Like many of your East Lothian readers, I reckon, my existing suspicions
were confirmed by your report that the number of new homes being registered
in the Garden County is considerably higher than the UK constituency
average (Courier, 2.9.21), currently by about two and a half times.
It is quite clear that the provision of infrastructure and services has
not matched this exponential rise in housebuilding in the county, as
implied by Messrs MacAskill and McLennan in your report. I think this
aspect needs much greater emphasis. It is already proving problematic in terms
of new residents seeking to register with GP surgeries, for example, and
the increased traffic on county roads is quite noticeable, to say
nothing of the ever lengthening traffic queues on the streets of Haddington.
Our main through route, the A1, is already busier than ever, and who
knows what it will be like when the new town at Blindwells comes on
stream. You only have to look at the inability of the Edinburgh City
Bypass to cope with traffic at peak times to see what the future might
hold for us in East Lothian.
I'm sure we all hope that the county will continue to be an attractive
place to live, but without proper planning and resourcing in support of
the myriad new housing developments this may prove to be a forlorn hope.
The Council planning committee and officials need to take heed and up
their respective games here.
East Lothian Council is introducing some changes to your recycling collection later this year.
The first big change is a move to weekly collections. It is intended that from 20th September 2021 recyclable material will be collected from households on a weekly basis with all materials collected on the same day. This refreshed recycling service is designed to help us all recycle more than ever before. The more frequent collections mean that you might not need to use as many boxes (unlikely).
The recently published Elections Bill in the UK Parliament is an attempt to rig our electoral system to favour the Conservative & Unionist Party. It will makes changes to the administration and conduct of elections with the stated aim of ensuring that 'UK elections remain secure, fair, modern, inclusive and transparent.' How this will impact elections in Scotland is unclear. But given this dysfunctional, discredited, bunch of people led by the great discombobulator anything can happen.
There is a lot of talk these days from people advocating we should be trying to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions as soon as possible to stop the planet heating up even further. However most of this is greenwash, it's meaningless or deception, it's a global con being used by fossil fuel industries to continue doing what they are doing. What we should be talking about is Zero Carbon, or as close to it as we can get.
