YOUR VIEWS: Academy Street planners seem disinterested in consequences
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Will Academy Street concerns be listened to?
It appears Highland Council is doubling down on their plans to block Academy Street to cars. They seem intent on ignoring businesses and the public who express opposition to closing off a major route into and through the city.
The idea is that drivers could access either end of the road, but not drive up or down it. Planners appear disinterested in the fact that the trips on Academy Street would not simply disappear but would mostly be shifted to going through the Crown area or the Longman.
A trip from Dalneigh to Morrisons would take about twice as long if Academy Street was blocked off. Would the shopper spend that extra time, using more fuel and putting out more pollution, or would they stop using Inverness businesses altogether and buy online? A move to online purchases would cost local jobs and increase delivery traffic.
The council seems dazzled by the prospect of accessing funding and spending millions but ignore the damage their plans would cause. They speculate on adding “mitigation” to reduce problems of traffic in Crown or the Longman. Would their ultimate aim be that a trip from Dalneigh to Morrisons would be directed round via Beauly?
Will city councillors follow what council officers propose, at their meeting of August 28, or will they listen to residents and businesses?
Donald MacKenzie
Greens put breaks on A9?
It has been noticed the increase in media attention to the A9 and A96, and I do believe that the SNP now would like to honour their election manifesto of many years.
Initially, the stumbling block was money as their ambitions far outweighed their vote catching ambitions. At the last election having failed miserably to get an overall majority Ms Sturgeon encouraged her party to get into bed with the Greens, so giving her the majority she was looking for to stay in power.
With pressure increasing from within the party rank and file for upgrading of the A9 and A96 the SNP hierarchy realised that the opportunity to shift the gaze from the SNP to the Greens existed and indeed this worked for a short time. But the then First Minister was noticeably losing her grip on controlling the inner circle and they started to question why?
At long last a diehard SNP politician put the concerns of his elected area first and the dictat of the party second. But back to the roads, the Greens want utopia and that is what the world needs now, but how to achieve it, certainly not with the present Greens philosophy.
They want us all in electric cars, OK I can see that, but they want us to use these electric cars on sub-standard roads, I don’t get that. I know that the world is changing but it would be nice to see a genuine environmental political party that really knows what they’re talking about.
Finlay G Mackintosh, Forres
Time to live within our means
Having enough money to cover all one’s expenses is “Living within your means”. Individuals and countries should apply similar principals to the whole range of their activities.
Scotland has an ageing population but does not have enough young people to look after the elderly, the tourists who visit nor to harvest its fruit and vegetables. The population is more or less static but a shortage of workers means that it relies on temporary workers from other countries. To eliminate this reliance on temporary workers it is necessary to change our expectations to be living within our means in the widest sense.
Climate change is considered by many as the most serious threat to the world and the main cause is the burning of fossil fuels. A number of words and phrases are being used in misleading ways such as bioenergy, carbon capture, carbon credits, carbon neutral, carbon offset, carbon sequestration, carbon storage, green energy, greenhouse gas, net zero, renewable energy, rewilding, sustainability and the cynical term green washing.
Most countries in the world have populations which are increasing. World population is increasing by 0.9 per cent per year and there is no indication that this rate of increase will cease in the near future. This is rarely mentioned and is the biggest threat to a world “living within its means”.
People expect their living standards to rise but this should come from increasing efficiency and not from increasing the plunder of the Earth’s natural resources nor increasing pollution. Some of our leaders, such as Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Prince William, set a bad example by having more than two children.
How will Scotland’s massive investment in peat restoration, wind turbines and solar panels etc aid the stabilisation of the world’s population?
Graham Tuley, Inverness
Are we really saving the planet?
The distressing news reports showing dead birds washing up on Scottish beaches, having perished from bird flu, is sad to see.
Something one reporter said as he stood near a lifeless feathered corpse moving sadly on the incoming tide really hit me: ‘This could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of numbers’.
Thousands of birds have died of this cruel disease and yet many more may not have come ashore to be counted.
When something kills creatures out at sea we probably only see a small fraction of the actual carnage ending up on our beaches.
A post mortem clearly reveals that the birds are dying from a virus.
Nothing can measure if human activity affects a marine mammal’s brain and navigation skills as it lies dying on the sand.
Are we, as a nation, so blinkered as we steam towards the moving target of Net Zero that we are prepared to ignore the real possibility that in our quest for ‘green’ we are actually killing our sea creatures?
Who decided it was acceptable to kill the planet in order to ‘save’ it?
Lyndsey Ward, Beauly
