'Edinburgh should not forget the dangers we now face from global warming' - Reader's Letter

In the midst of the COP 26 fever now rising in Glasgow, here in Edinburgh we should not forget the dangers we now face from global warming causing rising sea levels, storm surge and flooding, especially as the Greenland ice sheet continues to melt.
Heavy rainfall  has shown up the city’s inadequate sewer systemHeavy rainfall  has shown up the city’s inadequate sewer system
Heavy rainfall  has shown up the city’s inadequate sewer system

No actions appear to have been undertaken to protect the Forth Estuary, despite the fact sea levels are seen to be rising. There are many vulnerable low lying areas along the Forth, not forgetting the food warehouses and industrial hub at Grangemouth which employs over 50,000 people.

Recent heavy rainfall has also shown the sewerage run-off and flooding measures in and around Edinburgh miserably unable to cope, exposing antiquated systems designed for very different times.

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Not only does our capital city deserve better. We need a Scotland-wide strategy to protect our critical installations and expedite the design, planning and finance needed to build a robust new flood prevention infrastructure. This should provide an integrated flood and sewerage defence plan to offset the massive and continuous Arctic ice melt now in progress.

The Dutch have provided flood defences and sea walls at Rotterdam in the belief that there is now an unstoppable seven metre rise in sea level rise as global warming proceeds apace. Nothing has happened to gainsay this belief.

Having had the UN COP 26 meeting on global warming hosted in Scotland, the Scottish Government now needs to put words into action to alleviate its consequences before it is too late.

Elizabeth Marshall, Edinburgh

Neoliberal failure

A letter written by 30 of the UK's richest people earlier this week shows us how decency is trying to break through the stranglehold which neoliberal theorists and big financial interests have achieved in modern UK society. Gemma McGough, technology entrepreneur, said: “This is an attempt to shake the chancellor by the fiscal shoulders and wake him up.” These people are begging to be taxed more so that the burden of recovery does not continue to fall on the low paid.

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The thin blue line is stretched to breaking point - Readers' Letters
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The letter was a kick in the teeth to our so-charming chancellor as he delivered his Budget. But it is also a letter which surely attempts to shake the electorate by the fiscal shoulders and tries to wake voters up. My ancestors were fishermen who watched for the dangerous waves and oriented their little boats so they could float above them. They were concerned with tangible dangers. The dangers I see are that the hard-working lower paid will be impoverished over the next few years, and that only lip service will be paid to averting environmental catastrophe. The reason for this purblindness is that neoliberal views from the time of Thatcher and Reagan have shaped a disturbing politics. The weakness in neoliberalism is it's total lack of interest in morality.

We, the electorate, have to want a more ethical politics to emerge if we are to avoid ongoing decline. A government linked to dodgy financial interests and steeped in neoliberalism can't show us a better future.

Andrew Vass, Edinburgh

Halloween irony

Every year some Christian parents ask for their child to be excluded from school Halloween events. Rather than dressing up as ghosts and skeletons, maybe they’d prefer that their children knelt in front of images of a naked tortured man nailed to a cross?

Halloween is based on the pagan religious festival of Samhain and Scottish schools are still statutorily obliged to hold religious observance throughout the year. Do these sensitive Bible-fearing parents get the irony?

Neil Barber, Edinburgh Secular Society

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