Readers’ Letters: The energy transition is anything but just for consumers

In the article he explains the huge financial returns being made by investors in the electricity infrastructure conglomerates who carry out the “regulated energy infrastructure” in Scotland. SSE in the north of Scotland and Scottish Power Energy Network (SPEN) in the south. As he explains these are “core monopolies, immune to commodity price swings, protected from inflation and insulated from rising interest rates”, “these businesses carry almost no risk”. He goes on to say: “SSE has generated a total shareholder return of more than 60 per cent.”

As we all know, the reason why these companies are making huge profits is because they enjoy a monopoly situation and when they make grand announcements about the billions of pounds they are investing in the electricity network what they really mean is that they are going to spend our money- electricity consumers’ money – with the government’s approval. There is no risk to their shareholders and there is no incentive to spend this money wisely or prudently as all costs are just passed on to the consumers – and all costs, of course, have a built-in profit margin for their shareholders.

Meanwhile we the electricity consumers suffer ever higher bills whilst shareholders around the world enjoy risk-free record yields. Nice work if you can get it.

W Douglas,. Hawick, Scottish Borders

20mph ignored

I was intrigued that Midlothian Council is reviewing some of 800 roads with 20mph speed limits amidst concerns about vehicle speeding (your repoprt, 23 January). The same week my local council provided the results of traffic surveys on Edinburgh’s Turnhouse Road showing that more than 10 per cent of vehicles travelled over 30mph westbound in a 20mph limit near a busy pedestrian crossing close to a children’s nursery.

Excessive speeding in a 20mph limit may not be unusual but the crossing is a dropped kerb rather than controlled and is the only route for pedestrians and many cyclists from the city to reach Edinburgh Gateway rail station, with no car park or bus stop provision. Furthermore, anyone trying to cross to the station faces vehicles speeding around a blind bend from Maybury Road and emerging from a nearby slip road from Glasgow Road. At peak times, there is the added challenge of edging between queuing traffic blocking the crossing. The only way to cross safely is to edge out, look over queuing vehicles and run.

I have been lobbying the council for some months and in the autumn it pledged to fund a puffin crossing this financial year. Now the road safety officer cannot provide a date for when this will be installed. Traffic calming measures are also proposed but when is anyone’s guess.

As Rachel Amery’s report of 24 November, 2024 confirms, 20mph limits are overwhelmingly not being enforced. Signage costing millions of pounds has been wasted and resources would have been better spent on badly needed road safety infrastructure.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Workable idea

I have read Stephen Jardine’s piece on the work of Scotland's Road Works Commissioner, Kevin Hamilton (24 January).

In parts of Germany when a utility company opens a road or pavement, for whatever reason, they must notify all other utility companies that there is now a hole at XYZ. The other utility companies must all inspect their infrastructure (pipes, cables, sewers etc) and repair any faults or upgrade anything that has deteriorated. This must be done by all concerned in a set period of time (and records kept of what was done or not done) before the road or pavement is closed. A company that reopens the road within the following 36 months must explain why.

Legislation would be needed but unclogging our never-ending cycle of dig a hole, fill it in, dig the same hole again, and again, would surely be worth it?

Robert Cooper, Edinburgh

Infantile gesture

The Scottish government has sent a baby box to New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, hoping it “acts as a model for his policies to tackle the costs of living”. I wonder which SPAD “dummy” thought that one up.

According to a Lancet study the “absolute effects” of the Scottish Baby Box scheme “were small”. Mind you, it must be a lot cheaper than sendind a load of dignitaries to parade in ridiculous trews during Tartan Week.

I have no words. Well, maybe “goo goo ga ga”.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Settled will

Alex Orr says that Scots are not being given the chance to “decide their own constitutional future” (Letters, 24 January).

Mr Orr is also of the opinion that a majority of Scots want independence. I expect that he conducted a straw poll in an SNP constituency office somewhere. I haven’t met anyone who thinks that we have changed our minds since the referendum which decided that matter in 2014.

I don’t know why Mr Orr is so ignorant about the open goal the then government gave the separatists in 2014: date (2014, 700 years after Bannockburn); question (yes/no with the positive option for UK break-up); vote following Scotland’s team appearing at the Scottish-held Commonwealth Games; only a simple majority required to win; lowered voting age to get teenagers aged 16-plus (who were seen as more pro-independence) to vote; Commonwealth and EU citizens allowed to vote plus public funds, free publicity material delivery and use of public rooms by the Yes campaign given. Yet, still they lost.

Andrew HN Gray, Edinburgh

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