It's time to turf vandals at the 'gate out of office

YESTERDAY I (and presumably the other 2000 objectors to the Caltongate affair) received a letter from dear old Edinburgh City Council informing me that the first phase of demolition work in the course of the Caltongate development had been approved, and will shortly commence.

My computer dictionary defines the word 'vandalism' as "deliberate, mischievous, or malicious destruction – or damage – of property" (particularly in regard to public property).

Who are the greater vandals – the 16-year-olds spraying their tags on a building wall, or the councillors and council officers who have driven through the Caltongate abomination against significant local objection, and failed the people they were elected and appointed to serve?

It is time to clean the hive, and I appeal to every one of my fellow voters to vote for anyone except your sitting councillor at the next council election ... and if you like the idea, tell someone else about it: let's dump the whole lot and start again.

Voting in a clean council would only be the start, because the new council should be pressed to dismiss those council officers who significantly promoted the worst depredations of its predecessor.

David Fiddimore, Calton Road, Edinburgh


Make trams pay for loss of bus trade

IT is quite scandalous that the council is seriously considering cutting some bus services because income has been lost due to the work now in progress to prepare for the introduction of the much-criticised tram service.

If there is a loss in revenue, this should be made up by the tram scheme, which is mainly to blame for the loss of custom. There can be no argument that this is reasonable and fair, just as compensation is being paid to others who suffer from the same cause.

From correspondence columns and from the many people to whom I have spoken on the subject, the public as a whole are NOT in favour of the tram scheme and it is outrageous the council, having imposed the scheme upon us contrary to majority opinion, should make things even worse than they now are, by making cuts in the bus service, which has been struggling hard to cope with the many problems the current work programme has created.

They cannot punish us for the result of their ill-fated ideas.

JR Hall, Colinton Grove, Edinburgh


Why Monteith has got it all wrong

BRIAN MONTEITH claims (News, July 11) that the Labour Party's promise of "a better tomorrow" – if the UK electorate voted them into government back in May of 1997 – has turned out to be a hollow one. How wrong you are sir, and I'll explain why.

Firstly I will try to deal with a couple of your specific charges, the opening one being that the NHS "wasn't so much saved as dissected". Well, if the price of increasing the level of money spent upon delivering healthcare to UK citizens by record amounts is the loss of the NHS's 'National' status then I believe that that was a price well worth paying; or is Mr Monteith a fan of centralised-control?

Another charge he makes is that thanks to Labour living up to its manifesto promise of giving Scotland's citizens the opportunity to have their own parliament and therein determine at least some of their own affairs the Union is somehow "in peril".

I really do not think that this is a serious possibility Mr Monteith, particularly whilst Scotland's 'Black Gold' continues to flow (and as a consequence provides such enormous sums of money for the Treasury's coffers). Plus whilst Westminster continues to be sovereign; it could – if sufficient numbers of MPs were so inclined – vote Holyrood out of existence tomorrow, remember!

In any event, the only political union in peril so far as I am aware is the one of councillors Dawe and Cardownie at the City Chambers.

Finally, I have to tell Mr Monteith that D:Ream's "Things can only get better" was one of my LEAST favourite tunes of the 90s, however I do not agree with that its message has turned out to be hollow at all.

But then he probably – even as a lapsed Tory – objected to the House of Lords being reformed, ordinary hard-working folk being given the protection of a national minimum wage and Scotland being spared yet more years of misrule by Conservative governments.

Mr Alfred Baldwin, Albany Street, Edinburgh


Scent of cynical hypocrisy in East

THE Glasgow East by-election, sees Labour furiously running around trying to convince the East Enders that Labour cares about the deprivation in that part of Glasgow. Well, where have Labour been while the area was being neglected and abandoned?

To save Gordon Brown's face (and perhaps his job) Labour NOW say they really care. Cynical hypocrisy is what it is and Glasgow's East End may think no differently.

Trevor Swistchew, The Paddockholm, Edinburgh


Camera car spotted out in the suburbs

WHEN I saw your article in the News about the Google car (July 9), I thought "Aha, so that's what it was round here in Oxgangs Gardens". I think it was Monday. I thought at first it was a new kind of TV licence van out looking for dodgers.

It certainly was the same car that was in Morningside.

Mrs Florence Carlyle, Oxgangs Gardens, Edinburgh