I REFER to the letter headed “Vote Sarwar if you want broken nuclear future” (Sunday National, Oct 6) from Leah Gunn Barret in which she summarises why Scotland doesn’t need nuclear power as proposed by the Labour government.
This is a position adopted by HANP (Highlands Against Nuclear Power) since our formation. It appears that a lot more lobbying and campaigning is needed, as the position taken by, for example, environmental campaigner George Monbiot, is that nuclear is a clean energy and needs to be “part of the mix” of energy sources.
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Long-standing and new supporters of nuclear seem to ignore the reasons for nuclear not needing to be “part of the mix” including:
Generating electricity through nuclear is twice as expensive as through renewables, and when construction costs can't be raised from the private sector the taxpayer will pick up the bill.
● Nuclear is not "carbon-free" or green, as uranium has to be mined as the raw material required and there are high CO2 emissions during the average 15-year build period.
● All nuclear power stations pose a risk to health and the environment both during operation and decommissioning. Years after the fast breeder at Dounreay closed, there are still radioactive particles being found on the foreshore around Dounreay and there have been leaks of radioactive sodium.
● The UK has no facility for safely storing the 500 tonnes of nuclear waste which has been accumulating for 70 years –a proposed geological disposal facility has been proposed but will take decades to plan and build and has to last for 100,000 years – no man-made building has ever lasted this long.
● Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are closely linked, and weapons cannot be manufactured without the plutonium produce by nuclear power plants.
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HANP will continue to oppose any proposals for new nuclear power stations, whether conventional or small modular reactors – they are not wanted or needed in the Highlands or in any part of Scotland or the UK.
The future is in renewables. Progress has been made in onshore and offshore wind power and we’re only on the starting blocks for tidal and wave power – Scotland has the potential to lead in these technologies but greater priority and investment is needed. This will lead to 100% of clean and green energy meeting all our future needs.
Tor Justad
Chairperson, HANP
REGARDING your piece “Tory under fire as he says Scots language should be ‘left to Oor Wullie and The Broons’” (Oct 8), while I am in full agreement with Susi Briggs, the new Galloway Scots Scriever, that writing in the Scots language is part of our culture and is to be encouraged, it should surely be everyday Scots language that is understood and spoken by the average punter; the contemporary Scottish speech of buses, supermarkets, playgrounds, building sites, etc and specific to its own area.
Too often letters to newspapers in what’s claimed to be the Scots language are written in a cringe-making gaither-up (yes, an expression still used today) of Scots words borrowed from various regions and historical periods. Robert Burns’s extensive correspondence is written in English, the only letter extant written by him in the vernacular is one to his Edinburgh schoolmaster (and Dumfriesshire-born) friend William Nicol. And why “Scots Scriever”? Why not, more appropriately, “Scotch Scriever”? Did Burns not write of himself in 1787 “The appellation of a Scotch Bard, is by far my highest pride”? Time to reclaim the word, perhaps?
C Lincoln
Edinburgh
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THE excellent article on the Scots Leid on October 8 quotes the opinions of Oor Steevie Kerr. In perfect English he asserts that “a Scots language can’t be easily defined; it is different for everyone who speaks it depending on where they are from” and presumably he thinks that, in comparison, English is the same everywhere. Of course that’s true in the company Kerr keeps, and in Buckingham Palace. But wait a minute! Move about London a bit, or go to the the west, or the east, or indeed the north-east and north-west of England. You’ll find a bewildering variety of the ways people speak, and often it’s quite hard to understand without making some effort.
All over the world, there is consternation at the way minority languages are rapidly being lost to the big dominant languages (usually in the interests of commerce). In the case of Steevie’s attack on the leid, it’s about homogenising the culture of the UK in the interests of Unionism.
Derek Ball
Bearsden
“YOU” is the plural of “you” although “youse” is spoken in some parts of Scotland by folk ignorant of English grammar. It pains me therefore to read “yese” as officially accepted as being in the “Scots leid” (Tory under fire..., Oct 8). Imitating bad English grammar leaves the door open to pundits who deny there is a Scottish language, in all its variants. “Ye” is the Scottish plural of “ye”.
Jim McLean
London
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