lE'lTERS
A private function
Stan Baker (writing on water privatisation, The List 186), can be more optimistic about the future of Scottish Water. He says ‘non-payment ofwater bills is a very different proposition to non-payment ofthe poll tax.’
No it is not.
One and a half million people have already refused to pay their water bills because they are currently combined with the poll tax. There have been no cut-offs because cutting off your water is illegal in
Does anyone out there like mutilating little animals for science? Or channel hopping to watch the Booker Prize Late Show Special for that matter?
If so, fire off a letter to The List, why don’t you? There’s a bottle of Jose Cuervo’s favourite Gold
Tequila says you can’t write the best letter next issue.
Marr, in The Battlefor Scotland,
Scotland (You and Y0W5~ Radio 4s 5 ; (The List 186) should be so offended
Oct 1992).
Investing in water will be like investing in the poll tax. Scotland has learned its lesson and is equipped and defended for a fight against the theft of her water.
O. Brookes
Scienes
Edinburgh.
Thanksfor the information ‘0 '.
You ’ll be happy to know that two public meetings are planned in Edinburgh in the nearfuture. See the Open Page for details.
Trading places
I refer to the letter in issue 186 by Stan Baker. Glasgow. I feel it is vital that people realise that the campaign against water privatisation is on now!‘ As S. Baker says. once the meters
are in, it is too late and a non-payment campaign would not work as the private company would simply cut offthe water.
We must ensure that the natural Tory supporter. the small business person, is aware of the potential cost. Hoteliers, B&B owners. fishmongers, hairdressers. pub owners etc will be the hardest hit. Then the Tories might listen! . . . mind you. there’s more chance of the Queen volunteering to pay tax . . . sly old fox that she is.
Peter Hastie Clermiston Road Edinburgh
Defence of the realm
I find it a little ironic that Andrew
at the thought that Tory politicians
i believe the Scots like being governed
by Westminster.
Do we not meekly accept ridiculous, oppressive and destructive English systems of ‘justice’, taxation, ‘education’, land ownership and parking fines? Are we not looking forward to employing a few more thousand people to look after yet another Trident submarine? Do we not eat fish from legally-poisoned waters? Are not ‘travellers’ hassled as official policy, in the same way that Jews, blacks, Indians, hippies have been in other times and places? — not to mention the Irish and Highland Scots. Are we not watched by little photographic eyes on top of traffic lights? (Look for them!).
Och weel, it’s only three months to Burns Nicht, and we can still legally drink too much whisky and sing Scots Wha Hae . . .
Iain Oughtred Lasswade Edinburgh.
Noises 0"
‘Has Douglas Adams burned all his towels?‘ asks Philip Parr in his interview with the Hitch Hiker author (The List 186). who is promoting the fifth and. so we are told. final instalment of the trilogy. ‘Oh no, not again.‘ I hear a bowl of
petunias mumble in the background.
It is an interesting and little known fact that Adams dreamed up the I whole idea of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy while in an ‘illegal frame of mind‘. lying on his
back in a Swiss ditch looking at the Milky Way. Ifthe most entertaining, poignant, witty or symbolic job he can think of for his dispossessed Earthman, Dent Arthur Dent, is that ofSandwich-maker then it is obviously time for him to find his towel and take it back to the Alps. Adams has not burned his towel, if he had. he would still know where it is. No, from the excerpt quoted he is but a pastiche of his former self and has quite obviously grown up and thrown it in completely. Mine’s a pan-galactic- gargleblaster! Jeff Falkner Kerrycroy Avenue Glasgow
You'll have to settlefor a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila, Jeff. Just toddle up to our Glasgow office, turn left at the bug-blatter beast of Trall, andfollow thesign saying ‘beware of the leopard '.
, Heart of the matter
Like your correspondent Ann Douglas (The List 186) I find bleeding heart vegetarians a total waste ofspace. So I was pleased to read Catherine Fellows' excellent piece in the same issue on bringing vegetarian dishes into the
Continental European cuisine.
It made me want to visit both the restaurants she mentioned. I was also very interested to read inventive
ideas about using binding agents and alcohol. This is the way vegetarians should be putting forward our case: discussing our way of eating, attracting the carnivore with tasty morsels of good writing and not emotionally blackmailing them with arrogant rhetoric.
Susan Blair
Chancellor Street
Glasgow.
Nothing but the best
I could not help but notice in the recent edition of ‘The List’, that Tom Lappin arrived in Scotland as a student. While this scenario remains an increasingly popular means of access into our country by English people who later settle here, it is telling of his innate ethnic arrogance that he has the audacity to interpret the output of television for a Central Scotland audience. Has his appreciation of our complex cultural mores developed so much since he first unsuccessfully sought ‘Chas ‘n‘ Dave’s Old Tyme Cockney Music Hall’?
Wouldn’t it be so much more appropriate to do a similar job in his own country?
Thomas Moore
Cultural Sub-committee
National Security Department Specified Aliens Section
Siol nan Gaidheal
Aller Place
Livingston.
The best writers appear in The List, Thomas. Your ethnically pure ‘Utopia’ is racist tosh.
Post Script
Address your letters to: The List Letters at:
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 lTE.
20f
Old Athenacum Theatre.
179 Buchanan Street.
Glasgow G1 212.
Of
Fax them to: 031 557 8500.
We will not print yourfull address or phone number, butyou must include them. Deadline is the Friday before publication. Keep them pithy, as long letters may be cut. The best letter next issue will win a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila.
NEXT ISSUE OUT THURSDAY 5 NOVEMBER
Simply Killed: Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her Simply Tltrilled: Postcard Records return twelve years on Simply Down/till: Muriel swaps Munros for The Snow Show
Also appearing in the new Democratic term of office List: Hal Hartley, Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Fry (honest), John Cale, Neil Jordan and Adam Faith is Alfie, (What's it all about?)
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80 The List 23 October — 5 November 1992
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