l STRONGLY believe certain amenities such as power generation and water should be solely in the hands of the nation.The Government must also know that is so, yet it has made a somewhat idiotic decision to pass the master controls of proposed nuclear generation to China (“Premier’s reception at the inn defended as new contracts guarantee flow of £40bn into UK plc”, The Herald, October 22). Now he is desperate to defend his error behind a political firewall by saying the decision will create 25,000 jobs.
As someone who has worked on several nuclear power station construction projects, those are grossly exaggerated numbers. However, the building will create work, and to be perfectly realistic, exactly the same number of jobs would be created constructing UK-funded stations.
In these times of financial restraint, we have a situation where vast amounts of money are available for new railway systems that we all know will get from London to as far as Leeds then the plug will be pulled. Suggestions of starting at London and Edinburgh and working both ways have not been given time of day. So why not divert that same money and expenditure to building our own nuclear plants?
Given the choice if the between a UK-owned power industry giving us security of supply and safety, or the time it takes to drink a cup of tea knocked off the time on a train journey, I feel sure I know which decision most if us would make.
Colin Cookson,
37 Hatton Green, Stenton, Glenrothes.
IS signing up for a dependency on China wise? No, for we lose control of vital aspects that might be important in future, such as our nuclear power stations. We can neither be certain that these will be managed properly or even, in time of war, not be a fifth column in our midst.
In fact, the wise course is to retain a capacity for all basic industries, despite the extra cost, because the work can be bought elsewhere for less. In the recent past, this country gave up its dominance in aircraft, weapons, shipbuilding, cars and a host of inventions that once led the world plus our coal industry and others. The basis of our earning power was therefore eroded and the process continues with the loss of our steel industry. Henceforth we will have to buy our steel elsewhere, our aircraft, our weapons and so on.
The assumption behind all these changes is that the least price for which things can be made in the world controls what we can afford to make. Does it follow that we can sustain ourselves in safety by developing new industries? Even if we manage to replace the losses with new ones, our ultimate reliance on those we have lost could well result in a catastrophe.
What bedevilled our aircraft dominance was the cost of building and developing new planes we had designed. Huge American corporations were able to finance the costs (and reap the benefits). Hence the tie-up with France to build Concorde, an unsatisfactory marriage, that led to divorce.
If there really is no option but to depend on other countries, we must learn to choose them wisely, keep a careful eye upon all they do and manage our support throughout the world in case Armageddon beckons once more.
William Scott,
23 Argyle Place, Rothesay.
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