I was very surprised to read in Bill Magee's article (1 June 2022) that: 'Renewable energy currently accounts for almost 100% of Scotland's gross electricity consumption'. So I checked this statement out. As I suspected, it is not true (as with many other statements about Scotland's position by the SNP). Rather than repeat what I found, let me point you to Fullfact.
 
The problem is that, on very windy days, we export wind energy but on many other days, we have to import energy from England. This problem will exist for years until massive storage facilities exist.
 
You will note that Fullfact extracted an admission from the SNP that the statement by NS was untrue but that the document where the claim was made was not changed. Perhaps the Scottish Review might add a comment on this statement in the next issue?
 
The article also states that: 'Scotland is way up there when it comes to developments in clean tech, robotics, electric vehicles (EV), agile diagnostics, mental well-being and stem cell'. This again is a gross overstatement of the position. I am not aware of any aspect of EVs where Scotland can claim to have contributed and mental health here is terrible!
 
Donald McBride



As he crunches his cornflakes, Stuart Hannabuss (1 June 2022) finds the trite platitudes common 'in the advice manufactured and disseminated on an industrial scale by vendors of religious inexactitudes' of the God slot a 'dispiriting experience', and therefore affirms that it is time for the God slot to go.

I am reminded of an old film in which outside a closed church on a wet night one teenager said to another: 'If I were God, I'd sue!' Given – as Stuart Hannabuss accepts – that we are nominally a Christian country, the Christian faith is not a case of making up and giving good views. It is a case of offering good news of an additional dimension to life, for which there is evidence to be examined. 'Jesus loves me' is the simplest expression of the Christian faith which a three-year-old can understand and in which a thinking person can find authentic identity, yet the implications of it – that each person in the world is valuable – challenge global politicians, the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organisation.

Secularists are trying to remove the Christian faith from every aspect of public life including the media. Tolerance used to mean treating courteously those who have different views. The meaning is being changed. Modern society is being conditioned to assume that there is no such thing as objective truth: therefore no view can claim to be exclusively true, and anyone doing so is intolerant – the ultimate condemnation.

By trying to remove the Christian faith from the public arena, secularists are effectively censoring information and intolerantly imposing their worldview on others. An example of this was lawyers telling the European Court of Human Rights that, when faced with a clash between the requirements of their faith and their employment, Christians should 'leave their religious beliefs at home or move to another job'. The assumption that there is no such thing as objective truth automatically excludes the possibility of God, or His action in the world: but that is illogical because it is claiming for its assumption objective truth, which it says cannot exist.

Just as it is easier to draw a cartoon of some people more than others, it is very easy to caricature a Christian as, for example, a grey presbyterian hypocrite on a wet Sunday. The media has acclimatised society to use of the words 'God', 'Jesus' and 'Christ' in what the BBC calls a 'non-religious context', to such an extent that a teacher telling the Christmas narrative was accused by a pupil of swearing. By contrast, far from being dispiriting, the dynamic dimension 'Jesus loves me' warmly affirms the positive value of each person globally.

Whatever our view on the monarchy, this month it is appropriate to note the Queen's personal declaration that Jesus is the 'inspiration and anchor in my life... for me the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life'. This inspiring dimension of 'Jesus loves me' needs to be heard in the media, embodied in individuals and its implications made operational in the public arena.

Sandy Gunn



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