Sir, – As someone who has known the Wemyss Caves since childhood, I am delighted to see that at last there is some kind of plan to preserve them and introduce them to interested tourists.
Nearly 60 years ago Alex Wilson, owner of Macduff Post Office and General Store and a keen historian, along with a few others, managed to interest an archaeology team and excavations were carried out.
Since then volunteers have helped to look after the caves with very little help from those who should have seen them as a valuable historic site.
In many other countries such caves have been seen as important, both historically and as a tourist attraction.
Here, despite the best efforts of the Save Wemyss Caves Group and others, they have been ravaged by weather and vandalism.
I can only hope it is not too late to preserve them and allow people to see them and know their history.
Jess Mitchell.
Eden Park,
Cupar.
Question will be different
Sir, – Various leading figures in the SNP are urging grassroots Yes activists to get their local organisations ready ahead of a possible second independence referendum.
Yet if the powers that be do somehow enable another divisive independence vote to proceed, one thing we can be sure about in advance is it will not be a question with a Yes or No answer.
In the preparation for the EU referendum the Electoral Commission belatedly concluded that a question with a Yes or No response gave unfair advantage to the Yes side, who could readily contrast their apparent positivity with their opponent’s negativity, based simply on the construction of the question.
Instead a new question with a Remain and Leave response would be needed.
So, as the SNP strategists are hurriedly redrafting key elements of the White Paper to try to make sense of reality, their activists will now have to get badges and flags made up with Leave rather than Yes.
Keith Howell.
White Moss,
West Linton.
Time for a blitz on smoking
Sir, – I shall not beat about the bush.
Is it not time the practice of smoking in public places was made illegal and the law enforced?
Even now, with the present laws there is absolutely no enforcement.
It is actually a filthy, disgusting practice and affects everyone.
In my view there should be no smoking around bus shelters, no smoking beside restaurant entrances and no smoking outside shopping centres.
The entrances to the Wellgate and Overgate in Dundee are an ordeal for non-smokers.
The Murraygate and Nethergate are other areas where smokers, beggars and chuggers should be cleared out of the public’s way
How many times do you find yourself walking along the High Street or Murraygate when a sudden cloud of stinking, cancerous smoke is emitted from the person in front.
Whitehall Street is a no-go area, with bus shelters and restaurant doorways being used as a haven for selfish smokers.
Sometimes it is impossible to use a cash machine without breathing in someone else’s smoke.
If it rains the smokers seem to think they have the right-of-way in bus shelters and outside shops, forcing non-smokers to either move on or breathe in the dreadful and unpleasant fumes of their social crutch.
It is a disgrace that in 2016 we still have to suffer the selfish, unsociable, dirty habit of others.
These people are a huge burden on the NHS and a disgrace to Dundee, setting a horrendous example to children who will grow into adulthood paying for the huge costs of treating smokers, on the NHS, for cancer and other health problems caused by themselves.
The cancerous and antisocial behaviour of today’s smokers will mean fewer more deserving people will be treated for ailments not of their own making.
People should take responsibility for their own health and their responsibility to others.
People who choose not to smoke should not need to go out of their way to avoid public smokers. It should be the other way around and the smokers should be the ones who are inconvenienced.
Most of all we need enforcement of the existing laws. On-the-spot fines would soon show results.
Arthur Gall.
Pitalpin Court,
Dundee.
Throw money from a copter
Sir, – If an interest rate of 0.5% for seven years has had no effect, common sense says that neither will a rate of 0.25%.
Who makes these inane decisions at the Bank of England?
With regard to the further £170 billion of quantitative easing (QE) – money printing to us ordinary folks – which is equivalent to £2,600 per head of the UK population, let us hope that this does not end up in the hands of the rich kids, as the last £375bn, which was worth £6,000 per head, certainly did.
The banking system tasked with getting that money into the economy merely patched up their own balance sheets, and with no takers for the rest, simply gave it to their rich customers to play with.
It would surely make more sense to inject QE directly into private bank accounts, pay off individual credit cards, or just throw the stuff out of helicopters.
That way it would get into the economy and have an effect. Any action to improve matters that involves the banking system is doomed to failure as history repeatedly shows.
Malcolm Parkin.
15 Gamekeepers Road,
Kinnesswood,
Kinross.
Act of kindness never forgotten
Sir, – It is with huge sadness that I read about the death of Dick Donnelly.
I never met him but an act of great kindness had a huge impact on the lives of a group of young football-mad boys from Fintry in the early 1960s.
My dad, Norman McGowan, worked with Dick Donnelly’s dad in the Blind Institution in Dundee where football was discussed enthusiastically on a daily basis.
One day my dad came home with a leather ‘casey’ from Dick Donnelly, courtesy of East Fife Football Club.
Can you imagine?
Every evening after school we would all race up to Caird Park and play football until dusk, the only boys who had a casey.
Even when the inner tube burst, this proved no deterrent and we stuffed the casey with newspaper so that our nightly games could continue.
Surely nowhere was there a happier group of boys.
Ian McGowan.
6 Kingsmuir Avenue,
Preston,
Lancashire.