Your letters to the Helensburgh Advertiser: June 14, 2018

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Last week as the sun warmed up, I decided to have a nice day gardening. My stainless steel spade, a Christmas present, was about to get an airing for the first time.

Half way through the morning I decided it was time for a cup of tea, which occurs frequently in my gardening operations. Half an hour later I went back up to the top of the garden and my spade had gone along with my new flowery garden gloves and the little cherry tree I would have planted.

This is a warning not to leave anything of value lying about in the garden.

Back to my old gloves, wonky spade and an oak tree, grown from an acorn, that’s if my greenfingered thief doesn’t fancy them. Gardeners beware.

Pat Everitt

Luss

What was most obvious to me watching TV reports of the fall of the House of Fraser was that most of their soon-to-be-closed stores are situated in pedestrianised streets with no parking.

I haven’t shopped in my local department store in more than 25 years due to the impossibility of getting my car within several hundred yards of the front door - preferring to frequent out of town malls with a superfluity of free and convenient parking.

It must be nice for the green anti-car lobby to smugly walk and cycle past the shuttered shops of our High Streets the death of which are largely due to their blinkered efforts.

John Eoin Douglas

via email

I read through the National Transport Strategy proposals paper as produced by Argyll & Bute Council.

It proposes several actions as listed within Appendix 1 of that report. Many are laudable and worthwhile: the A82 improvement north of Tarbet is already being actively considered but may be technically difficult due to the terrain and its already heavy traffic; the passenger rail station for Faslane is unlikely to be a viable option. What is missing from the list is the provision of fixed links across the sea lochs within Argyll and the Clyde estuary.

Southern Argyll and the Mull of Kintyre are cut off from the rest of the country by poor roads, expensive ferries and long detours. While this continues the decline in population will continue, the young will leave and we will suffer a slow decline with an ageing population and shrinking business activity.

Argyll struggles already from these maladies and needs an influx of active young people and the economic activity they bring with them and there is little prospect of any change while our infrastructure remains in the 19th century.

The answer is to create fixed links with better and shorter roads between the centres of population.

Look at the map and imagine bridges, sea bed tunnels or causeways across the Gareloch, Loch Long and Loch Fyne - maybe even across the Clyde to Dunoon.

Small independent countries like the Faroe Islands and Norway have routinely built fixed links to small populations on various islands. They reap the benefit with a more diverse economy and the ability of people to get from here to there without it being a problem.

Here there is no prospect of going down this route while we have submarines based in Faslane. If we were not living with these submarines, there would already be links connecting isolated communities to the upper Clyde area. Unfortunately, in the present circumstances there is no prospect of achieving decent transport communications throughout Argyll.

Dougie Blackwood

via email

We must get away from the constant presentation by the National Trust for Scotland that Geilston is operating at a loss (Helensburgh Advertiser, June 7, 2018).

When circulated by the press, it has the effect of raising doubts in the public’s mind, making it sound as if the garden is a financial basket case. This is running Geilston down, literally, so that when, and if, the property is run down and closed, the public will remember the headlines and think, “Well, of course, it was always operating at a loss” - a classic case of the effect of false news.

Unfortunately for Geilston, it is one of the few NTS properties that is not protected by legally binding endowments or other agreements.

The NTS encouraged Miss Hendry to leave Geilston plus an endowment now worth approximately £2.5million without any conditions attached. Her assumption was that her garden would be preserved by the trust and her house would “not be mucked about”.

The trust subsequently acknowledged this and recommended that the property be created inalienable but, for whatever reason, it failed to do so.

Of course, these things happen and become a focus of interest when business expertise is brought in to revitalise an organisation that is losing direction, but with it comes a change of ethos and approach.

New senior management will look at the business and decide which parts run at a profit, at a loss and should be closed down, or be usefully disposed of to provide investment in the business.

This is complicated in the NTS’s case because it is a rather unusual business, with liabilities (its portfolio of properties tied up by legal agreements) that it cannot escape.

Therefore, it is not surprising that focus should light on Geilston as it is one of the few properties that can be both closed down and asset stripped.

It is logical that business managers should take this view: in their terms, it would be remiss not to do so. But it clashes with the conservation objectives that are at the core of the NTS.

In fact, the asset stripping has already taken place with Miss Hendry’s endowment being moved from a fund set aside for the maintenance of Geilston into the trust’s general income fund, and by doing so, allowing the NTS, in the terms in which it frames the economics of the business, to present Geilston as running at a loss.

Take out what makes that part of the business tick and it can then be said to be a loss maker: so, close it down.

Geilston need not be presented as running at a so-called loss if it was endowed to the value of Miss Hendry’s financial legacy and there was investment in the property, which the NTS has failed to do to date, except on the most modest scale. Also, it needs to ensure, through whatever mechanism, that a financial contribution is made by approximately 11,000 NTS members who currently pay no entry fee for their visits.

The problem, entirely of the NTS’s making, is not the garden but the house, and that could be solved by some lateral thinking and investing for the long rather than the short term: surely good practice when running a sustainable, conservation based business.

Mike Thornley

via email

The friends and family of Adam Lyon who died last week competing in the TT on the Isle of Man will mourn his loss in private.

The wider public should pause and consider the achievements of this quiet, unassuming young man. Adam died following his dream. For a motorcyclist, the Mountain Circuit on the Isle of Man represents the ultimate challenge. It is the equivalent of the north face of the Eiger or El Capitan for a rock climber.

A proving ground for your skills and judgment, riders set off at minute intervals. It is not a contest against others - it is you against the 37.73 miles of the circuit.

Motorcyclists have been accepting the challenge for 110 years. I competed in 1969. My 250cc Yamaha seized after eight miles on the first lap. In 1970, I finished the six-lap race in 32nd place in silver replica time on a 350cc Yamaha.

Why? There is a camaraderie among motor cycle riders of all persuasions. The freedom of the open road, the control of a powerful machine ready to do your will. The temptation to go faster on public roads has obvious limits.

Road racing on closed pubic roads is the answer to this dilemma. Short circuit racing offers competition where the risks are minimised. Dangerous obstacles are removed. On the Isle of Man this is not possible. You have to respect the circuit. You must exercise your skill, your ability to access risk The situation is changing by the second, that fine balance between control and none. The feedback from the small contact patch between tyre and road indicates the limit of adhesion. At 110, 120, 130 mph, you probe and push and test the limits of your experience on your machine. Fear is never a factor. At any time, you can roll back the throttle and coast to a stop. But the next corner is ahead. When to brake, to downshift, what line to take through the corner, how many revs? Questions that must be answered now. At the end of the 37.73 mile lap, the stopwatch tells all.

It is part of the human experience to seek adventure. Risk is part of life. For some the answer is found on a mountain, others choose extreme sports. A few are racing motorcyclists. To live is to die.

Adam Lyon, Rest in Peace.

John Black

via email