SIR, – Doonies Farm, just outside Aberdeen, is a nationally recognised breeding centre for native livestock species threatened with extinction and thus plays an important role in the preservation of our agricultural heritage.
Within easy reach of the city centre, Doonies provides an easily-accessed, educational and agricultural environment which stimulates interest among children and adults.
It provides an important tourist attraction, as other similar farms do across the UK, although some development of this is warranted.
Aberdeen City Council should be more positive about this asset and develop it for the benefit of the local community and visitors alike, not close it.
Ian Stewart,
East Aquhorthies,
Inverurie.
SIR, – Aberdeen City Council has passed budget cuts which will remove much-needed services such as day centres for people with special abilities. The council wants to cut and even close sports centres and to close Doonies Farm.
School closures are proposed – including Victoria Road School, which is in an area with a growing population of young families. Last year, a green field in the Torry area was sold for the stated purpose of improving sports facilities for the Victoria Road children.
All across Aberdeen, people are protesting at these severe cuts, cuts which should not be needed. The social impact on children, the elderly and people with special abilities is devastating.
Nowhere does the council propose cutting down its extremely large number of managers. The council also has hundreds of thousands of pounds in uncollected rents, council tax and parking violations – the collection of even a fraction of which could save much-needed social programmes.
It is clear that the calculations for the new council premises at Marischal College have gone way over budget by millions. Who is responsible for the waste? Who has recommended getting rid of much-needed services and centres?
An online petition has been started at www.ipetitions.com/petition/ aberdeenbudget. I would urge anyone unhappy with the council’s budget cuts to visit this website and consider signing the petition.
Suzanne Kelly,
Victoria Road,
Aberdeen.
SIR, – With reference to the current debate regarding MPs’ allowances and expenses, the press seem to be concentrating on some of the current MPs. But let’s stop and think: these allowances have presumably been granted to MPs in the past, so how much have the public contributed in taxes to this aspect of MPs’ salaries over the past 50 years?
I imagine it would be a lot more than the few thousand pounds which is the target of the current investigation. What about the public getting a refund of some of this money in the form of a tax rebate?
If not a refund, what about a reduction in tax? Where could we start, I hear you call? Let’s see, oh yes, tax on fuel. The big, bad oil companies are making profits hand over fist, of course, but who makes the bigger profit from oil? Why, surprise, surprise, the government. It has no exploration, manufacturing or distribution costs, and is quick enough to criticise the oil companies when they put the price of oil up by a couple of pence a litre.
Inevitably, tax goes up as well: 70% of the price of a litre of petrol/diesel is tax and, as all normal people know, but politicians seem to fail to grasp, when fuel prices go up, the price of everything else goes up.
So, reduce the price of fuel by 30p a litre, to a level which will not cripple the average motorist, give some relief to transport firms, hopefully help to reduce electricity prices, and give us all back some of these extra pounds we contribute on the never-ending “tax-go-round”.
I can but dream.
Brian Young,
39 Leslie Crescent,
Alford.
SIR, – Allow me to make it clear to your readers that one of the many heinous aspects of the “supporting people” tax on the self-funding elderly is that it varies between one sheltered housing complex and another.
I pay £68.16 every four weeks in “supporting people” charges to Aberdeenshire Council. For this, I receive two things – a call every weekday morning from the manageress to ascertain that I am alive and have no immediate medical emergency, and the use of alarm pulls in my flat.
I went to a meeting about this matter which was attended by a representative of the council. When I protested that the payment for these services seemed excessive, I was told to regard it as “a kind of insurance” against needing further services at a future date.
This is an expensive policy, especially as the list of services potentially available includes none that I could ever conceive of wanting (help with household equipment, filling up forms, dealing with authorities), unless I had become totally incapable, in which case I would presumably no longer be a tenant in sheltered housing.
Thank you for the attention you have drawn to this matter already. Democracy is a letter to the editor.
Jean Hood,
11 Doune Court,
Church Street, Macduff.
SIR, – Pakistan blocked an internet programme recently because the government judged it to be against the country’s interests.
In stopping reception in Pakistan, they inadvertently stopped reception worldwide. Well done.
I am inclined to the view that the internet does more harm than good and we would be better off without it.
It must be over a year ago that the Press and Journal reported a professor’s prediction that, in the future, humans would be completely controlled by technology. The Pakistani action shows that this need not be so. Isn’t it time that there was more international control of the internet? Its harmful activities range from tasteless intrusion of privacy to the spreading of vicious ideas.
Andrew Marshall,
31 Inchard Place,
Kinlochbervie.