Readers' letters: Protect our farmers from sea eagles slaughtering lambs

The Scottish Government is paying out £970,000 to farmers this year under the Sea Eagle Management Scheme, but that does not mitigate the barbarity of the white-tailed sea eagles. Farmers are being put out of business. Many talk of the devastating impact on their mental heath.

The eagles have a wing span of 2.5 metres and were introduced to Scotland from Norway in 1975.You can be fined £40,000 if your dog kills livestock but the ghastly sea eagles, which also kill puffins and other small birds, kill with impunity and are protected. It will be of no surprise to anyone the Scottish Greens regard this slaughter as a big conservation success story.

Both BBC TV and Radio Scotland this week, inexplicably, adopted this slant, proudly proclaiming that there are, perhaps, 220 breeding pairs in Scotland. Indeed, how commendable it is these predators are moving into north England, a conservationist argued.

I don’t think the Scottish public were ever consulted on this chilling barbarity nor did we acquiesce.Our MSPs must be told, in no uncertain terms, this abhorrent slaughter must stop.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing, Fife

Ban shooting

More than 40 million pheasants and partridges, many of them factory farmed, are released each year in the UK, to be shot out of the sky for fun – most of the birds do not end up being eaten. Of course this is cruel to the birds, but it also damages the environment.

The scale of the problem is enormous: in fact, in late summer, the weight of all the birds released is greater than that of all the wild birds in Britain. The mass release therefore has a devastating impact upon wildlife and ecosystems.

In addition, wildlife is poisoned by the more than 7,000 tonnes of lead ammunition that is discharged into the UK countryside by shooters each year. There is also the danger of bird flu spreading from game farms to wild birds once the farmed birds are released. And finally, there is the issue of gamekeepers illegally killing protected birds of prey.

For the sake of our environment – and for the birds themselves – surely it is now time to ban shooting.

Fiona Pereira, Campaigns Manager, Animal Aid

Numbers game

Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon states that 54 per cent of respondents were against the setting up of a national park in Dumfries and Galloway and Ayrshire (your report, 30 May). So this 54 per cent are to be respected – but not the 55 per cent that rejected the pie-in-the-sky independence referendum?

I would dearly love to be able to cherry pick my choices on a whim. However, life being difficult as it is, this would lead to absolute carnage – in exactly the same fashion as we are governed in Scotland. This really sums up the hypocrisy of the SNP. The truth of the matter is they couldn’t have put it into practice – like all the other policies they spout and never see through.

David Millar, Lauder, Scottish Borders

Wasted money

In 2015, Derek Mackay, Transport Minister and John Swinney, Deputy First Minister, signed a fixed-price contract for two ferries at a cost of £97 million, it has now been reported that the total outlay to the shipyard is now just under £1 billion. Mackay is long gone but Swinney is still hanging around, seemingly totally unconcerned about this national scandal.

What have the taxpayers got for this outlay? One ferry with much reduced capacity and another which may or may not enter service.

Imagine, for a moment, if the SNP had stuck to the original fixed price. Imagine if the SNP had used the difference between that price and the latest, (but not final) price. Imagine how much state-of-the-art equipment could have been purchased for our hospitals, thereby saving lives and cutting waiting times. Think how many people could be back at work instead of waiting for an NHS Scotland appointment.

Or maybe, it could have been used to build a super highway (let’s call it the A9), all the way from Perth to John o’ Groats, thereby opening up half the land mass of Scotland to much needed inward investment and perhaps allow the sick and elderly in half of Scotland easy access to hospitals.

Ever since Nicola Sturgeon launched the Glen Sannox, for political gain, with painted-on windows and cardboard funnels, this has been nothing short of a vanity project for a party which has long since lost touch with the people who voted them in and demonstrates a complete lack of financial responsibility on the part of the SNP.

Bruce Proctor. Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Markets in charge

“TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) has become the policymakers’ acronym of choice for the disruptive on-off policies that are coming to define President Trump’s second term. Furthermore, imposition of blanket reciprocal tariffs by the White House has now been deemed unconstitutional by a US federal court. This ruling faces immediate challenge in the US Supreme Court. The balance of expectation, however, is that the Court’s decision will be upheld. Consequently, “tariff” may be losing its lustre as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” for the Donald.

This looks like good news, especially for trade negotiators. But every silver lining has its own cloud: selective high tariffs on steel, aluminium, cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals etc can/will still be legally imposed by Presidential executive order under the US Constitution; and the main overriding concern remains the heightened uncertainty, instability and risk for international businesses and government policymakers engendered by Trumpenomics.

Stock exchange reaction to current developments has been relatively sanguine. The reaction of bond markets is more concerning with yields staying high on long-term government bonds (both US Treasuries and UK Gilts). As a result, the cost of government borrowing remains worryingly high. If future tax hikes prove politically too damaging, more swingeing cuts will be forced on Rachel Reeves. The bond markets, it seems, hold the ultimate trump card!

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Big bills

Can somebody please explain how the NHS arrives at the costings of their procedures, as quoted by Alan Hinnrichs (Letters, 30 May)? To the uninitiated some of the figures seem simply incredible!

Chris Forrest, Polmont, Falkirk

Remember seamen

It is of enormous credit to the Norwegian people that the D/S Hestmanden has been preserved and maintained as a museum and tribute to the 30,000 Norwegian war sailors who served with the Allies during World War Two (your report, 28 May). The large Norwegian fleet and, in particular, their fast modern tankers proved to be invaluable in the transport of oil and oil products to every theatre of the war.

Following on so closely behind the commemoration of VE Day it is of importance to note that, in the last attack carried out by a U-boat in World War Two, the Norwegian ship Sneland 1 was torpedoed near the May Island, with the loss seven lives.

How tragic it is that these Norwegian sailors, who must have known that the war in Europe was almost over and they would soon be able to return to their beloved country after five long years, had their lives and futures snatched away. Amongst those lost was the ship’s master Johannes Bernhart Laegland, aged 46. Also lost was a 17-year-old British Mess Room Boy, William Ellis from Hull. Young William and two members of the crew of the Avondale Park, which was torpedoed in the same attack, added to the huge number of almost 32,000 casualties suffered by the British Merchant Navy in the Second World War.

I found it somewhat strange that in the various commemorations for VE Day I did not hear one mention of the Merchant Navy or see a “veteran" from the Merchant Service being interviewed. Perhaps we, like our seafaring cousins the Norwegians, should pay more attention to the enormous sacrifice made by our merchant seamen.

I wish Captan Klungtveit and the D/S Hestmanden a pleasant return voyage to Norway.

James Simpson, Lower Largo, Fife

Scots words

The translator of Danish books into English, Barbara J Haveland, confessed in an article that she likes to “sneak” Scots words into her translations.

As examples she offered “outwith”, “swither” and “forenoon”. My dictionary acknowledges the Scottish origins of the former two. However, there is no such comment about “forenoon”. This word is designated as a “modifier” with the example offered “a forenoon meeting”.

Totally unrelated is the recollection that the word “outwith” always reminds me how, from childhood, I used to sing “There is a green hill far away, without a city wall” and I actually pitied this poor hill that lacked a boundary wall. The third edition of the Church of Scotland hymnary clarifies the situation and reads “outside a city wall”. We live and learn.

Bill Greenock, Netherlee, East Renfrewshire

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