Your letters to the Helensburgh Advertiser: September 28, 2017

To have your say on any issue of local interest, just email your views to editorial@helensburghadvertiser.co.uk with 'Letter' in the subject line of your message.

Please include your name, postal address and a daytime phone number in case we need to check any details at short notice. Happy writing!

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I am past the age when one worries about the relative youthfulness of police officers and am encouraged that we have MPs and MSPs barely into their twenties.

However I must point out that the opening statement in Ross Greer’s latest column (Advertiser Comment, September 21) that Scottish schools are in crisis and the Scottish Government/Scottish Office won’t address the cause, could have been made any time in the last thirty years.

The issues he describes predate both the current Scottish Government and Mr Greer’s schooldays.

The unavoidable fact is that problems with teacher workload, pay, and the effect of budget cuts have become endemic. Workforce planning, never an exact science anyway, has tended to produce gluts or famines with newly qualified teachers either unable to get work and disillusioned or desperately fending off multiple offers for their services.

I would certainly agree with Mr Greer that Teach First can only ever be a sticking plaster solution and that diddling around with educational governance only ever succeeds in shuffling responsibility, and probably blame, on to someone further down the system.

However the main criticism that must be aimed at the Scottish Government is not that they have created these problems but that, like their predecessors, they have failed to solve them.

Indeed I have no faith that these issues will be resolved by anyone until education ceases to be treated like some political shuttlecock, to be whacked enthusiastically from side to side of the Holyrood net.

Only when the blame game ends and some real effort goes into finding long term solutions will we make any progress.

Unfortunately the choice is not ours but we can, at least, try to pressure our politicians into putting aside their differences and getting things fixed.

Robin Irvine, 4 Abercrombie Place West, Helensburgh

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John F Stirling's criticism of Brendan O'Hara MP and the SNP government (Advertiser Comment, September 21) for not giving support to the UK government in its Brexit negotiations is a confused letter.

The SNP delivered an overwhelming Remain vote from Scotland to the UK Prime Minister David Cameron, but the incompetence of the British establishment of both the leadership of the Tory and Labour parties to

legislate for and campaign in an EU Referendum without appreciating the possibility that the ingrained hostility of the English majority to the EU would deliver a 'Leave' vote , and Mr Cameron's instructions to

civil servants not to prepare for a 'Leave' vote, hardly encourages any degree of confidence in a fractured Conservative Government.

Why does Mr Stirling not direct his criticism in that direction?

Rather than being a source of friction and irritation to the UK Government it would be better if Mrs May recognised that both the Scottish and Welsh governments could greatly assist her efforts if she showed a willingness to negotiate a UK settlement for farming and agriculture and other devolved issues with the Scottish and Welsh governments concurrently with its negotiations with the EU.

How can the UK Government expect the EU to discuss withdrawal and a new trade arrangement simultaneously when it refuses to offer the devolved administrations a similar facility with the repatriation of EU rules on

devolved issues?

To extend Mr Stirling's metaphor of 'singing from the same hymn sheet', he would do well to appreciate that a rich harmony requires the collegiate approach.

Graeme McCormick (Convener, SNP Dumbarton Constituency Association), Redhouse Cottage, Arden

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A word of caution regarding Brendan O'Hara's pronouncements on smart meters (Advertiser, September 21).

Yes, you can readily highlight which devices are using more power than you thought, and quickly see the advantages of LED lighting, for example. (On the other hand you could read the power ratings on the equipment when you plug it in.)

However the greatest savings on utility bills are made by swapping suppliers, far more than from fiddling around with timers and light bulbs. And - surprise, surprise - one supplier's smart meters are frequently incompatible with those used by the new supplier.

So in go another set of new meters, with all the hassle of reverting to meter readings until they're installed, sorting out the billing, and the recently new meters ending up as scrap. Environmentally-friendly or what?

We are promised industry-standard smart meters soon, but that promise is already two years behind schedule. Be careful what you wish for!

Donald McLaren, 87 James Street, Helensburgh

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It seems that not a day goes by when I’m not contacted by farmers and crofters in my ward with justifiable concerns about single farm payments and the plight of our rural economy.

Unfortunately the bad news just keeps rolling in as the Scottish Government could face a fine of up to £700,000 for the late payment of European subsidies to farmers this year. The penalty, estimated at between £500,000 and £700,000, relates to delays to 2016 Common Agricultural Policy.

The figure is on top of potential financial penalties of around £5 million as a result of late payments in 2015 after delays caused by the introduction of a new £178 million IT system.

A total of 90.4 per cent of payments due to farmers were paid by the June deadline, with the European Commission rejecting a request from Scottish Ministers for an extension to the payment window.

Even worse the Scottish Government could also face separate EC financial penalties, known as disallowance, if weaknesses in the administration and control of CAP payments are identified. A recent assessment from Audit Scotland warned the figure for this could be as high as a massive £60 million.

To add insult to injury the SNP has announced cuts worth tens of millions of pounds for projects aimed at helping Scotland’s farming communities.

In a recent written statement to the Scottish Parliament, rural affairs secretary Fergus Ewing said he was slashing support for less favourable areas by £40 million, with a further £42 million being removed from climate change schemes.

Along with the SNP’s aforementioned mishandling of hundreds of millions of pounds in Common Agricultural Policy payments due to a botched IT system this makes for a double hammer blow for our framers, crofters and the wider economy in rural Scotland.

Most shocking of all is that as part of the revision, the Less Favoured Area Support Scheme will have money reduced from £459 million to £419 million.

That’s money which supports businesses in areas of the country which are harder to farm successfully, particularly in remote areas.

Due to mixture of incompetence and indifference we in rural Scotland are having our economy starved by an urban, central belt and separatism obsessed Scottish Government.

We in Kintyre, the Islands and the rest of Argyll and Bute deserve better.

Cllr Alastair Redman (Conservative, Kintyre and the Islands), Portnahaven, Islay

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I take great offence to the piece written by Ruth Wishart on cyclists recently (Advertiser Comment, September 7).

In it she demonstrates not only her ignorance of the subject, but an attitude that is intended to incite hatred towards a specific group of people.

Had her words been directed at women, Asians or homosexuals (for example) she would correctly be seen as sexist, racist or homophobic and potentially guilty of a criminal offence.

However, the group that she singled out for her wrath was cyclists, so was seen as “fair game”. But I cannot accept this.

In her piece she describes how she gives a concession to horses and riders by slowing down to pass. I note also that no reference is made to what the riders were wearing.

In contrast she immediately launches into her tirade with an irrelevant and indeed possibly contradictory depiction of clothing choice by some cyclists.

I suspect Ms Wishart would be equally up in arms had the cyclist in question been clad all in black and barely visible.

In case she hadn’t noticed we live in an area with an inclement climate and cycling is a physical sport that requires suitable clothing.

Does her non-acceptance of bright clothing extend to all local residents and their own sartorial choices?

Why also does she begrudge cyclists the use of the road while happily accepting the inconvenience that horse and rider brings?

In her mind, what difference is there between these two slow-moving road users who both require care and patience when passing?

On the one hand she describes with a positive sentiment riders who “exercise…our four-legged friends…on these roads”.

While on the other hand is the derision of a cyclist based on his choice of clothing and the fact that he “hogged the road”.

I can assume from her obvious stance on the matter that Ms Wishart is not a regular cyclist. If she were then she would probably understand that, while cyclists would love to use well thought through and maintained cycle paths, many of our “expensively constructed cycle tracks” do not fall into this category and the road provides a more suitable means for getting around.

Rather than vent her anger at a cyclist slowing her progress, Ms Wishart should ask herself why they would take the risk of sharing the road with speeding metal boxes. Does she really believe it is simply to annoy her?

I ride my bike on the road regularly. I do not have a car available for me to commute to work and the cost of maintaining my bike is far cheaper than a train fare.

There are only a few parts of my commute where cycle lanes are available and I choose to use some but not others, weighing up the added risk of sharing the road with cars against the need to make reasonable progress.

I wear bright clothes (and lights) to give other road users the best chance of seeing me – not for my own sense of style.

Cycling gives people the opportunity to keep fit and healthy, travel with minimal cost to the pocket and even less cost to the environment. It should be positively encouraged and cyclists are as entitled to use our roads as cars, horses, tractors and buses.

I appreciate that a newspaper should encourage discussion and can present a number of different views. However, in my opinion, Ms Wishart’s article simply seeks to isolate a group of society to incite hatred towards them.

John Ritchie, via email