It's time to stop the scaremongering over heat pumps

The Herald Scotland

06-06-2025

If you take away the cost of a gas boiler, which would not be required, this makes the cost difference about £10,000 maximum.
Is he suggesting that the housebuilders should leave out the insulation and double glazing as well?
The difference in heating costs between a standard house built around 1970 and current standards is significant and I doubt if anyone would want to live in a basic 1970s house or pay the heating bill.
The housebuilding standards in the UK for insulation have been extremely poor compared to the standards in Scandinavian countries for at least the last 60 years and we are paying the price now in high retrofit costs to bring them up to a similar standard.
Most of the hype about additional measures required to install a heat pump result from this failure in building standards, and any changes to the heat emitters of new-build houses should result in a reduction in costs as less heat output is required.
For interest, you only need to replace the heat lost from a building and a heat pump can do this just as effectively as a gas boiler although it may be necessary to increase the radiator size as the flow temperature is lower. This does not apply to new-build and therefore it will not result in additional cost.
There was no incentive for builders to build houses with decent insulation and this could have reduced the potential profit per build and it was only when the Government eventually started introducing proper building standards that this situation slowly improved.
The before-tax profits of one major housebuilder last year were £359.1 million for 10,664 completions which amounts to £33,674 profit per house (11.1%). Some of these properties will include most of the standards for net zero and should be heat pump-compatible if they are still fitted with gas boilers.
I am not suggesting that housebuilders should not make a profit as that is how capitalism works, but perhaps it might put Ross Lambie's claims in perspective.
There are lots of reasons why we should be moving from gas to electricity, reducing global warming and saving the planet is only one of them, but misinformation is making a sensible transition more difficult.
Iain McIntyre, Sauchie.
Read more letters
Pride has had its day
I found the first half of the letter (June 4) from Rebecca Don Kennedy, CEO of the Equality Network, regarding the removal of Pride flags from lampposts on Arran quite enlightening. I read it thinking that we may well have an outbreak of common sense. Until.
The CEO went on to accuse Mark Smith of hypothetical and imaginary views, indeed, accusing him of victim blaming. There then followed a completely non-evidential, truly hypothetical and imaginary reasoning of what someone must be thinking if they dislike a flag.
The removal of a flag is straightforward vandalism (if damaged) or theft, and nothing else. Until the perpetrator is found nobody knows what their thought process was. They may just have been having a laugh. Under no circumstances is that then a hate crime.
For me, and many like me, I'm afraid that Pride has had its day, and it seems to me that it, and the "inclusive" groups of people behind it, are more about continually causing and promoting division in society.
Why can't we all just let people be?
Gregor McKenzie, East Kilbride.
A Pride march in Glasgow (Image: PA)
Frustration over hospital parking
Today (June 4) I failed to make a significant appointment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI), booked at a specialist unit in October 2024. I spent two hours attempting to find a parking space, and failed.
I recall that there was some problem in making the GRI car park free, which was eventually resolved. As a regular patient, I enjoyed a brief period when outpatients had an allocated parking area: that privilege did not last.
A missed appointment costs the NHS around £233 and I have now to wait until at least September for a new appointment.
I do not believe that the GRI car park is solely occupied by staff and patients. Glasgow is restricted and punitive in parking, and I suspect that this car park has a high occupancy of selfish non-entitled healthy parasites.
Stewart MacPherson, Kilsyth.
Dictionary corner
The faulty English usage Steve Barnet despairs of (Letters, May 29) doesn't exasperate me as much as the profusion of malapropisms that have become common.
Educated writers can no longer use the following, for fear of being misunderstood: apprise, which will be confused with appraise; beg the question will be supposed to mean pose the question; deprecate (an obscure theological term) seems to be supposed to be a posh modern variant of depreciate; enormity is used as a synonym of magnitude; fulsome is used instead of full (it is cognate with foul); ilk is presumed to mean sort; iconic is used as though it means special rather than totally standard; the verb loathe is used where the adjective loth would be correct; the adjective staunch is used where the verb stanch would be correct.
This stems from the modern practice of guessing at meanings instead of consulting a dictionary. Some hold that words should mean what people think they mean rather than what a lexicographer declare them to mean, but this leads to degeneration into baby-talk shorn of all subtlety.
Robin Dow, Rothesay.
Cruise control
It annoys me that CalMac ferries, the latest Glens Sannox and Rosa in particular, are referred to by several of your correspondents as "cruise liners". They are actually "crew's liners", a very important distinction and the root of a large number of the problems imposed on CMAL and CalMac by each other.
Peter Wright, West Kilbride.