Sir, The latest ramblings of Fife Council on the reorganisation of bin collections are beyond belief. Those responsible for coming up with this scheme of going to three or four-weekly collections for landfill bins have obviously not thought it through properly.
They have forgotten that there are many households in the rural area who only have one bin for landfill.
Despite offering space for recycling bins on this farm, Fife Council have refused the offer, so everything goes in the landfill bin. It makes a mockery of the reasoning being put about by Fife Council that they want to increase recycling this is total nonsense. All they want to do is save money on collections.
If we are to get a monthly collection of landfill bins, there is no way we can manage.
The result will be a mess of uncollected rubbish, and I suspect a campaign to stop paying Council Tax when we get precious few services in the country.
And now Fife Council suggest they will do special collections for soiled nappies.
So who is going to pay for the research to determine where this would have to be done, and the collections?
Come off it, Fife Council, stop this ridiculous nonsense and provide a service that we already pay for.
Andrew F Gilmour. Londive, Montrave Home Farm, Leven.
Not tolerant of others’ beliefs
Sir, I have news for Alan Mathieson (Little Christian tolerance, Letters, March 18), about the Scottish Secular Society. It has a founder who likes to pose the question “Is religion fascism?” and who has admitted that he wants to see churches sidelined.
In my opinion, it is a militant atheist campaigning group, not really a secularist pressure group at heart. I have read many of their individual member posts and its members seem to me far from tolerant of other people’s beliefs.
In the same column, Angus Brown, in his letter, Humanists not anti-religion, supports a Humanist set of values for society. Yet it was allegedly a form of Humanist values that marked the terror in the secular states of Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Give me the peaceable Christian values and gentle humanity of such as Saint Francis, Eric Liddell and Martin Luther King any day over the intolerant societies where militant atheists, often posing as “democratic” socialists and as “secularists” have held sway and left little room for others to express faith or difference of opinion with autocratic secular governments.
Gus Logan. 2 York Road, North Berwick.
Old Creationist chestnut . . .
Sir, On Tuesday you published a remarkably silly letter from someone retelling the old Creationist chestnut, that the Theory of Evolution is “only a theory” and therefore not really worth any thinking man’s time.
This is like saying that cell theory or the heliocentric theory are “only theories” and therefore, etc. It also shows an unhappy ignorance of the meaning of the word “theory” in scientific use.
A theory is the most reliable, rigorous and comprehensive explanation we have of the results obtained by research into a group of observations, and provides useful pointers to the future.
No experiment has yet been done that shows it to be false. If it were only at the level of a “first guess” it would be a hypothesis.
Your correspondent then went on to say that certain theories in the realm of particle physics are not yet complete. While this is true, it has nothing to do with evolution, which is concerned only with living organisms on this planet.
Michael Spencer. 27 James Street, Pittenweem.
Stick and carrot plan suggested
Sir, Bob Taylor (Wednesday’s letters), says that the problem of unauthorised traveller encampments “will go on until the council and the travellers agree to talk at the very highest level in Fife Council”.
The difficulty there lies in the phrase “the travellers”. Travellers are like any other group within society. Some are brilliant, some are downright anti-social and most are somewhere in between.
Unfortunately, the downright anti-social drag the rest into disrepute. Substitute “teenagers” or “football fans” or whatever for “travellers” and the same story applies. Who do you talk to to sort out the anti-social element?
For some time, the Fife Conservatives have been calling for a stick and carrot approach. The carrot is better facilities for the decent, law-abiding majority, but it won’t succeed without an incentive for the awkward squad to comply.
We’ve suggested that a small number of areas such as sports fields and industrial estates should be declared no-go for encampments with criminal sanctions to back that up. Such areas would be carefully selected to ensure that encampments didn’t lead to economic damage or serious loss of amenity.
No-one has said “no” to this idea but officialdom doesn’t seem inclined to move it forward with any speed.
Cllr Dave Dempsey. Leader, Fife Council Conservatives, 7 Carlingnose Park, North Queensferry.
A dose of good sense needed
Sir, You reported on the Horsecross management’s plans for the restoration of Perth Theatre’s “former glory,” with the aim of creating a new “buzzing hub” for the Fair City, at a cost of some £15 million.
Illustrations on the theatre’s existing frontage show a very large airport terminal-like plateglass and metal building to be tagged on to the back of the buildings fronting Mill Street, though its theatrical purpose is not clear.
In the opinion of many local taxpayers, the scope and costs of these plans are quite grotesquely excessive, when all the present, delightful Perth Theatre needs is interior redecoration and new seating, to accommodate our larger selves these days, at very much lower cost.
Looking at the council’s new development departments’ various proposed plans we see, eg, upgraded sports facilities, a controversial road to be driven through a crematorium garden, and more projected plans, costing in aggregate tens of millions of pounds. Also, schemes for the creation of a civic square after the demolition of the City Hall, though that depends on approval by Historic Scotland, so far denied the planners.
The extremely controversial City Hall proposals, where we risk losing a huge asset, with the potential for reviving our dying city centre and killing off local retail in the course of its demolition, make absolutely no sense.
One wonders how the councillors and planning officials could possibly believe in the usefulness of these and some of the other proposals.
It is said that the planning momentum comes from a handful of senior council officials living, incidentally, outwith Perth, insisting on the council’s compliance in their plans.
Two or more councillors have, it seems, “broken ranks,” from the City Hall/civic square proposals.
Can the voters now trust councillors to “crack the whip,” and bring a modicum of good sense to their officials’ crazily overambitious and expensive plans?
Isabel & Charles Wardrop. 111 Viewlands Road West, Perth.
One rule for them, and . . .
Sir, Last week Alex Salmond used despicable language, calling David Cameron a coward, but in SNP circles that apparently is OK.
This week we see the four Glasgow councillors being redeemed after a despicable public burning of The Smith Commission report because those sort of actions are also OK in the same SNP ranks.
But when a certain UKIP MEP makes a comment about a certain SNP Minister, the full SNP battalion, complete with pipes and drums, rains down on the media in protest.
The SNP appear to have one set of standards for themselves and crucifixion of anyone who doesn’t agree.
Colin Cookson. Stenton, Glenrothes.