Sir, How can certain members of the public be so arrogant or selfish as to ignore warning signs and scare the osprey “Lady” off her nest?
Farming within sight of Loch Leven I periodically witness an osprey flying overhead with a fish in its claws.
In fact, they have a favourite tree on the farm where they alight and partly consume their prey before taking the remainder to either their mate or their chicks.
However, the lady ranger quoted in your article made some astounding assertions.
It seems that you only have to be within 200 metres to scare a bird from its nest even allowing for the fact that it is up a tree.
When the new completed walkway around Loch Leven opens this Easter can we therefore assume that no bird will nest within 200 metres either side of the footpath or, say, 250 metres considering the amount of people using the path, the dog noise and smell and the ringing of cyclists’ bells?
Given that the walkway is roughly 13 miles in length that is an area of nearly 2,500 acres without any nesting birds.
With the decline in bird numbers will the farmers again be blamed for bad farming practices?
Willie Young. Mawcarse, Milnathort.
Closer EU tiesworse than Westminster
Sir, Alan Lawson claims that an independent government in Scotland would give us “the opportunity to get politics back on track” after the Westminster expenses scandals (Expenses scandal if only it were that simple, letters, April 15).
I cannot see how that would help. Holyrood has had several scandals of its own without any help from Westminster.
There is a further problem. We have dodgy politicians both south and north of the border, but their nefarious activities are not in the same league as the goings-on in the corridors of power at the EU. Corruption and waste are endemic there. After all these years, the EU has still to present its accounts for auditing!
Yet Alex Salmond is adamant that an independent Scotland would form even closer links than we have now with the EU.
Alan Lawson would therefore have us bound even more closely with an organisation whose representatives leave our politicians standing in the corruption stakes.
Better the devil you know, I say, and do our reforming from within. My proposal for the reorganisation of MPs’ expenses would at least cut down the opportunities for making mistakes.
George K McMillan. 5 Mount Tabor Avenue, Perth.
Whole UK can’t be defended
Sir, Now we have the Admiralty representative, Admiral George Zambellas, ordered by the MOD in London to advise us in Scotland not to vote “yes”.
His excuse, we could never manage to defend ourselves after independence and the GB would be weaker.
Where was the London- based MOD representative of the British fleet, in the shape of a warship ,when the Russian Naval ship “Kuzetznof”, appeared just outside our Scottish territorial waters only three weeks ago?
Apparently someone in the Admiralty sent it up and it appeared two days later.
To be quite frank the Admiral’s statement is quite correct, in fact nowhere in the UK can be defended at the moment as he and the Royal Navy have been held back by the same “austerity” problems that have been imposed by politicians in London on all who live in Britain.
No money, no ships, no navy, easy.
In having our own economy we have the opportunity in Scotland to address these issues and help our neighbours down south with the extra ships that are denied them by their own government.
Bob Harper. 63a Pittenweem Road, Anstruther.
Defence under the union . . .
Sir, After listening to the lectures from Admiral Zambellas and Philip Hammond on how lucky we are in Scotland to have the protection of the UK’s defence forces, I wonder if these chaps get out of Whitehall much at all.
The fact is we had to rely on a fishing vessel to tweet that the Russian navy were in the Cromarty Firth.
Remember the days when we had our own intelligence gathering facilities and surface warships and AWACS to keep an eye on our shores and air space?
Don’t worry, though, we are in the safe hands of Hammond and the First Sea Lord, no questions, feedback or responses from Scotland required, or wanted.
The future under the union? Leuchars soon to be reduced to a few hundred army personnel rather than the promised 6,900 coming back from Germany. Kinloss already gone, Army HQ Scotland gone, no RN surface ships, training and refitting facilities virtually all down south, billions of pounds underspend on Scotland’s share of defence.
The MOD will have to do better than this to keep Scotland onside.
Better together? Aye right!
J Barrie. Blackness Road, Dundee.