Sir, Your reports of the continuing delays over the future of Perth City Hall highlight the ongoing impasse between the “wreckers” and the “revivers,” while, although being kept inexpensively in fine condition, our hall stays unused.
About 80% of all hall bookings sought during the past five or more years had to be declined as unsuited to the Concert Hall and denied the City Hall, as per council policy.
It is most difficult to understand the council’s position as a “wrecker,” when the City Hall has such potential for revival, capable of many useful functions, already suggested to the authorities, when the council’s alternative suggestion is of a roofless civic square, costing at least £4 million, plus the dire impacts of a protracted demolition, likely to kill off the remaining businesses in the threatened city centre.
The “revivers’”position is that the City Hall is a great asset, the destruction of which would be a terrible own goal for the Fair City, with the loss of many well remembered functions, for meetings and dances as well as smaller concerts, complementary to the newer Concert Hall.
There are the added advantages of space for a re-sited tourist information office, along with local arts and events, displays, and historical and geographical exhibitions, all designed to tempt and attract visitors to the city and county.
Historic Scotland staunchly supports the “revivers”.
We all know of the city centre’s presently severely threatened viability, which a redeveloped City Hall, could help bring back to vigorous life. A roofless, open square could not do that; anyway, we already have the North and South Inches for open-air shows.
Do think again, please, Perth and Kinross Council, before you carelessly destroy a vital, irreplaceable asset with the potential to revive the Fair City, substituting a near-useless square in return, at crippling costs.
Isabel and Charles Wardrop. 111 Viewlands Road West, Perth.
Alex Salmond hits a new low
Sir, It has taken me a few days to recover from the shock news that Alex Salmond is so keen a fan of Vladimir Putin. A strutting, egotistical, totalitarian, dangerous despot (that’s Putin by the way, but you know what they say about flattery and imitation).
I’ve never had a high opinion of Mr Salmond, but this is a new low. Added to that, just a couple of days ago, he was back at it I want a fair share of UK assets for an independent Scotland.
OK, you can have 8% of them. But since the oil was in UK waters when it was discovered, and still is, perhaps you will recognise that 92% of the reserves will have to stay with the UK government if you leave the UK, in the very strong unlikelihood of a “yes” vote.
Now I don’t think Alex can reconcile these two ideas. He seems to be a keen supporter, not just of the Soviet Prima Donna, but of the Scottish economic idea of the UK that “What’s yours is ours, and what’s ours is wir ane.”
Alex, there are two men behind you and they’re both wearing white coats.
Ken MacDougall. 3 Logie Avenue, Dundee.
A similar view about Putin
Sir, I am a subscriber to Prospect magazine, “a monthly British general interest magazine, specialising in politics, economics and current affairs”.
In this month’s editorial, it says of Vladimir Putin that: “His view of how to reclaim Russia’s lost might has been entirely consistent, and . . .pursued with impeccable strategy for more than a decade. In contrast, the EU’s response has been a mess of diffidence and division.”
They make clear that Putin’s values may not be their own and the editorial was probably written before the Ukraine crisis, but their view would seem to be much the same as that of Alex Salmond.
In his own terms, I am sure that Putin would consider himself to have been very successful.
Les Mackay. 5 Carmichael Gardens, Dundee.
It was the FSA’s responsibility
Sir, With reference to Mr Peterson’s letter (April 30) may I just point out that neither the Governor nor the Bank of England as an institution, had any responsibility for banking supervision during the time of the Blair/Brown Government. This may be another urban myth.
That responsibility belonged to the now defunct Financial Services Authority, the FSA, created by Gordon Brown because he felt the Bank of England was insufficiently sympathetic to Labour Party Government policy which was to reduce regulatory overview with the intention of encouraging the growth of activity in the financial services sector and benefiting from the increased tax revenues which would be spent on Labour Party policies and used, among other things, to finance the Iraq war.
So the responsibility was stripped from the Bank of England that had a good track record on controls over the banks and was given to this newly created body, the FSA,that proved to be wholly incompetent as a regulator of financial services and the present Government quite rightly closed it down.
Derek Farmer. Knightsward Farm, Anstruther.