Sir, When paying my Scottish Gas bills, I sent them to Worthing.
My driving licence renewals go to Wales as does my road tax.
My income tax is dealt with in Newcastle and Liverpool, whilst the people dealing with my state retirement pension live in Wolverhampton.
Life insurance (taken out with the old Bank of Scotland) is covered from Aylesbury and my home insurance from Leeds.
Investments made by my wife and myself with the Dunfermline Building Society are now controlled from Swindon.
My private pension, arising from work, 95% of which was carried out in Scotland, is dealt with in Manchester. For decades I have been in the Automoblile Association and they too have their head office in England.
Whilst I was working, the companies employing me had their head offices in Harrow and Wigan respectively.
Should I wish to take a long-distance flight or a cruise, it is likely I’ll be filtered through Heathrow or Southampton, to my inconvenience, and the financial benefit of the deep south.
My point is: just how many jobs in the rest of the UK have my activities as a resident in Scotland kept afloat? Better together? For whom?
Joseph G Miller. 44 Gardeners Street, Dunfermline.
Why such a difference?
Sir, Perhaps our local elected representatives could explain the reason for discrepancies in the frequency and duration of councillors’ surgeries.
While one of the four Ferry Ward councillors manages to hold a surgery every week, three of them avoid holding surgeries during school holidays (that’s 12 weeks per year) though none of them use school premises for their surgeries.
One councillor’s weekly surgery lasts 30 minutes, two last an hour each and the fourth lasts an hour and a half.
Charles Webster. 16c Bath Street, Broughty Ferry.
Should invest in technology
Sir, Like many people in my home city of Perth I was stranded for several hours one recent morning after every cash machine was non-operational due to a “system fault”. This caused me great inconvenience and I was left late for an appointment as I could not get access to cash to use transport.
It is absolutely ridiculous that in 2014 systems are not in place to prevent this sort of thing happening. Instead of paying huge bonuses to executives rewarding them for failures, losses and poor customer service they should be investing in technology to ensure this sort of system failure does not occur.
This has happened several times this year already to customers of big banks and it is time the banks in this country had a look at their priorities, ie their customers.
Gordon Kennedy. 117 Simpson Square, Perth.
SEPA happy to help with issues
Sir, I read the article, Tidal surges combine with rain to flood farmer’s fields (March 4), about flooding at Easter Rhynd Farm, with interest and some disappointment.
The farmer, Mr Hay, refers to issues with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) in the 1980s regarding the maintenance of flood banks. This was prior to the establishment of SEPA, in 1996, although we do have historical records from a predecessor body regarding concerns over the use of unsuitable materials for bank maintenance at Easter Rhynd. There is, however, no reference to our predecessor preventing the works, in fact quite the opposite.
We are very aware of the challenges facing farmers and land managers during a prolonged spell of wet weather and our staff are always happy to discuss drainage and river work issues. At a corporate level, we continue to liaise closely with NFUS on this important issue.
In fact, staff from our Perth team had a site meeting with Mr Hay and his son on Friday (February 28) to discuss repair of a flood bank which had started to erode in December 2013 and was breached in January 2014. Our officer confirmed that no authorisation was required from SEPA for the repair, as long as similar materials were used and the bank was rebuilt to the same height.
Extensive river works carried out in the wrong place, and in the wrong way can result in serious environmental damage and a risk or increased erosion and flooding elsewhere, but we often find that farmers and land managers are surprised to learn they can carry out certain dredging and clearance activities and some flood bank repairs, without contacting SEPA.
For more significant engineering works permission may be required, and our staff are always available to discuss such works.
David Harley. Water and Land Manager, SEPA, Stirling.