for the Palestinians (Letters, September 7).
Her letter analysing the situation is an example to all journalists and should shame them all, as it cuts through the obfuscating layers of lies and smears to get to the truth – something which the vast majority of mainstream media journalists have failed to do, embedded as they are in the establishment and its narrow, one-sided and self-serving global viewpoint.
We can see this viewpoint everywhere. Witness the appalling rush to judgment over the latest “revelations” in the Skripal affair. Revelations concerning two men who can only be described as the most incompetent and clumsy assassins ever. But true to form the mainstream media ignores this. It looks the other way (as it does with Israel and its shameful behaviour) and needs no evidence as it has already made up its mind. It happily swallows the government’s story hook, line and sinker and blares it out on its front pages. A story so full of holes that any competent journalist would have sunk it well before now.
Like the anti-Semitism story, this one has only one aim too – to demonise Russia and so justify more sanctions and an attack on the Russian-backed Syrian army as it tries to liberate Idlib from its nest of US-backed terrorists.
And may I say how deeply disappointed I was to see Ian Blackford give the SNP’s support to such a blatant piece of government anti-Russian, evidence-free propaganda. I would hope that once we are an independent nation, freed from the grip of Westminster, we will be able to see events like these as they truly are, without fear or favour, in a clear-sighted and unbiased way.
Frank Rodgers
Glasgow
READ MORE: Letters: Bid to oust Corbyn is yet another Project Fear
I ALWAYS enjoy Hamish MacPherson’s pieces on Scottish history, and I would like to add one small bit of information to his excellent profile of Hector MacDonald (How Fighting Mac rose from crofter’s son to hero general, September 7). Many of us have already heard of this soldier even if we think we haven’t, since he was “Hector the Hero” for whom the great fiddler and composer James Scott Skinner named one of his finest laments.
Bruce Baker
Paxton, Berwickshire
READ MORE: How Fighting Mac rose from crofter’s son to hero general
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