LADY M and her husband talk glibly of the £60 million that they have lifted from public funds in one go as if it was not significant. To put it into perspective, a worker on the age-related median salary, working 50 years (18 to 68) would earn gross 0.65% of that if they maintained full-time employment. They would work 48 weeks a year and that would be their full reward. They would not be putting the money they earned into trust for the future.

If they put away 15% (including employer’s contribution) of their salary into a pension fund they may, on average investment return, build a fund of 1.3% of the money gained by Lady M and her husband in one go.

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To allow these carpetbaggers to look us in the eye and say it was a fair return for their investment compounds their lies. They invested very little, if anything, in this venture as the subsidy capitalist model that pervades business means that they were to be fully compensated and more by public funds.

For them to plead that they are scapegoats only underlines the fact that there are many more people and companies out there that have conformed to the same model. They are aided in this by politicians who think this is the proper way to run public services and who wish to further compound the problem by charging the public twice for the same service.

The English water company model is a prime example that allows shareholders to cream off money while the service is under-funded and then demands that the public, from whom the assets were taken in the first place, pay extra to support their failed business.

The contempt for the majority of the population who work to support these supposed entrepreneurs is now out in the open, and we will fail as a society if we do not tackle the societal inequity that is taken for granted at the heart of our government.

David Neilson
Dumfries

THE John Hutton Institute reports that Scotland’s weather has changed. It is warming up and getting wetter in winter and drier and warmer in spring and summer. I can hear some folks saying “What’s not to like?”

First let’s talk to the people in Scotland that think there is no climate change, or acknowledge there is change but believe the climate always changes and it will change again so we need to do nothing.

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This is true, but not accurate. Over the long years of our history, change has sometimes taken place in a few short weeks. Take as an example the Earth life extinction event caused by the meteor strike close to the Mexican Yucatan peninsula, 65 million years ago, which caused the demise of the dinosaurs and left the land open for mammalian expansion.

This event took seconds to hit, months to cloud the atmosphere, then the dinosaurs took a few years, maybe five – whilst harvesting the bodies of the dead herbivores – to die off.

A relatively short period of time, such that dinosaurs – being locked into their environment and with no capability or intellectual capacity to change – did not survive.

We humans have both the capability and intellect to avoid serious change to our environment, should we collectively wish to use it.

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Others look at the financial cost and postulate that our wee bit of the planet will become “broke”, so why don’t the big producers take action and mend their ways. They are maybe (like us) not doing enough quickly enough, but they are changing. Well, the big players should, but that doesn’t mean we should sit on our hands.

My heart goes out to those folks in Brechin, and several years earlier in Banchory, when both were inundated by exceptional weather events. I am sure that folks in Brechin and Banchory would, if they could, have spent more money rather than have to put up with the years subsequent to these weather events. Folks in Brechin are still to recover, and it will take time.

What is the point of having money in your pocket, when the water is up around your armpits?

Alistair Ballantyne
Angus

AMANDA Burgauer’s piece “Scotland’s land connects everything – this Bill is just the beginning” (thenational.scot, Dec 7) presents a misunderstanding of our grouse moors, which are brimming with rare bird and plant life and excellent for carbon sequestration.

It was found in a recent study published in the journal Global Change Biology that areas of Scottish upland planted with trees stored less carbon than plots of untouched heather after several decades.

Beyond that, a study published this year, carried out by a team at the University of York, found that muirburn was an even more effective method of heather management for long-term carbon capture, biodiversity increase, water-table increase and reduction of wildfire risk, compared to unmanaged heather. We should celebrate our grouse moors and all the benefits they bring.

Roger Seddon
Scottish Countryside Alliance