WHEN Nicola Sturgeon rages that any attempt to stop Indyref2 would be anti-democratic, she should look in the mirror. The SNP government has repeatedly waved through ministerial approval for major windfarm developments that have been rejected by local councils. The latest looming illustration of this determined effort to overrule local democracy involves the bid to construct a windfarm at Strathy Wood in Sutherland. The proposal by the German multinational energy company RWE to erect 13 giant industrial turbines, each 180 metres high to blade tip, has come under fire from local objectors and has been refused planning approval by Highland Council. The SNP government passed legislation enabling it to call-in applications for windfarms that have an installed capacity greater than 50 mw.
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A tree is for centuries, not just for COP26
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We are being urged and, in some cases, paid by the government to plant more trees. Actually, this happens most years. I can even remember ‘Plant a tree in ’73. Plant one more in ’74’. It is a bit like saying ‘Have more babies’, without any provision for their care once born. It all depends which trees, where you plant them and how you tend them. If you walk through the country nowadays, or near new-build housing estates where trees have been planted in ‘mitigation’, you will see large numbers of saplings dead or dying, still in their tree guards, planted too close together and then forgotten. New trees need protection from rabbits, deer, weeds and competition. As a dog is not just for Christmas but for life, so a hardwood tree is not just for COP26, but for centuries. Besides, tree-planting can do ecological harm. Great damage especially to now-fashionable peat was done to the Flow Country in Scotland in the 1970s by the heavily subsidised planting of conifers