Letters / A national disgrace?

During a recent visit to Edinburgh I had the opportunity to see the view from Arthur’s seat; that overlooks the whole impressive city and parliament buildings. 

However, I was surprised that I could see no wind farms in any direction from this vantage point above the city; neither in water nor on land. 

I thought with our Scottish Government presently running policies that appeal to the green movement, that they would be supplying the massive amount of electrical power required by the parliament buildings and the rest of this city; from their assumed environmentally friendly sourced wind power.

Surely transmitting the wind generated power over the shortest distance from where it is produced, to where it is required, would be the most environmentally friendly option, as there would be less environmental disruption to the natural habitat when installing those shorter power cables and less natural loss of power when transmitting the electricity to the customers.

The alternative of the construction of wind farms offshore, thus polluting our country’s precious fishing and fish spawning grounds, where the electrical power is neither wanted nor required, will cause irreparable damage to the marine habitat and will result in a massive natural loss of wind generated electric power; from the power travelling through the thousands of miles of cables traversing the seabed, before it even gets to the shore.

The damage this may do to the natural environment in our nation’s waters is incalculable.

The importance to the wider world, of the precious resource of seafood around our nation’s shores, is presently evident by the number of foreign nations’ fishing vessels, continuously plundering our countries fish stocks; unhindered and unmonitored by our UK authorities, while they keep our own country’s fishing vessels tied to the quay by enforcing unrealistic EU set quota allocations.

Our own fishing communities are only allowed a fraction of what is taken from our own waters by other nations.

Could this possibly be to appease the EU in the hope of re-joining, against the wishes of the majority of the UK electorate?

We can only wait to see and hope that in 2026, when we are told that our government would have control of our waters out to 200 miles; or to a median line between ours and other nations’ waters, that we will still have a UK fishing industry left and some fish and fishing grounds left to fish on. 

Whatever happens, it is a national disgrace that our governments are presently encouraging the pollution of the seabed around our shores, with enormous swathes of wind farms; alien to the marine habitat, which will possibly eradicate the surrounding sea life and our communities dependent on it for our existence and livelihoods.

This pollution of our country’s fishing grounds with wind farms is not environmentally friendly to the marine habitat and marine life and requires a serious rethink of policy by our elected governments.

William Polson
Whalsay