14-05-2025
How much of our own electricity will Scotland be left with?
To quote from the UK Government website on Eastern Green Lines: 'EGL1 and EGL2 are designed to unlock Scotland's renewable energy reserves by scaling up the UK's capacity to transport clean energy from where it is generated to where it is needed'. Note the carefully crafted language.
Once operational (2029), both EGL1 and EGL2 will have the capacity to deliver enough electricity for four million homes (two million each).
READ MORE: Glen Rosa delivery pushed back to 2026 as costs spiral further
Scotland's renewable electricity will then flow down two new subsea cables, costing a total of roughly £7 billion, from Peterhead and Torness to power-hungry England (Drax/EGL2 and Hawthorn Pit in County Durham/EGL1), while Scots continue to pay among the highest domestic and business energy bills in the UK. This all courtesy of Westminster, via Ofgem, to which energy is reserved! How many homes in Scotland are powered by Peterhead at the moment? How much of our own electricity will Scotland be left with?
This is blatant, brazen channelling of Scotland's natural resources to England without as much as a by your leave. There is no mention of Scotland being recompensed for all its clean, green energy. Scotland has arguably the best wind resource in the northern hemisphere, and by harnessing that resource could eliminate fuel poverty and revitalise our own economy.
It doesn't take an energy expert to work out that the wholesale price of electricity in Scotland should currently be the lowest in Europe, attracting very heavy users of electricity like data centres, electrolysers and such like. So instead of paying to export our renewable electricity subsea to England, data centres are increasingly looking to buy land in Scotland so they might be able to benefit from this low-cost electricity – should it ever materialise.
David Lowden
via email
YOUR comment piece 'I work at Holyrood – how toilets policy affects me' (May 12) is full of misinformation. Dylan Hamilton claims that the Scottish Parliament is following 'guidance they are not legally obligated to'. This is simply wrong. The guidance, issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is simply a restatement of the law, as clarified by the Supreme Court. The court did not use the law 'to interpret whatever they wanted from it'. Instead, it analysed the Equality Act virtually line by line to establish what the law actually says.
Nor is it true to say that the mixed toilet facility is a 'secret third thing' and that people who identify as trans will be outed by using it. This is not a 'trans-only' toilet. but can be used by literally anybody. I dare say your correspondent's colleagues (amongst others) will be more than happy to use it as well.
READ MORE: BBC 'sorry' for wrong pronouns during Supreme Court gender report
Such third spaces have existed for years in many buildings, in Edinburgh and elsewhere. They are a compassionate solution which allows everyone their rights and does not insist that anyone is forced to use a facility which does not align with the way they feel about themself.
What this article – and much of the commentary in the media – demonstrates is that the trans movement does not want a world in which everyone is provided for, but one in which their insistence that everyone play along with their claim that they are literally members of the opposite sex takes precedence.
I can, to an extent, understand the howls of outrage. The lie that people can change sex has been widely adopted for many years, mostly at the expense of women and lesbians. As a result, trans-identifying men and women have become so used to imposing their preferences on the world that it will take a period of adjustment to find their rights do not trump everyone else's.
Over the last ten years or so, women and lesbians have increasingly been denied the rights to our own spaces, free from males no matter how they identify. The judgment has confirmed that right always existed, even if it has been ignored. It also clearly reiterated the rights of people who identify as trans to be fully protected against discrimination. They have lost nothing, but their dominance.
Sally Wainwright
Lesbian Persistence
IT is reported that the Westminster government may be breaking international law to avoid offending Trump. The English government is still sending arms to Israel, the government of which is committing widespread violations of international law.
READ MORE: David Lammy denies misleading parliament over Israeli arms exports
What logic is there for Westminster agreeing to sending weapons to such a state when it is abundantly clear that there is no money left in the coffers? No money for the NHS. No money for care homes. No money for schools or their teachers.
It gives me great pleasure to tell the story of a BBC head of department, having been invited as a substitute for Controller in Scotland, to a visit to Scotland by Margaret Thatcher. His wife, having been asked a question about libraries, was able to proclaim 'of course, they are all free in Scotland'. No money for libraries, either, it seems.
Tony Kime
Kelso
