East Lothian Courier letters: March 14, 2024

Parking charges alone aren't enough but a good first step

Christiane Maher (letters, March 7) asks me to cite evidence for my support for parking charges – I would be glad to do so!

Change is needed because private transport makes up 25 per cent of Scotland’s emissions and East Lothian is failing to make necessary progress towards a 20 per cent reduction target.

Interested readers can look up the Essential Evidence factsheets produced by Edinburgh Napier’s Transport Research Institute, freely available online.

Factsheet 21 found that parking policies which restrict parking lead to a shift towards more sustainable modes of transport; factsheet 74 cites parking charges as one of the most effective policy options for behaviour change; and factsheet 71 gives evidence that sustainable transport policies which may be unpopular at first rapidly gain acceptance as people appreciate the benefits of reduced traffic and increased public space.

My comments about safety were to do with the overall effect of reducing car dominance, particularly through Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, which have been repeatedly found to lower street crime and road accidents (e.g. the work of Rachel Aldred).

Parking charges alone won’t deliver this change, but they are a good first step.

North Berwick Community Council claims that car parking charges will ruin businesses but have presented no evidence for this.

Evidence from other towns and cities suggests the opposite.

In Delft, a historic market square functioned as a car park until the early 2000s.

When the town council suggested removing parking, businesses were scared, but the town proceeded on an opt-in basis.

Soon all the businesses requested to turn that parking space into outdoor seating, and the square is now a thriving, pedestrian civic space (see the work of Melissa and Chris Bruntlett for more on this, including before and after photos).

This is also relevant to Ms Dickinson’s letter last week. She argues that cycling infrastructure is a waste of money, particularly in comparison to healthcare spending.

Actually, a recent BMJ article by Scarlett McNally describes active travel infrastructure as a ‘best buy’ for improving health, with cycle commuting associated with a 30 per cent reduction in mortality from heart disease and cancer.

This is not to say that every current design of the Active Toun project is perfect but, like the parking charges, the concept of a network of routes to encourage more cycling and walking will be one key driver to shift us all towards more sustainable transport (see Factsheet 18 from Napier’s TRI for more evidence on how this works).

The most recent Scottish Government budget allocated over £1 billion to the trunk road network: it is this cash that should be spent elsewhere, not the fractional amount allocated to active travel.

Cllr Shona McIntosh

East Lothian Greens and chair of ELC Cycle Forum

Avoid tinkering

Recent reports and letters (Courier, March 7) indicate that discussions of parking restrictions in North Berwick will resume, after the previous consultation failed to find a consensus of agreement on change. This should give an opportunity for a wider range of views to reflect different arguments. We are in times in which new information and shifting attitudes are altering views about what we need to do right now to respond to changes and threats in our environment.

Recently, in a report produced by the Greater London Council and Transport for London, it appears London has cleaned up its act in terms of air quality and ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) is largely responsible. London’s reduction (49 per cent) is ahead of all other parts of the UK, with Scotland second (39 per cent). This is awkward for the Conservative Government since they recently turned against ULEZ and other greener issues as a result of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. North Berwick isn’t London, but air pollution is caused by the same factors.

Rishi Sunak commissioned a report on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in England, presumably thinking that the result would be ammunition for his Government’s new approach to environmental issues – backing the motorist. The report seems to have been shelved initially but indicates that people are roughly twice as likely to approve of LTNs as disapprove.

In the new consultation relating to traffic and parking, perhaps it is better for the council to avoid tinkering with the old proposal and produce a new one taking more research into account. This can be presented to residents as part of an attempt to be more transparent and more effective in protecting us all from environment problems. Or has the Labour-controlled council decided that the climate emergency declared in 2019 is somehow ‘over’? That would come as a surprise to SNP and Green councillors.

The Scottish Government has committed to work towards a greener Scotland, for which they can be praised. There may be mistakes on the way but they are pointing in the right direction. Meanwhile, the Westminster Government has been flip-flopping for some time – perhaps mainly about how to maximise their votes in a forthcoming election which they are again probably doomed to lose in Scotland.

Dr Paul Brna

Warrender Court

North Berwick

Council views

Congratulations to those organising the Zoom meeting of the North Berwick Local Place Plan Discussion Session 4. The aim of such meetings is to help the residents to think about how they would like to find North Berwick in the future. I recommend attendance at any further meetings for those wishing to express their views.

One topic that emerged was how democratic is the council.

I believe council members are voting without enough detailed knowledge of a problem or sometimes without any knowledge. The council is not paying enough attention to the views of residents.

Parking proposals in North Berwick are a good example. One councillor (living, it seemed, in a street wide enough for resident parking outside her property) was even quoted in the Courier as saying she did not know that there was such a problem!

The population of North Berwick is approximately 8,000, yet the council rejected a petition of 4,000 residents against the council’s proposals on the pretext that it counted as only one vote! If what I suggest below had been put into practice, some councillors might very well have changed their vote.

Some time before a vote on a really important proposal is taken, perhaps each councillor should give a brief statement of his or her view on the matter with the reason for it. These statements could be published in the Courier. This would give constituents time to contact a councillor online or in one of his or her surgeries to express approval, disapproval and why.

Another snag not thought of is the narrowing of the east entrance to the High Street and changing the angle of approach for all vehicles, especially HGVs.

This will make the already broad pavement on the right even wider, and the already dangerously narrow pavement on the left even more dangerous, as often pedestrians have to step onto the road with backs to traffic cornering at speed from the end of Quality Street.

It has seemingly been calculated that the hugely long and wide HGVs will be able to manage the curve and not crash into the shops on the corner, or overhang the narrow pavement and endanger pedestrians on the pavement. Market Street exit to High Street currently has a problem from HGVs caused by angle and overhang onto pavement, forcing pedestrians to avoid that pavement and therefore affecting the business of the shops at that side. Who calculated? What trials were made? Who is confident? Are you as a resident?

Morna Mulgray

Melbourne Place

North Berwick

Town ‘a midden’

I lived in Musselburgh 45 years ago and thought it was a clean town with a busy High Street. I moved to the Borders and have now come back to the Honest Toun to retire but feel really disappointed with it. It is filthy.

We are trying to give up using the car and taking public transport but the bus stops are full of graffiti and smashed windows.

And while walking to the bus stop, I passed the bus garage, where the ashtray on the wall is exploding with cigarette butts falling out of it.

Does no one else see this?

Also, if a cafe has tables and chairs outside, surely it is responsible for keeping that area clean?

I feel really disappointed by the cleanliness of the main street.

Does no one care anymore about where they live?

This is a beautiful town and we are letting it turn into a midden.

Name and address supplied

Save our skyline

Lammermuir SOS is a group of people who live within 10 kilometres of Newlands Hill, a point in the Lammermuirs to the immediate south of Gifford. The SOS stands for Save our Skyline but, of course, it also stands for Save our Souls, symbolically giving a voice to how collectively distressed we feel about the fate of our East Lothian environment jewel, the Lammermuirs.

All of us are in favour of sensible measures to transition away from fossil fuels to ‘greener’ energy, but not the headlong rush to achieve net zero.

For a long time, we have been worried about the lack of the ‘helicopter’ view. Where is the objectively based strategy for Scotland/UK’s green and sustainable energy future? How is it that the huge Berwick Bank offshore project to provide green energy for six million homes will benefit England, not Scotland?

How is it that Scotland is in line to produce 39GW of wind energy when we only need 9GW, the balance going to England?

How is it that across the Scottish Border, whilst Northumberland is devoid of turbines, here in East Lothian we already have 257 operating turbines? Add on 27 consented but not yet operational and 32 (including Newlands Hill) in the ‘scoping’ (exploratory) process – that is a potential total of over 300 and counting.

Lammermuir SOS has been going since Christmas 2022. We started with a few letters to the Courier but we have been galvanised into action since November 30, 2023, when Belltown Power finally published their planning application for Newlands Hill. It comprises 17 turbines up to about 200 metres high and a battery storage unit.

For many reasons, we are against this proposal to site these huge turbines on the top of the Lammermuir skyline where they will be seen from up to 50 miles away. There are a host of other reasons, which is why we have launched our campaign to make everyone in East Lothian aware of the potential impact of this planning application, if it is granted consent.

We have leafleted 8,000 homes outlining the consequences of a successful planning application and emphasising the importance of lodging an objection.

We held a meeting in Gifford Village Hall on March 6. We invited both Belltown Power and the landowners to join us, but without success. We assembled an informed collection of speakers who are understanding of local concerns over the construction of an 18.5km access route and the significant harm to our natural environment.

Andrew Hamilton

Orchard House

Gifford

Ceasefire vote

Well done Councillor Shona McIntosh (Greens) and Councillor Lee-Anne Menzies (SNP) for submitting a motion to the Council for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and well done to all our councillors who supported the amended motion.

I would urge Labour members to reconsider their position to a public sector boycott of companies linked to Israel and for them to also reconsider the reinstatement of UN relief agency funding, as the withdrawal of this funding is contributing to the starvation of innocent children, women and men, and is a form of collective punishment.

The starvation of the population in Gaza is a deliberate tactic by the Israeli state. It is against international law and an act of genocide.

Contrary to the understanding and humanity our councillors have shown, we have a UK Prime Minister who addressed the nation, stating that demonstrations in support of Palestine were a threat to democracy and they were attended by terrorist sympathisers and the police had to crack down on them.

My wife and I have attended almost all demonstrations held in Edinburgh since October and they have all been peaceful. There have been no arrests for violence or antisemitic speech. At almost every demonstration, we have had a Jewish speaker speaking out against the actions of Israel. The two main issues they try to get across is ‘not in my name’ and they take great pains to explain the difference between criticising Israel and Zionism, and antisemitism. It is okay to criticise Israel and Zionism, they are not the same as Judaism.

If Rishi Sunak the Prime Minister is looking for terrorist genocide sympathisers, he should look in the mirror, or across the House of Commons to the leader of the opposition Keir Starmer, or look at all the Labour and Tory MPs who have sat on their hands and refused to call for an immediate ceasefire.

The terrorist genocide sympathisers are not outside Parliament, they are sitting in Parliament.

Shame on these politicians. Free Palestine.

Colin and Louise McFarlane

Weatherly Farmhouse

Innerwick

Waste of money

Here we go again, our beloved council trying to justify their existence by wasting money on a cycle path on the A199 which is not needed, as there is a path which no one uses already in existence.

Is this the usual ‘spend our budget on anything before April or we lose it’? Probably. Well, you would be better spending the money on potholes and roads such as the Coal Road in Longniddry, which is in an awful state.

This is a typical council case of ‘we employ road planners, therefore they must have money to spend or we lose them or our budget’. If it’s not needed, don’t spend it. It is not a race to waste money.

John Darlington

Longniddry

‘Seen it before’

Seventy years ago, the headline in a national newspaper read: “Storm cuts radio, towns are blacked out. Winds and torrential rain smashed houses, cancelled air and ferry services. Roads were blocked and telephone cables uprooted.”

The date was January 16, 1954.

We have seen it all before.

Similarly, the annual rainfall on the north side of the A1 in East Lothian has averaged 25 inches per year for 25 years with never more than a five per cent annual variation. So we are not getting wetter!

Your readers might like to read a book entitled Green Murder written by Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist – or Google him to hear the alternative view on climate change, the IPCC etc.

Plimer claims that we have seen it all before.

Worth a thought?

Keith Chalmers-Watson

Fenton Barns

Gaza pressure

Jack Fraser (letters, March 7) seems to be blinded by the Parliamentary cant and hypocrisy of the House of Commons when it comes to the Starmer Labour Party and the procedural points of government, and cannot see the mass anti-capitalist movement forcing the crisis in Parliament.

George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election, reflecting a rejection of all the establishment political parties.

Tories, the Liberal Democrats, and Labour – whose ‘disowned’ candidate Azhar Ali still appeared at the top of the ballot paper as Labour, next to the rose emblem – mustered just 26.7 per cent between them; Labour received over 50 per cent of the vote there in the 2019 General Election under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

Sunak’s impromptu public address on March 1 shows the capitalist class is shaken by the result.

But Sunak’s attempts to whip up racism and division in response will only make it worse for the bosses and the Tories.

However, the shambolic end to the parliamentary debate on Gaza on February 21 reflected the pressure being felt from the anti-war movement on the Tories and Labour, and the widespread anger at their refusal to call for a ceasefire.

The continued weekly anti-war demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands of marchers nationwide every week, means that Parliament’s bending to the anti-war mood in society needs to be noted and responded to by forcing them much further, through stepping up anti-war protests and other class actions, including strikes.

Today’s thoroughly pro-capitalist Labour Party, Blairism mark two, is showing its right-wing political character on the issue of the Gaza war, as on all other issues.

But this doesn’t mean its elected representatives are immune from the views of those who elected them, which is the underlying cause of Labour’s internal divisions regarding the war.

In reality, Speaker Hoyle was well aware that Labour is likely to form the next government, with the Tories in massive disarray and widely hated, and no doubt he saw it as in the interests of the capitalist establishment and Parliament to help Labour’s leaders avoid the setback of a major Labour division.

As an active socialist who has attended 95 per cent of the Edinburgh Palestinian demonstrations advocating a socialist solution to the Gaza war, I am campaigning for a trade union-based workers’ list of candidates to be put forward in the coming General Election, with the aim of a bloc of MPs being elected, including Corbyn and Galloway, who would mark a complete departure from the rottenness of pro-capitalist politics – a bloc that would genuinely represent the views of those who elect them, standing firm on representing workers’ interests, and leading to the creation of an independent workers’ party.

Jimmy Haddow

Socialist Party Scotland

Carlaverock Avenue

Tranent