YOUR VIEWS: Transparency plea over renewables plans, support for LGBT group and the benefit of trusted news platforms
Call to support energy motion
We write to express our unwavering support for Councillor Helen Crawford’s motion for fairness and transparency regarding the surge of invasive industrialisation sweeping through our beloved Highlands.
This motion, which will now be debated on Monday, addresses the pressing need to assess the cumulative impact that wind farms, pylons, and battery storage facilities are having on our landscapes and communities.
Action groups across the Highlands stand in full solidarity with Councillor Crawford’s call for transparency and accountability. Many community councils have also pledged their support for this important motion, recognising the need for a thorough examination of how these developments are affecting our land, people, our environment, and our way of life.
Disappointingly, one community council between Latheron and Helmsdale has chosen to remain neutral, raising critical questions about where their loyalties lie. Is it politics and profit that take precedence over the communities they are meant to serve? This neutrality feels like a betrayal of the very people who depend on their representation.
We ask whether their decision not to support this motion should have been put to a ballot within the community itself. Shouldn't the voices of local residents matter more than political calculations? We urge all community councils across the Highlands to step off the fence and stand with the people, supporting this call for fairness and truth.
Councillor Crawford’s motion includes several vital points, aimed at ensuring transparency, public access to information, and real community involvement in the planning process – including online mapping of applications, opposing ‘salami-slicing’ by developers, planning training for community councils and a review of Highland Council’s role in planning.
We call on all Highland councillors and community councils to show leadership and back this motion. It is a motion for transparency, truth, and the protection of our communities.
These industrial developments are transforming the very nature of the Highlands, and our people deserve to know the full picture.
The Dunbeath/Berriedale Community Say NO to PYLONS Action Group
Well done to LGBTQ group
The founding of a group for LGBTQ+ young people in Wick is to be greatly commended.
More years ago than I care to remember I used to work with LGBT Youth Scotland in Dumfries when I was a youth worker for Dumfries and Galloway Council.
The bravery shown by LGBTQ young people is inspirational and we could learn a lot from them about compassion and justice and equality for all.
Well done to everyone at Stepping Out.
Rev John Nugent
Argyle Square
Wick
The voice of Caithness
Many people these days receive their weekly local news online, looking at a screen, or some may actually go to the shop and buy a local paper.
However, visually impaired people in Caithness have a further option which is to hear the local news via the Caithness Talking News.
Caithness Talking News (CTN) is a free service available to visually impaired members of the public in the Caithness community and also further afield. CTN was established by Jessan Mackay of Castletown, who became blind in the early 1980s, over 40 years ago. CTN has no regular income and relies on donations and bequests to keep it running.
It is run entirely by volunteers who work on a seven-week rota. Each Wednesday a volunteer reads and records parts of the Caithness Courier onto a master cassette tape. The master tape is then passed to another volunteer to read and record the John O’Groat Journal on a Friday.
Following this, the completed tape is taken to, or collected by, a third volunteer who duplicates the master tape and posts the copies to our clients.
The reading and recording is done at the volunteers’ homes and the duplicating is carried out at the Royal British Legion Scotland’s premises at Mackenzie House, Coach Road, Wick.
The CTN tapes are currently sent to around 40 visually impaired clients and for many of our older listeners this is how they keep in contact with what is happening in Caithness.
New listeners who wish to be added to the list of the Caithness Talking News can contact the Sensory Centre in Wick on 01955 606170 or in Thurso on 01847 895636 and they in turn will contact CTN for you.
We urgently need more volunteers. In particular, we need volunteers to carry out the duplicating role in order to increase numbers in the team of three duplicators we currently have.
The duplicating, labelling and posting of the tapes involves around a couple of hours on a Friday. If you wish to become a duplicator we will show you how the equipment works and what is involved.
If any readers would like to offer their time as a CTN volunteer, we would greatly value a call or an email from them so we can tell them more about our service.
Jayne Blackburn
Secretary, Caithness Talking News
The Chimneys
Castletown
Email: jayne@blackburn8.plus.com
Phone: 01847 821042 / 07766 455619
Trusted news in your hands
This week the global news industry has been running a "Choose Truth" campaign, with over 100 countries, hundreds of news organisations, media associations, and individuals highlighting the importance of fact-based journalism.
It builds up to World News Day on Saturday, September 28, in which publishers and editors hope to encourage their audiences to continue supporting trusted newsbrands, like the one you are reading now.
In an increasingly fractured communications landscape and a breakneck pace of change which will only accelerate in the new era of artificial intelligence, the importance of, and need for, trusted, reliable information will only increase.
Of course, in such an intense and ever-changing environment, mistakes do happen. But through fast, fair and free regulation, like the Independent Press Standards Organisation and the Advertising Standards Authority, speedy recognition and resolution of problems ─ far quicker than the courts ─ is an essential part of a media ecosystem on which the public can rely.
More people derive information from social media than ever before, but not for nothing is it known as a communications Wild West because of overseas-owned platforms’ refusal to subject themselves to reasonable regulation.
But rather than an arid, sparsely populated plain, it is a jungle in which dangers are hard to spot in the dense undergrowth of misinformation.
We know many people access reliable news sources through social media, but all too often the platforms’ sudden, unannounced algorithm changes can cut off readers from trusted sources.
Social media platforms often claim to be facilitators of free expression, but on too many occasions they prove to be an inhibitor, with users often unreasonably blocked or banned altogether for reasons which are hard to fathom.
The only way through the thicket is with reliable news brands and we also know from independent research that consumers do come back to recognised news operations locally and nationally to verify information they may doubt.
But if those brands are no longer there, where will those people go? It is vital for the health of open, democratic societies that trusted brands with high visibility remain to help people through the social media jungle.
The news industry is nothing without its readers, listeners and viewers, and you can do your bit to make sure the John O’Groat Journal and Caithness Courier remain a trusted guide by continuing to read and subscribe.
John McLellan
Director
Newsbrands Scotland
Independence for all?
Nicola Sturgeon has recently been talking about the future. Scotland, Wales and a United Ireland will be enjoying a wonderful independent existence.
Like Southern Ireland today they will be enjoying a lifestyle supported by the EU. Like Southern Ireland they will not get involved in any military alliances that could involve them in international conflict. Leave that to the warmongers – England, France, Germany and Eastern European countries that have always been having wars. It’s their thing!
Well, recently there has been growing objection to Southern Ireland, living in assured peace. Freeloading on the countries that are contributing to the mutual protection of all, both in money and the willingness to forfeit the lives of their soldiers.
Southern Ireland has had a comfortable life in the EU until recently. All the evidence is that this is now coming to an end.
Talking of independence, I recommend a look at Wikipedia – “List of active separatist movements in Europe”. A short sample. “Faroe Islands from Denmark”. “Aland from Finland”. “Basque areas of France and Spain to unite as a separate state” .“Tiny Malta to split in two”. There is much, much more.
If the EU starts to extend membership to the resulting shrapnel it will eventually collapse. Success in a few cases will increase the fever of the rest of the mob.
John Campbell
Waitside
Castletown
• Letters of up to 300 words should be emailed to editor@nosn.co.uk. Please include your address and a daytime telephone number. Letters will be included at the editor’s discretion and may be edited.
