We need skilled personnel for much of life’s normal functioning. This is much better addressed by vocational training in colleges with skilled hands-on lecturers. These colleges have been deprived of sufficient funding for some time as they are considered second-class.
We need the Government to take the skills shortage seriously and invest in our future if this situation is to be addressed.
Ian Smith, Troon.
• THE culpability of the SNP in the skills shortage in essential jobs to improve the Scottish economy is once again highlighted by the 25/26 Budget’s real-terms cuts to college education.
Year on year further education funding has been reduced by successive SNP governments. Money has been spent on the shibboleth of free university tuition fees rather than essential education and training in the FE colleges.
Scottish industry has more need of qualified electricians than graduates with MA (Hons) in The Flower Symbolism in the Writings of Marcel Proust.
James Quinn, Lanark.
Remember the last decade?
DR Gerald Edwards (Letters, January 10) opines that the chaos in the UK economy is only “current” and the direct result of Rachel Reeves’ Budget.
I wonder where he has been these last 10 years?
With no sunlit uplands in prospect he further urges us to “just think how much worse it would be if we also had our own Scottish currency”.
With so many of Project Fear’s dire predictions having crystallised despite remaining in the UK, is this really all unionist contributors have left?
Alan Carmichael, Glasgow.
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The UK’s populists
BRIAN Wilson’s tacky smear of John Swinney as a “populist” politician (“We’ll judge the FM on what he delivers, not what he promises”, The Herald, January 9) surprised me. If he’s genuinely concerned about the growth of populism within the UK body politic he need look no further than the PM-led conversion of the Labour Party into a Union Jack-waving advocate of the absurdly expensive cohort of parasites surrounding the monarchy and the equally wasteful group of privileged layabouts occupying the redundant House of Lords.
Add to this the refusal by the Labour Party to lift the lid on the so-called red wall electorate’s loyalty to an English nationalist ideology reminiscent of the worst aspects of the Empire Loyalists of the 1930s. I wonder if he will be able to assert in a year or so that he’ll judge the PM on what he delivers, not what he promises ? I won’t be holding my breath.
Barry Docherty, Glasgow.
The big ferries puzzle
WHAT puzzles me is that the ferry debacle has been running for so long and there is no answer from politicians to George Rennie’s valid questions (Letters, January 9) unless I’ve missed them. There’s been so much press coverage and comment, including many letters to these pages, but no proper examination or explanation from any independent authority that I am aware of.
For sure, some projects cost more and take longer to complete than originally forecast (for example, the Edinburgh trams). But, usually, there’s a good explanation or an investigation into the reasons.
I used to think the ferry problem was mainly due to the incompetence of civil servants in CMAL and Transport Scotland and it was unfair to blame the transport ministers or first ministers, who could not be expected to be expert in shipbuilding design or procurement. But, given the apparent lack of interest from ministers to provide acceptable explanation, or instigate a proper inquiry, now I suspect there’s more to it and they just don’t want us to know.
David Bruce, Troon.
A lifeline for CMAL
IT must have been embarrassing for CMAL when CalMac pointed out that the provision of both diesel and LNG engines in the Glen Sannox will not make her significantly “greener” than a diesel-only vessel and indeed could make her more planet-damaging if the CO2 emissions from the long supply route of the LPG are taken into account. But CMAL has been offered a face-saving escape route by the news that the Glen Sannox is 90 tonnes heavier than specified.
The loss of freight capacity resulting from the vessel’s extra weight is potentially serious, particularly after a period of weather cancellations when there is a backlog of important freight for Arran. But if they strip out the LPG engines, tanks and pipework, they should be able at least to reduce the loss of freight capacity and maybe even remove it altogether.
They would have to start with the Glen Rosa and leave the work on Glen Sannox until she could be spared once the Turkish ferries arrive. CMAL could claim that the move was needed because of the weight problem. They could blame the shipyard for the problem and deny that it was a result of their impossible specification. A few people might even believe them. They would not have to admit that the move was an admission that their decision (and that of their political masters) to go down the dual-fuel route would not deliver the green benefits they claimed.
Alistair Easton, Edinburgh.
Renewables push an act of self-harm
FUTURE generations will look back on this crazy period of self-harm as we do on the Luddites.
This has been a bitterly cold winter, and we learn from National Grid data that renewables supplied around 10 per cent of the UK’s energy needs at peak times. There seems to be a direct link between plunging temperatures and the ability of wind-driven generators to produce – the colder it is, the less wind, the less output.
Yet, the reality of the situation will not stop the zealots demanding our ultra-reliable oil and gas bounty is shut down immediately, if not sooner. And so, we will be forced to scramble for Middle Eastern and Russian oil and gas – with all that is involved in the politics of doing that and the environmental damage getting it here – to keep our most vulnerable alive.
Alexander McKay, Edinburgh.
A heated debate
I WONDER if Chancellor Reeves, sitting in a taxpayer-heated office in London, has any suggestions how the pensioners in Scotland, who didn’t get the winter fuel allowance, should keep warm when the temperature up here reaches minus 10 degrees Centigrade and getting even colder?
I’m sure Herald readers will have suggestions.
Stewart Little, Bridge of Weir.
Cold comfort for the BBC
IT’S pleasing to see that the BBC finances are improving. Otherwise how could BBC Scotland afford to send a weather presenter, normally based in Glasgow, to Braemar to show us how cold it is? He would no doubt be accompanied by a producer and sound and lighting crews. The team reported from outside the Fife Arms Hotel (special offer prices starting from £309 per night). Hopefully the BBC licence fee payers won’t be asked to cover the cost of a stay there for at least four people.
Alan McGibbon, Paisley.
Why must we depend on migrants?
JB Drummond (Letters, January 7) does not define his view of “middle class” but displays a negative attitude to capitalists from that class while ignoring that it was they, and their many “working class” equivalents, whose genius and enterprise created the great increase in society’s wealth and reduction in poverty of the last 250 years – albeit offset in some respects by unexpected and unintended adverse consequences which our capitalist democracy is now rectifying or mitigating.
I accept that some of the UK’s privatisation went too far (or at least was not subject to sufficiently high operational standards, for example before bonuses could be paid) and the pollution by the water companies in England is an utter disgrace – but has the Environment Agency’s policy and inaction on flooding been so much better?
He clearly favours immigration (another cause of our housing shortage) but why should we make that easier when the UK currently has 946,000 Neets (those aged 16-24 but not in employment, education or training) plus many others over 24, and when the UK’s net immigration was 1.5 million in the two years to December 2023, mostly to the already-congested England?
Why are our self-styled “progressives” happy for the UK to depend on migrants, many of them from poorer countries which may well have greater need for them for their own social, economic and political developments than we do? Moreover, recent data indicate that such immigration results in a reduced GDP per head which is a far more important measure of our comparative wealth and wellbeing than our national GDP.
There may indeed be a case for a Scotland-specific visa system, if that could be implemented without border controls from Berwick to Carlisle, but we should first deal with our high level of Neets of all ages.
John Birkett, St Andrews.
Should the Glen Rosa be stripped of her LPG engines and tanks? (Image: PA)
Our children are over-protected
REBECCA McQuillan’s column on Boxing Day (“It’s time to give our children a Generation X 70s childhood”, The Herald, December 26) met with my full agreement.
Experiencing my move from childhood to teenage in the very early 1950s near Maryport in Cumberland, I can attest to a fully enjoyable and instructive childhood.
We explored the Ellen Valley, looking into abandoned drift mines and swimming in sheltered pools, we explored the abandoned waste tip from the old Maryport Iron Works, we looked for and caught adders on the Salta Moss to give to Maryport Cottage Hospital.
Every year we would gather in local groups to build bonfires for November 5. These bonfire groups formed our society for the year, because it was the most competent bonfire builder who became leader, not necessarily the best fighter.
I have been chased by farmers, being found sliding on haystacks. At the same time I helped those same farmers build corn stooks and pick potatoes.
It was a free open-air life. We entered dangerous territories, but we learned to recognise danger and it prepared us for life.
My and subsequent generations of parents have unfortunately shielded our children from life, much to their cost.
Andy McAdam, Ayr.
Give us more binmen
IVOR Matheson (Letters, January 10) is right to be appalled at the number of overflowing litter bins.
Monologist William McCulloch told of auld Mrs Near The Bone encountering her binman holding out his hand for a tip at Christmas. ” I’m the man that empties your bins.” “Aye,” says she, “and I’m the wife that fills them.”
Perhaps the authorities need to cut out waste in other departments and employ a few more binmen.
David Miller, Milngavie.