Sir, – On reading your article about Californian lawyers pursuing the owner of Shepherd’s Loch over the use of the term Hobbit hut, I had to check the date and no, it wasn’t April 1.
Tolkien may well have believed that he coined the word Hobbit to describe his imaginary vertically challenged underground creatures. He certainly popularised the term, but he wasn’t the first to use it by a very long way. Several centuries, in fact.
More recently, the skeletal remains of a tiny one-metre-tall female archaic human who roamed the earth about 12,000 years ago was found by a team of anthropologists in a cave in Flores, somewhere in Indonesia, who named her Homo floresiensis. Perhaps to get some attention for their find (and more funding for subsequent research?) they named her the Hobbit, so presumably Jamie’s pursuers will also be going after these opportunist anthropologists?
Another writer, Charles Dickens, popularised a similar phrase with Scrooge’s “Bah humbug”!
Perhaps from now on, Jamie’s Hobbit hut will be referred to by his staff as the “Humbug hut” in a tribute to the small-minded people who threatened him with legal action.
It is not known for certain that Homo floresiensis is a direct ancestor of all Hollywood lawyers, but in this case, cranial capacity seems to be a match.
William McLeod, Netherbrae, Turriff, Aberdeenshire.
Let election results do the talking
Sir, – Ann Bowes is a great example of diversion and would be worthy of the Russian foreign minister.
The elections in Scotland are “local” elections and judgments will be made on that basis. The fact that the Westminster government has piled vast amounts of money into Scotland over the last two years and has delivered a massive response to the Covid outbreak will not be lost on most voters.
Contrast that with the incompetence and ineptitude of the SNP administration who reduce to dust everything they touch.
The last paragraph sums up the typical lack of understanding of Scotland’s fiscal position. There would be no improvement in Scottish lives if we only had Scottish income.
Stewart Wight, Haddo, Aberdeenshire.
Unreliable renewables
Sir, – Every wind installation planning application includes a claim relating to the number of homes it could supply with electricity. Totting up all these claimed numbers suggests that all homes in the country, and more, should already be supplied by wind-generated electricity. This is not happening!
The national grid is still being supported by large quantities of electricity generated by nuclear and fossil fuel generators – currently at over 55% of demand as I write, with wind at 17%.
Could it be the basic flaw: namely one wind turbine and no wind equals zero electricity and 10,000 wind turbines and no wind also equals virtually zero electricity?
The assertion by the wind industry that the wind always blows somewhere is obviously misleading! Perhaps a better name for renewables would be unreliables?
GM Lindsay, Whinfield Gardens, Kinross.
Time to rethink rules on masks?
Sir, – Nicola Sturgeon has delayed the plan to relax the legal requirement to wear masks in certain settings because of, she says, “the current spike in case numbers”.
But doesn’t this spike suggest that masks haven’t been working?
Geoff Moore, Braeface Park, Alness.