CHARLIE WHELAN: The Spey is dying a slow death because of all the water being extracted
Can someone please tell Moray Council that Scottish wild Salmon are an endangered species before they give the go ahead to the latest greenwashing scheme in the region.
In the final quarter of this year they will have the chance to block plans to extract even more water from the iconic River Spey in a scheme shamefully supported by Speyside distilleries.
Speyside Hydrogen want to set up a plant in Ballindalloch to provide so called ‘green’ energy primarily for the distillers.
What they fail to say about the production of hydrogen power is that it needs water and lots of it.
And where do you think the water will come from? Yes you’ve guessed it, the river.
It takes 20kgs of water to produce 1kg of hydrogen and of course not all the water is recovered.
The extraction of water from the Spey is already at dangerous levels.
The vast majority is of course from the Spey dam that will need to be removed if the River has any chance of returning to its former glory.
For the whisky distilleries that already extract water from the Spey to consider taking more is reckless.
They need a healthy river as much as everyone else does.
This ill-thought out scheme is seen as a key element in the Scottish Whisky Associations pathway to net zero.
It is taking the same irresponsible attitude to the environment as companies like BrewDog who abandoned its pledge to be a carbon-negative company after it emerged that half the trees it planted on the local Kinrara estate died and couldn’t be used for the dodgy carbon credit scheme.
These carbon credit projects are the most obvious example of using the Scottish Highlands for greenwashing.
Speyside Hydrogen is another and it’s time to put a stop to them all.
• I spent the past month watching the football from Germany and pushing leaflets through people doors in support of the Scottish Labour Party.
I was delighted with the result of the General Election which thankfully saw nationalism take a mighty crash.
Unfortunately we also saw Scotland yet again failing at a football tournament and England losing yet another final.
I was in regular contact with the Highland Tartan Army through my old pal Don Lawson who organised a charter plane from Inverness to take the foot soldiers to Munich.
He tells me that this was his last trip and who can blame him?
It was back to the football last week as I took a trip down to Edinburgh to see my team Tottenham Hotspur take on Hearts.
I met up with a pal’s son who is Scottish but supports Spurs!
I asked him if he supports the Scottish football team which he most certainly does but was prepared to admit that he supported England once Scotland were on the plane home.
I guess he’s like a lot of young Scottish lads who watch English premier teams who don’t have the same attitude to the English as the ghastly SNP newspaper ‘The National.’
This carried an overtly racist attack on England which I suppose they thought was funny - it wasn’t.
They may learn from their thumping defeat in the election that this sort of narrow Nationalism is not welcomed by the vast majority of Scots.
It is especially unwelcome to youngsters between 16 and 18 to whom the SNP gave the vote but overwhelmingly voted to stay part of the United Kingdom in the referendum.
At least we won’t have to hear the ‘R’ word mentioned again in my lifetime!
Charlie Whelan (Labour) was one time spokesman for Gordon Brown
