Is there no alternative?

Is there not another way of looking at savings in education other than rural school closures?

A few years ago I was made aware of the possibility of rural district heating schemes, using a combination of wind, solar, and biomass energy. Aith and Mid Yell were mooted as pilot projects.

Both leisure centres and schools I believe were planned to be included in these schemes, as well as domestic and business premises. 

Dual benefits would be considerable savings in both fuel costs and carbon emissions.

What do we have now? The dismal prospect of empty or under-used purpose-built properties in rural areas, while we are further than ever it seems, since the 1990s, from a new Anderson High School.

We have a Renewable Energy Strategy which seems to have embraced the Viking Windfarm at the expense of other more innovative and decentralised initiatives, and as the answer to all our economic problems.

The recent public statements from councillors about shedding staff as if they were an inconvenience rather than an asset worries me too.

I had hoped that this new council would bring more than one fresh pair of eyes to solving our problems, that its members might think ‘out of the box’.

No doubt there are some doing so, but what is coming across to the public appears to be a general acceptance of “the inevitable”, when other possibilities have either been discarded or been ignored.

James Mackenzie
The Lea
Tresta