Sir, I congratulate Mike Galloway, director of city development, for his decision to advise councillors against re-naming Cross Row as Nablus Place (Councillors urged not to rename historic street, August 15).
Dundee’s twinning with Nablus was opposed at the time by many people in the city who were horrified at the idea of a link with a place which was/is a hotbed ofterrorism.
However, it was railroaded through by the council of the day.
I know that it caused at least one eminent Jewish Dundonian to leave the city, and indeed the country, for good, so disgusted was he at this joining of his home town with a centre for terrorists whose sole aim was to wreak death and destruction on the Jewish nation of Israel.
The fact that the twinning has been praised in recent years by the likes of Mick Napier of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign is no cause for celebration.
If anything must be named after Nablus then let it be some out-of-the-way link road in the technology park but let’s leave what’s left of Dundee’s old streets as they are.
Angela Rennie. 88 Muirfield Crescent, Dundee.
Right to be sceptical
Sir, G Thorpe (Letters, August 14) is right to be sceptical about the Westminster Government ever reducing electricity prices. Even the House of Commons Energy Committee agrees. Their recent report strongly criticises both the Westminster Government and Ofgem for not doing enough to support the interests of consumers.
The way the electricity industry was privatised has led to an extra electricity distribution levy which applies to half the land mass of Scotland.
This levy is applied to the bills of all consumers in the former Scottish Hydro Electric area. That is everyone north of a line from Campbeltown round the north of Glasgow to Dundee. The cities of Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth and Inverness are all included. We all have to pay some 20% more on the distribution cost element of our bills.
No account is taken of the climatic conditions which compel us to use more energy to keep warm than those further south.
Following the fragmentation of the industry, cross-subsidy is now frowned upon. I would suggest that it is a social necessity for governments to rectify this problem which is such a worry to Scottish households, especially those off the gas grid and dependent on electricity for their heating.
R J Ardern. 26A Southside Road, Inverness.
City Square a perfect setting
Sir, As a Dundonian who’s been living in Glasgow since 1978, it was a first for me a coffee al fresco in the City Square of my home town recently. I had a meeting with clients and it was a perfect setting in the sunshine.
I’ve munched sandwiches in the square, met dates as a young man there, cheered United triumphs and queued in it for big gigs at the Caird Hall Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rory Gallagher, Rod Stewart and The Faces, Emerson Lake & Palmer among them but Tuesday’s experience was a fresh delight.
I really hope the 2017 City of Culture bid ends in triumph. Dundee is often underrated but not by me, I must add. I am very fond of the city.
The changes at the waterfront will transform the area and are bound to boost other parts of the city, too. Bonnie Dundee, right enough.
Mike Ritchie. 21 Fotheringay Road, Pollokshields, Glasgow.
Thin end of the wedge?
Sir, I have to hand it to your writer Jim Crumley for spotting the biggest flaw in sports like football and cricket right now over-technology.
There was a time when referees and umpires made decisions and we, the spectators, could argue about them all day. Now with goal-line cameras on their way into football and “Hawkeye” cameras judging where a cricket ball would have struck the wickets (or not) we might as well dispense with those officials.
The claim is, of course, that these will make decisions more accurate. I sincerely doubt it. Anyone who owns a computer knows that what seems infallible is extremely fallible when you least expect it. Are we going to see a follow-up in football to the ridiculous “appeal” rule in cricket which goes through a third umpire? Let’s hope not. When the umpire says you are out you should be out and not out is not out. When a goal is given it should be a goal, not given, it isn’t a goal.
Ian Wheeler. Springfield, Fife.
Another lost commodity
Sir, Whatever happened to our peace and quiet?
While aware that I am a fully qualified dinosaur and out of audio-sync with many of the younger generation, I find it difficult to believe the virtually ceaseless cacophony from a burgeoning array of electro-audio equipment is acceptable to most folks: if not actually harmful to today’s youngsters.
Malfunctioning security-alarm systems, bleeping shop-tills, loud “music” played with TV adverts and the hyper-drumming during TV newscasts.
It would seem that peace and quiet has become yet another lost commodity.
Kenneth Miln. 22 Fothringham Drive, Monifieth.