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The National
4 days ago
- The National
How to get a whole year of The National for just £20
For a limited-time, you can purchase a 12-month subscription for the equivalent of around 5p per day. It's a great price for access to our breaking news, exclusive special reports, in-depth interviews and award-winning commentators. As part of your subscription you'll be able to read content across our website, and get special access to subscriber-only content like our Behind The Headlines newsletter – offering unique insight into the work of our brilliant journalists. Sign up here today and don't miss out on the best of The National.
The National
21-07-2025
- The National
Yet another triumph of money over people disrupted Beauly's gala day
He says the original journey date for the second transformer was Friday July 4, leading the reader to be perhaps more understanding that SSEN was only a day late with their delivery due to 'necessary maintenance and additional safety checks'. However, the transformer was scheduled to travel through Beauly on the day before, according to SSEN's own notification to residents: 'The second unit will be transported on 3rd July 2025 between 18.00hrs and 20.30hrs. The time and date of this transport have been selected to reduce the impact on roads.' READ MORE: Extra safety checks led to delayed transportation of SSEN transformer There followed a short-notice update of travel for the Saturday gala day: July 5th between 8am and 10.30am. They got the day right the second time, but missed their timings by some margin. A modicum of research would have told SSEN they should have delayed again until late on the Saturday evening when the village would have been quieter but no, money over people won again and the promised effort to 'reduce impact on roads' was thrown out of the window. Mr Smith refers to the scoped-out topics that SSEN has seemingly repeated across all of their planning applications, topics that they DO NOT have to address in their Environmental Impact Assessments. It is only fair that people understand exactly what those topics of most concern are: 1. Population and Human Health, 2. Electric and Magnetic Fields, 3. Radio Frequency Interference 4. Major Accidents and Disasters, 5. Air Quality and Climate and 6. Disposal and Recovery of Waste. A slide listing these topics was shown at a public presentation by SSEN regarding the 868-acre substation site at Fanellan within the rural community of Kiltarlity and was met with horrified gasps from the audience. It was swiftly taken down. READ MORE: Timing of disruption by SSEN demonstrates lack of regard for locals It is the opinion of those fighting for their health and wellbeing within this unprecedented electrical experiment that all these relevant subjects should be included and scrutinised in SSEN's planning applications and satisfactory answers given before any approval is considered. Mr Smith then takes the opportunity to attempt to justify what SSEN is doing and dangle the rotten carrot of community 'benefit'. Unfortunately, without a full, independent cost/benefit analysis for Scotland and justification as to why our rural communities are being sacrificed to export electricity out of the country, with no guaranteed customers and for the enrichment of their shareholders, his 'explanations' are at best inadequate. Ed Miliband is hell-bent on industrialising England with renewables plus nuclear and new gas generation, and it is entirely possible they won't even want to buy what the global investment companies here in Scotland have to offer. Lyndsey Ward Communities B4 Power Companies, Beauly THANK you to The National for publishing the revised route for the Palestine protest demonstration in Edinburgh on Saturday. I am guessing that this change was enforced following discussions with police. One consequence for my friend Alex in his wheelchair and myself in my scooter was to rule out our participation from St Giles'. Neither of us can manage cobbles, so this starting point was impossible for us. We were both keen to add our protest against the continuing genocide of the Palestinians people in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force and the continuing implicit support from our UK and Scottish governments. The UK Government for refusing to recognise the state of [[Palestine]], for continuing to assist the attacks by arms exports, by providing surveillance information and by proscribing a protest group and by using the new law to attack those who object to this proscription. Our Scottish Government for their non-recording of meetings with Israeli officials and the continued subsidies to our defence companies who are supplying military equipment to the Israeli government. READ MORE: I was at the national Palestine protest in Edinburgh and saw hope So, guessing the travelling time from St Giles', we met on Waverley Bridge to join the protest as it passed at our estimate of 1.45pm. We waited for more than one hour in heavy rain after our estimate before the march arrived. Apparently there were speeches before they started. Had this information been released, we could have avoided getting such a drooking. We were, however, pleased to participate. Come the time to man the barricades, could some consideration be given please to provide a ramp for those of us less mobile but equally committed? Campbell Anderson (self-appointed correspondent for the ancient society of disabled Old Age Protesters!) Edinburgh
The National
15-07-2025
- The National
I spent the weekend beach-cleaning in Dumfries and Galloway
I'm spending the weekend beach-cleaning with People Against Plastic Pollution (PAPP), a small charity set up in 2021 after its founder Will Thorpe – an environmental consultant from Devon – visited the Western Isles and was dismayed to find beaches there strewn with rubbish. Glance at the beach at Port William in Dumfries and Galloway and you would have no idea of the scale of plastic pollution on it, and within it. READ MORE: 'Collective action' against Israel to be decided at global conference But take a closer look and you will find plastic almost everywhere – embedded into the soil, trapped between stones, forming habitats for wildlife including slow worms, voles and ants. They are living under fishing crates and giant drums, but we're here to clear as much plastic as we possibly can from this hard-to-reach part of the coastline before it becomes too brittle to deal with at all. The creatures scamper and slither away to find alternative refuge in the thick vegetation. At last summer's clean-up there were a dozen volunteers, but this year it turns out to be just Will and his determined colleague (also called Will), until my arrival boosts the squad by 50%. I'm here on Saturday under my own steam and on Sunday using volunteering leave offered by The National's publisher, Newsquest. Assisting two Englishmen to clean up a Scottish beach certainly seems to fit with the goal of delivering a positive impact on the local community. We may be small in number, but we have the resolve of a much bigger team. Many hands make light work, but so does a brand-new 518cc quad bike loaned to the group by Honda UK, which we use to repeatedly tow a trailer piled high with hundreds of kilogrammes of plastic. Last year the group had to drag everything they collected along the beach, but we're able to load up a trailer, tow it up the road and hurl it into a huge skip provided by Dumfries and Galloway Council. Not until we have weighed it, though – the charity pledges to collect 2kg for every £1 donated, so we keep track of every load and set ourselves ever-increasing targets. We spend hours hauling huge trays and barrels we've stuffed full of boxes, bottles, fishing rope and much more, and what starts out feeling like a losing battle becomes more satisfying with every weigh-in. The clean-up is enlivened by the discovery of some 'treasure', including a doll's head with no eyes, a message in a bottle (about how to find Jesus) and a cheerful yellow duck printed with 'World Record Duck Race – Ireland 2006'. READ MORE: Seven charged in connection with hate crime at St Mirren match Some investigation reveals that this was one of a number of escapees from that fundraising event, set loose from the River Liffey by some mischievous children. It clearly wasn't the strongest swimmer of the raft, as others reached Sweden and Holland. On day two I remark that it was interesting to find so many bottles with liquid in them and the lids screwed shut. 'Have you ever seen the inside of a fishing boat?' asked Will T. 'They're probably all full of pee'. I pause to contemplate the fact that he had neglected to mention this to me 24 hours earlier, when I was diligently emptying out the contents of these sealed bottles to ensure we were weighing only the plastic, not liquid too. Undeterred, however, I keep doing so, reasoning that human pee was probably less of a threat to my health than the near-infinite number of microplastics to which each of us is exposed daily. So every kilogramme of our grand total of 1.4 tonnes was plastic. Returning to my desk, it felt serendipitous to find an email from Yes West Lothian about its community litter pick this coming Saturday (starting at 10am at The Lanthorn, Dedridge). Imagine the impact if every Yes group in Scotland did the same, for just one day this summer – a win-win for the environment and the cause. I'm already looking forward to next summer's PAPP mission. If you're averse to rodents, spiders, legless lizards and/or handling urine, then this might not be the activity for you. But really the most disturbing thing is getting a glimpse of how much plastic, in various states of degradation, is in our oceans, on our beaches and in our environment – to witness how solid objects break down into tiny fragments too small to collect or contain. Microplastics are being found in rapidly increasing concentrations in human bodies, including in the liver, kidney and especially the brain. It really is a race against time to remove what's there, while taking action to prevent more being added. I certainly won't look at a single-use plastic bottle the same way again.
