Here are this week's letters...

 

A long family connection to town

I was pleasantly surprised to open last week’s Courier and see a picture of my family in North Berwick in the early 1890s (see image right, courtesy of East Lothian Archives and Museums).

My great grandfather moved to Tantallon Terrace in 1889 and the house has been in the family ever since. I was born and brought up in North Berwick and am now the fourth generation to live on Tantallon Terrace.

Your article rightly says that my great uncle, Dr James S Richardson, founded the museum. He was also in charge of the excavation of St Andrew’s Auld Kirk at the harbour and, most poignantly, designed the North Berwick War Memorial knowing that his younger brother, Arthur, would be one of the names on it, having been killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. Dr Richardson was granted the Freedom of North Berwick in 1967.

I sincerely hope that the Richardson family’s association with North Berwick continues long into the future. Where better to live?

Ross Richardson
Tantallon Terrace
North Berwick

 

Left to fester?


On May 19, multiple fire crews attended a fire at the former Edenhall Hospital.
Once a busy NHS facility, the hospital was closed in 2010 and services centralised at Musselburgh

Primary Care Centre. The site has been marketed since 2016. The buildings and land now lie abandoned and are vulnerable to vandalism.
Elsewhere, East Fortune Hospital lies derelict and Herdmanflat is the topic of contentious housing plans.

Will Belhaven Hospital and its wider site face a similar festering future? NHS Lothian has not communicated with the community on future plans. This is unlike 2009, when community outrage offset a previous closure proposal and the promise was made that the site would not close until new facilities were in place; a promise repeatedly made over the years.

Work is currently ongoing on options for the care of older people. The steering group was told that no changes would be made to existing services until the work had concluded and, in consultation, residents had clearly said that the NHS beds, Blossom House care home and other services provided at Belhaven should remain.

The decisions made by East Lothian IJB were at a meeting which did not allow any community representation, unlike those in 2018, when the withdrawal of minor injuries, the closure of ward 2 and the proposals for replacement of facilities by extra-care housing were on the table. The last noted meeting in December 2018 agreed to co-production with the community on the future of Belhaven.

The IJB decision was based on the need to make spending cuts due to financial pressures. It is saddening that arson in the hospital grounds in early March were part of the rationale for closure.

The closure was agreed despite major spending on Belhaven to upgrade facilities and remedial works following the discovery of legionella in 2022. By FOI, I found that spending was almost £1 million. Beyond spending on the buildings, there has been much investment by the voluntary sector in Belhaven Community Garden, a growing space but also used for therapeutic gardening opportunities for those with mental health and disability support needs. What a waste!
The closure is short-sighted. The services are still needed.

The closure will add to bed blocking, as care home beds and care packages are so difficult to access in Dunbar and East Linton ward, especially in the villages south of the A1. That blocking will impact on the centralised hospitals in Haddington and Edinburgh and thus on the front door at A&E. NHS Lothian tells people not to go to A&E but East Lothian residents have no other option.

I wrote with concerns to the Health Minister, who responded that he could not intervene in NHS decisions. However, he, the First Minister and Scottish Government could facilitate the scrapping of the much-delayed and over-budget National Care Service, which even in a cutback form may cost around £1 billion. It is widely opposed. Money would be better used on funding for the frontline services that are needed now. It is needed to retain the Belhaven site for health and social care use, rather than mothballing it and allowing it to rot and be vulnerable to vandalism like Edenhall.

Jacquie Bell
Belhaven

Torness views


I note with interest your [online] coverage of Lord Foulkes’s comments on May 16 that “everyone around Torness... is keen to see a new Torness”.

Would Lord Foulkes care to cite his references for this claim? I certainly live around Torness and know many local people who agree with the Scottish Government’s policy that no new nuclear power stations should be built in Scotland.

Ironically, Lord Foulkes as an MP used to be pretty anti-nuclear – especially when he thought plutonium might be flown out of Prestwick Airport to the USA. Unfortunately, the problems of radioactive waste disposal have still not been solved after 70 years of trying.

He may be thinking of the 550 jobs at Torness, but of course after the closure in 2028, a workforce will be required to de-fuel, dismantle and decommission the reactors, taking years to achieve.
Our country needs to spend its money more wisely than ploughing money into a new nuclear station at Torness, or anywhere else for that matter. 

The current EDF estimate for completing Britain’s next nuclear power station at Hinkley is £46 billion. I’m sure next year it will be higher. Just imagine how the transition to a carbon-neutral energy system could be underpinned by this sum, and in the process directly benefit residents and local communities.

Alister Jack, the UK Government’s Secretary of State for Scotland, wants the Department for Energy and Net Zero to plan for a Scottish reactor as he expects “a Unionist regime” to be in power in 2026. 

I suspect this proposal will give people in Scotland a target for opposition to the UK Government, equivalent to the birth of the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM) in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

As a veteran supporter of SCRAM, I for one do not want another nuclear power station at Torness. Over to you, Lord Foulkes.

Sheila Durie
Garvald Grange Cottages
Haddington

 

Voters decide


Criticism of East Lothian’s MSP (letters, May 16) leads Julian Osborne to wish that Holyrood “could return to a more collaborative approach... to lower the temperature of the debate and result in better policy making”.

All supporters of proportional representation, democracy and national self-determination would concur, as would the 74 per cent who voted for devolution in 1997. Mr Osborne might have noted Mr McLennan commending the First Minister for not re-appointing a Minister for Independence (columns, May 16). Party politics sometimes crowds out a fundamental fact: Scotland’s constitutional future is in the hands of the people of Scotland. Those striving for independence and those who fear it face the same reality: the voters will decide.

Mr Osborne might be more controversial in characterising as “gerrymandering” the negotiations to form a government required by multi-party politics. In his astute letter (also last week) Sam McComb compares Scotland’s GDP with that of other small, independent countries – all better off than Scotland. Sweden has eight parties represented in its Parliament, Belgium nine, Denmark 10, the Netherlands 15. All these countries, and others, have a GDP not only higher than Scotland’s but also higher than the UK as a whole. Would the elected representatives of these small countries consider they ‘gerrymander’ their parliaments to achieve their prosperity?

Questioning whether opposition parties are on top of their game is not solely SNP territory. Douglas Ross was described recently as “red-faced Tory leader hung out to dry [by Westminster Tories]” (Press and Journal); “Humza Yousaf puts Douglas Ross in his place” (The Scotsman); “Scottish Tory leader helped bring humiliation on himself” (The Herald).

A national debate is under way about the capacities of a small country to run its own affairs. This is normal across Europe, Mr McComb argues, adding the debate should be about addressing the obstacles to independence.

Local residents, as well as some visitors, clustered round the pro-independence and pro-EU stall on North Berwick High Street on Saturday and their engagement was encouragingly upbeat, thoughtful and well-informed. The focus wasn’t party politics at all but the bigger picture, beyond the Union: what kind of country do we want Scotland to be; and how can that be achieved? Even without a referendum campaign, the national conversation is moving forward, perhaps unstoppably.
Dr Geraldine Prince
Victoria Road
North Berwick

 

‘It’s a bit rich’


It is a bit rich of the Scottish Green councillor Shona McIntosh blaming working-class people on the failed climate target when her Green Party has been in, official and unofficial, coalition with the SNP Government for eight years and carried out every Tory austerity cut on the fabric of council services.

Let us not forget but before the two Scottish Greens MSPs in Government were dumped by the SNP majority party, they had agreed to the climate cuts without a whimper. At root, these events reflect the utterly failed pro-capitalist approach of both the SNP and the Scottish Greens; and the growing working-class opposition to the Scottish Government’s cuts and anti-trade union policies.

Copying their European counterparts when in power, the Greens have backed the SNP budgets at Holyrood for years – budgets that have had, and are having, horrific consequences for vital public services like the NHS and local government. Investment in social housing has collapsed. Colleges and universities are facing huge shortfalls in vital investment. Scottish Green councillors have also backed cuts in Glasgow and elsewhere, for example.

Yes, the Scottish Government have also failed on the environment. And no wonder. How can pro-business policies like handing over licences for offshore renewable projects to big energy assist the fight against climate change? The SNP leadership have long been supporters of the oil and gas corporations and a low tax environment in the North Sea.

The Scottish Greens have driven the introduction of green taxes like low-emission zones and the failed deposit return scheme, which hit working-class people and not the multi-national companies responsible for the majority of emissions.

Also the use of strident identity politics by the middle-class Scottish Green leadership has without question alienated a section of the working class – especially galling when the same Scottish Government the Greens are part of are implementing cuts to vital public services that working-class communities rely on, including LGBT+ and women’s services.

The face of the Greens as a radical political force prepared to struggle for the interests of all of the working class is being exposed as a fraud, just as it has been for the SNP. Because the Tories, Starmer’s Labour and the Greens are all the same, a new workers’ party based on the trade unions and committed to fighting socialist policies is vital, including a socialist class approach to ending all forms of oppression.


Jimmy Haddow
Socialist Party Scotland
Carlaverock Avenue
Tranent