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Why should these employees of the public, who are mainly clerical, be allowed to stay at home or go to the gym or play golf or football or take their children for a walk in the park at our expense? There are public employees who are tradesmen or supervisors who can only perform their duties at their place of employment. Should they be compensated because their clerical colleagues are getting time off to play football (while they are “working” from home)?
It seems to me that as our trade unions constantly seek to reduce the working week they see over-manning as the solution. A bricklayer or a joiner or an electrician can only do so much work in an hour, so if you reduce the working week you need more manpower to produce the same output. If our civil servants are enjoying free time at public expense then it’s high time the Government insisted that they get back to working as teams in their workplaces.
Peter D Christie, Newton Mearns.
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Postponing the landfill ban
Sepa’s much-vaunted ban on the landfilling of untreated municipal waste remains on track to come into force on January 1 despite the fact that there isn’t enough installed treatment capacity in Scotland to cope with the consequences. Critics have pointed out that this will mean thousands of tonnes of waste having to be trucked to England instead. Rather than postpone the starting date for the ban (again), Sepa has now told waste disposal operators who can’t comply with the ban that they can apply for a six-month extension to allow them to make alternative arrangements. If by the end of the six months they still can’t comply, they can apply for another six-month extension. Up to four six-month extensions will be authorised if Sepa is convinced the applications are based on genuine circumstances (for example awaiting the completion of new energy from waste plants or other treatment facilities).
While on paper this should avoid hundreds of journeys down the M74 every month (and the associated increase in costs for the operators and their customers, many of them councils) it looks like a sophisticated, selective postponement.
And as each extension application will have to be individually assessed, there’s no mention of whether Sepa will need extra staff to do this work. If not, that means fewer staff available for catching the crooks who now handle 20% of Scotland’s waste.
John Crawford, Preston.
Time to be fair to Melville
Kevin McKenna’s interviews with Sir Tom Devine (The Herald, November 21, 22 & 23) will have been appreciated by many readers, but it would be a pity if Sir Tom retires completely from public discourse.
I certainly hope he will continue to criticise, and indeed educate, Edinburgh City Council regarding its disgraceful, biased, incomplete and unfair wording on the Melville Monument plaque in Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square, over the role played by Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, during the UK campaign to abolish the slave traffic and slavery itself, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
It distorts history, misleading residents and tourists alike. A “bald truth” can mislead if it is not “the whole truth” and can therefore be little different in effect from an outright lie – hence the longstanding legal maxim in our judicial system.
With Cammy Day no longer council leader, and the late Sir Geoffrey Palmer (who chaired the committee which compiled the wording and whom I admired in other respects) no longer with us, it is now an appropriate time for Edinburgh City Council to install a new plaque giving a more complete, fair and accurate history of that period, and of Melville’s crucial and ultimately successful role in ending the abomination of the Atlantic trade.
John Birkett, St Andrews.
The madness of Royal Mail
Your Letters Pages regularly feature reports of Royal Mail’s decline. I now suspect that decline is terminal.
Some years ago I opened an account with the Royal Mail online shop but had not used it for ages because I always encountered so many glitches that I was rarely able to make a purchase. Instead I logged on “as a guest” and was able to bypass the problems. Last week I attempted to do the same again but the option was no longer available and I was forced to enter my email address, which led to my having to log in to the account. However my browser prevented me from doing so because the certificate for the web page “was not valid”. I rang the given telephone helpline and was told the number had been changed. I dialled the new number and received a “number unobtainable” tone. I then managed to find a geographical address for the Closed Accounts Team and wrote to them requesting that they close my account.
Exactly a week later the post arrived and the first letter I opened was from the Closed Accounts Team. It confirmed that they had closed my account and wished me “all the best for the future”. My pleasant surprise at receiving such a prompt and efficient response was gradually dispelled as I opened the second, third, fourth and fifth letters; they were all exact copies of the first.
Peter Martin, Perth.
Subtitle sorrow
I read Alison Rowat’s review of Prisoner 951 (“Prisoner 951: A harrowing account of love triumphing over Iranian tyranny”, The Herald, November 24). While I would agree with her that it is a powerful dramatised account, I think perhaps she was not watching the same programme as myself. In typical BBC and other broadcasters style, we had a great deal of white subtitles on a white background, thereby obscuring a lot of what was being said. It is not rocket science to have the subtitles within a contrasting box.
Steve Barnet, Gargunnock.
Obvious objection
Having read in The Herald that drivers with older vehicles are more likely to face unexpected repair costs (“Two in three drivers hit by sudden repair bills”, The Herald, November 22), I await your reports on the religious affiliation of the Pope and what bears do in the woods.
Gregory Beecroft, Skelmorlie.
