Wednesday’s correspondents to The Courier write about fishing in the River Tay, the “halcyon days” of the 1940s”“50s, World War Two’s unsung heroes, and the belief that rising house prices are a good thing for the country.
Scotland’s salmon rivers face destructionSir,-You are correct to report on the difficulties between angling interests and other water sports on the River Tay.
The reason is simple and the solution impossible for either Councillor Bob Ellis or Solomon to resolve.
Canadian open canoes enjoying peaceful passage are rarely a problem for anglers but rafts and fluorescent canoes eskimo-rolling through a salmon stream are a different matter.
Westminster had the wit and wisdom to leave water and woodland out of their Land Reform Bill.
But here in Scotland, our left-wing government of the day refused to acknowledge the incompatibility of some sports being played on the same pitch at the same time.
Much like golf, salmon angling is a self-funding industry that involves private heritable property with rights and title deeds.
Both contribute over £300 million annually to our rural economy and we should be proud of their heritage.
The Land Reform (Scotland) Act, introduced under the name of Lord Wallace of Muckle Folly, will only work if the government nationalises the properties it wishes to destroy with its unfettered access and stakeholder policies.
Michael C. Smith.Threapmuir Farm,Cleish,Kinross.Unwarranted crime perceptionSir,-I am afraid that your correspondents George K. McMillan and George A. Craigie (September 6) are indulging in too much scaremongering over the perception of past criminality and the current fear of crime.
If, as Mr Craigie states, Dundee is rife with crime, then I fear that the citizens of Aberdeen are suffering a crime epidemic.
Aberdeen has much higher levels of criminality than Dundee does.
How safe is it to walk the streets of Aberdeen in comparison to Dundee I wonder?
Mr McMillan’s personal account of the crime-free halcyon days of the 1940s and 1950s is all very well.
But if Mr McMillan were to peruse the real criminal and policing history of Dundee, he would have realised it was due to a real epidemic of crime in the 1820s and 1840s, when well-to-do Dundonians were forced to carry weapons to protect person, property and purse, that saw the introduction Dundee’s first police force.
If we were to use 1820 as a starting point, then Dundee now is a paradise of law and order.
I do not underestimate the impact of crime on Dundonians but neither should people indulge in anecdotal claims and perceptions of criminality in comparison to other times, nor negate the current actions of the police force and the justice system in tackling crime.
Dundonians should not let unwarranted perceptions of criminality dictate our behaviour. We are better than that.
Malcolm McCandless.40 Muirfield Crescent,Dundee.Remember merchant navySir,-In recent weeks the media have paid great tribute to the pilots of the RAF who fought during the Battle of Britain and quite rightly so.
However, once again, Merchant Navy Day (September 3) passed with little mention of the grave losses suffered by the merchant navy and UK fishing fleets in time of war.
During the Second World War, it was merchant vessels which transported troops, fuel, industrial supplies, munitions and food across the Atlantic.
There were numerous other theatres of war in which the merchant fleet has served this country including Murmansk and the Far East, often in vessels which had it not been wartime, would have been scrapped.
In an effort to starve the UK into submission, the primary targets of Hitler’s U-boats were merchant vessels. One in three merchant seamen lost their lives during the war, a higher ratio than any branch of the armed forces
Churchill wrote of what he later called the Battle of the Atlantic, “the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril”.
This battle raged from the first day of the war through to the last, the longest battle of the war. For the lucky few who survived an attack and perhaps days in a freezing, wet life-raft following the loss of their ship, they were “off pay” until they returned to the UK and signed onto another vessel.
On arrival back in the UK, their lack of a uniform precluded them the use of NAAFI and WVS facilities at railway stations.
Such was the bravery of several merchant navy officers during the war, that they were granted posthumous RNR commissions so that they might be awarded a Victoria Cross rather than a George Cross.
Even as recently as the Falkland’s War, the merchant navy suffered losses, a factor again sadly forgotten by the media.
Colin Topping.26 Crathes Close,Glenrothes.Celebrate drop in house pricesSir,- House price crash, cry news headlines (September 3). Behind the headlines lies the simple fact that house prices may be flat-lining or even falling modestly. The assumption, of course, is that rising house prices are a good thing.
Maybe we have become too accustomed to that over the last 15 years, most of which have seen hyper house-price inflation.
And the result? Record numbers of first-time buyers locked out of the market. Land prices that are too expensive, causing knock-on effects on the public purse by making social housing programmes unaffordable.
And a private sector development model that is trapped into gambling on rising land prices as its main source of profit.
All of this is economically inefficient, socially divisive and grossly unsustainable.
Let’s start to see the return of house prices to some semblance of sanity as something to be celebrated, not feared.
Graeme Brown.Director,Shelter Scotland,6 South Charlotte Street,Edinburgh.