Water-powered cars is nothing new and something to revisit (2016)

The concept of water powered vehicles is not new. Indeed, we need to look no further than Scotland for the brains to achieve this. Many years ago I was in touch with an inventor in Motherwell who said to me that he had developed a water-powered car which ran on tap water. My immediate reaction was one of scepticism and disbelief. He invited me to Motherwell to see his invention in action. What he had done was modify an existing petrol engine to run on normal tap water. I watched him pouring water into the fuel tank, and starting the car. So far, so good. The car started without any problem and ticked over as normal. He took me for a spin in the car and there was no apparent difference in performance from using water as a fuel, as opposed to petrol. When we returned to the car park, he asked me to taste the water dripping out of the exhaust pipe (as no noxious gases were emitted from running the car on water). Reluctantly, I tasted the water from the exhaust pipe and it tasted like normal tap water.

That test run in a car where the petrol engine had been modified to run on water was over 20 years ago, and I`m sure that water-powered car technology has advanced since then. The technology and expertise exists in Scotland to produce vehicles which run on water.

So, what happened to this great Scottish achievement you may well ask. The inventor sold to a large oil major who purchased the rights to the modified water-powered engine and the engine disappeared off the grid. The oil companies will do everything in their power to `bury` the engines that run on water, until every drop of hydrocarbons have been exhausted. They are quite prepared to destroy the environment and pollute with carcinogenic-producing exhaust fumes, in the name of greed and profit. The planet and the public are merely collateral damage on the corporate altar of money.

I am 100 per cent behind McLelland`s suggestion that Scotland should be leading the world in the development of water-powered cars. I have seen a water-powered car with my own eyes and travelled in one. Electric and water powered cars could be developed and operate in parallel. If we must exploit hydrocarbons, then a significant proportion of the revenues should be invested in developing water powered vehicles. It will be a long transitional conversion from petrol/diesel to water powered vehicles, and it would be naïve to believe we can fight the oil majors into submission overnight.

The Scottish Government should establish a Working Party to examine the possibility of establishing research, development and production of water powered vehicles in Scotland, using indigenous expertise and technology in universities, private inventors/entrepreneurs, etc. In addition, collaboration with Nanoflowcell AG and other companies, scientists, and technologists internationally, working in the area of water powered vehicles, should be explored. It may be that the Scottish Government could establish a nationalised company, joint venture, etc., to develop and produce water powered vehicles as part of Scotland`s overall renewables strategy. To continue with the current polluted, environment and health endangering status quo, is not an option. If we don`t take the bull by the horns on this issue, then the bull will take planet earth by the horns, and it won`t be a pretty sight.

William C McLaughlin Biggar

KEIZA Dugdale’s call for a new Act of Union is the latest attempt by the Scottish Branch manager to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Labour have been the main saboteurs of Scottish home rule. A memo written by a senior civil servant in the Scottish Office in the 1970’s argued the discovery of oil meant an independent Scotland would be the “Kuwait of the North”.

It continued an independent Scotland would have the strongest currency in Europe behind Switzerland. The New nation would have been massively in surplus and living standard’s would have shot up. The report was buried by the then Labour government when it emerged in 2005 Alistair Darling dismissed it as old news.

Dennis Healy admitted in 2013 that Labour in the 70’s had a deliberate policy to underestimate the value of North Sea oil to undermine support for independence.

In 1978 George Cunningham with the support of many Scottish Labour MP’s tabled an amendment to the devolution referendum in 1979. The so-called 40 per cent rule (meaning that 40 percent of the registered electorate had to vote for an Assembly in order for it to pass) this effectively killed off devolution.

The Labour says no campaign took Tory money to campaign against devolution. Many unionists grandees were wheeled out to promise ‘something better” of Scots rejected devolution. What Scotland got was Mrs Thatcher’s ruthless privatisation and deindustrialisation. This lead to 250, 000 jobs being lost.

The pattern of Tory-funded Labour fronted campaigns continued at the 2014 referendum. Tory Lord Strathclyde complained that they gave too much say over Better Together claiming “we paid for it that ran it and not in an inspirational way”. Calls for federalism or devomax are part of the Labour campaign to ensure Tory rule continues in Scotland.

This is being done to ensure Labour members and donors can still sit in the Lords.

Alan Hinnrichs Dundee

It comes as no surprise that Labour are now calling for yet another constitutional convention, it’s their usual call whenever they feel they are being left behind. As Scotland’s third party there is even less chance that Scots will fall for this latest call from Labour, after all weren’t we promised by Gordon Brown that a No vote in 2014 would provide us with federalism within 2 years!

Cllr Kenny MacLaren Paisley

TRUE to his misguided loyalty to a Labour Party that no longer represents the ‘home rule spirit’ of its founders, Dr Scott Arthur (Letters, The National, December 7) seizes the first apparent opportunity that arises, since Labour’s proposals to pay for a myriad of wishes by raising income tax were resoundingly rejected by the electorate, to lambast the object of his fixation, the SNP. Most of the electorate are only too aware that a Labour government would be unlikely to resist the temptation to raise taxes even further given their persistent track record of economic incompetence and are also aware that the SNP has had to be rigorous on higher education spending due to the adverse economic situation across the whole of the UK.

Of course, in spite of what one might think on reading Dr Scott’s letter, the reduced number of available college places to which the Labour Party continue to make reference has nothing to do with the PISA statistics on the performance of 15-year-olds in science, reading and mathematics. Certainly there is cause for concern in that through the period of the adoption of Curriculum-for-Excellence, which had broad cross-party support, Scotland has slipped relative to England in this single set of league tables. However, with the SNP’s overall commitment to education and with education in the capable hands of John Swinney I expect that the next set of PISA figures in three years will show Scotland returning to the higher rankings in these tables, even if at that time self-determination has yet to be realised.

Stan Grodynski Longniddry, East Lothian