Your letters to the Helensburgh Advertiser: April 5, 2018

To have your say on any local issue just email your views to editorial@helensburghadvertiser.co.uk with 'Letter' in the subject line of your message. Please supply your name and address, and also a daytime telephone number in case we need to check any details at short notice, though this will not be printed.

Happy writing!

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In response to your interview with Maurice Corry MSP (March 22) concerning his accusation that the SNP is attempting a “tax grab” set to disadvantage military personnel, I feel it is only right to offer an alternative view.

Since the SNP budget was passed by Holyrood in February, there have been a number of claims by Conservative MPs and MSPs about the so-called “tax grab”, most of which have been shown to be misleading or completely false.

However, making such a statement without reference to facts would merely reduce the value of my response, so I’ll stick to facts with references.

Firstly, it’s fair to say that many of the service personnel serving in Scotland will pay more tax than they would if they were based in the rest of the UK.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants has calculated that those earning above about £30,000 would indeed be paying more but at £43,000 per year the Scottish Parliament Information Centre estimates they would only be paying an extra £170 a year.

When I was based with my family in Scotland, I’d grown up 680 miles away in Devon so I was significantly financially disadvantaged being in Scotland.

Yet anyone who knows me will have heard me say that my happiest time in the forces was when I was based in Scotland.

Later in my career, I was based in Germany with access to tax free cars and fuel and a generous overseas allowance and, when I worked in London, I received London Weighting Allowance.

Some postings disadvantaged me whilst others more than compensated me. By its very nature, service life is like that as Maurice Corry will know, being ex-Army himself.

If the UK Government feels the extra tax service personnel must pay if based in Scotland is significant, perhaps it could introduce a Scottish Weighting Allowance?

However, looking at the MoD UK Regular Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey Results 2017, they will know that since the Conservatives came into power, personnel satisfaction has fallen year-on-year in almost every respect.

So rather than trying to make political capital out of a modest tax differential, perhaps they should be focussing on their own fundamental problems?

Since 2010, the Conservatives have overseen the emasculation of the UK’s conventional defences and the National Audit Office estimates they’ve got a £20 billion defence budget black hole to sort out. The delayed strategic defence review will inevitably see further cuts.

Much is made of the UK exceeding the 2 per cent of GDP defence spending target set by NATO but we all know where too much of that money is going!

As for the disadvantages to businesses, a significant proportion of the extra tax raised has gone into benefits to the business community amounting to about £96 million.

The remainder has gone mostly into mitigating Conservative cuts and assisting the less fortunate in our society.

Our service personnel will no doubt be pleased to know there is at least one part of the UK where there is a Government that cares about the well being of all of its people.

Geoffrey Tompson, via email

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I NOTE from the Helensburgh Advertiser that the long awaited Scottish Submarine Centre has eventually opened but, unusually, with no fanfare.

Although I would wish it every success, time will now tell if that is going to be the case or whether there will be further requests in the future for more of the public’s money to be made available from Argyll and Bute Council to support this project.

This is a project that the council allocated £140,000 of public money to over four years ago when councillors were told that the submarine would be transported at the end of June 2014 “with the key milestone to open at the same time as the Commonwealth Games” in July 2014.

Although this was a major local project, for some strange reason, the Helensburgh and Lomond area committee was not allowed to discuss the request for funding or to make any recommendations to the council.

When the council considered a request to release the £140,000 for this project in March 2014, I and a number of other councillors raised serious concerns with regards to the project, the unrealistic timescale and the fact that local councillors had not been given the opportunity to discuss the funding request.

Although the council’s ruling administration were happy to release the £140,000 to the project, Councillor Richard Trail and I moved an amendment to defer a decision on the funding and to refer it back to the area committee for discussion.

Unfortunately the council’s administration would not allow that to happen and approved the release of the £140,000 with me, Councillor Trail and Councillor Vivien Dance being the only local councillors who supported the amendment to allow the area committee to consider this major funding request.

Here we are, more than four years after councillors were told that the centre would be open in 2014, more than four years after the council allocated substantial public money to the project, the Submarine Museum is eventually open (very belatedly and quietly) with, as far as I am aware, no local councillor being invited to attend the opening.

It is now more than four years beyond the planned completion date yet, in all that time, the administration of the council has not provided any formal update for councillors on this project, given any reasons why there has been such a massive delay or informed councillors of what has happened to the public’s money.

It certainly appears that the council is happy to allocate massive sums of public money to a project and then conveniently try and ignore the fact that it ever did so.

Had the views of three local councillors not been ignored more than four years ago, the embarrassing situation relating to the funding of this project may have been avoided. Hopefully the council will learn from its mistakes.

Cllr George Freeman (Independent, Lomond North)

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As the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority have now belatedly applied Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) to the decimated area in Drumkinnon Bay (Advertiser, March 29), is it not time that the Park were more proactive in protecting other areas within the Park before this happens yet again?

The papers for the National Park Authority (NPA)’s board meeting of March 12 this year (Item 9 – Organisational Update 8.4.2). indicates other unlawful tree felling having taken place. This, apparently, was taken to court, but only after members of the public had complained!

Yet in the planning portal on the Park’s website, under ‘Protecting trees in the National Park’, it states that “as part of our responsibility as a Planning Authority, we have a duty to preserve trees...”.

The Park even employs a Trees and Woodland Advisor who appears to be based at the NPA headquarters.

The NPA can legally apply TPOs, a planning condition or legal agreement may be used to protect trees on a site during construction and/or post construction, planning legislation to protect trees in Conservation areas.

Surely these legal measures should be applied more widely before any more unlawful tree felling takes place in our area and where new planning applications arise, especially for major developments such as Flamingo Land and West Riverside, Balloch (where it is likely that a monorail will be built up in the trees) and the area of Balmaha with mature oak trees (where planning permission has been granted for 12 houses, eight flats and two plots).

After all, the first aim of the National Parks (Scotland)Act 2000 is “to conserve and enhance the natural and cultural heritage of the area”. It behoves the National Park Authority to do just that!

Mary M. Jack, via email

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Further to your coverage in last week’s Advertiser of the Welcome In Recovery Cafe, I wish to write this in honour of all the courageous souls that have walked the journey of depression.

It is an arduous one, and do they get any recognition? Does it bring admiration if you get through it and come out the other side? No.

It gets pity, stigma, you get treated like you wasted so much of your life. It just doesn’t get recognition of any merit whatsoever and I want that to change.

I would like people to recognise that mental health matters like any other human condition.

If you survive cancer, limb removal or replacement, a stroke, or a heart attack, you’re admired for your bravery and courage. Some even receive awards. But do you think awards would be presented to survivors of mental health journeys? Those who survive the psychiatric system and come out smiling? Certain special people do help along the way, but they help in a system that is so flawed.

Recovery from addiction is another arduous journey, but people do come through it and go on to help others. Their stories, and those who have survived the journey through depression, showing great courage, endurance, determination and survival, are the untold stories of humanity.

Many people whose lives have been touched by mental health or addiction issues have hearts of gold. But alas, society does not always open its heart to difference. Society often ignores the fact that people are living through rough journeys.

I know it is not always easy to support people who are in a dark place. And those who are in the ‘recovery club’ have their own invisible barriers to keep them safe from humanity’s lack of understanding. But those on both sides of those invisible barriers could learn from each other and attempt to break down those barriers and allow every human being, whatever their road, to be recognised, accepted, loved and cared for

Oh how easy it would be to live in a perfect world - if we only opened our hearts to each other and accepted difference.

If anyone out there wishes to nurture and support a good cause financially or otherwise - please come along to the Recovery Cafe at Helensburgh Parish Church every Thursday from 11.30am to 2.30pm.

The cafe is free, but a donation box is there to help keep it open.

It’s an amazing place that is going from strength to strength – as it helps people, then people help it.

I thank it and all the volunteers for their existence and the support and inspiration that helped me on my own road to wellbeing.

Elma Chapma, via email