Letter: Met Office need not treat us like idiots

David J Wood (Letters, 16 December) is a man after my own heart. We need to get away from the idea that weather is merely something to chat about and we all have to try to understand it.

We all need this understanding for our day-to-day lives, not just now in severe weather, but all the time.

It would help if the Met Office stopped treating us as idiots and gave us proper forecasts which were comprehensible to both the more informed and those who prefer to have things simpler.

It would also help if Scotland were not considered a region, but as a country, with micro-climates.

It would also help if the BBC listened to criticism, rather than always being on the defensive.

Marina Donald

Tantallon Place

Edinburgh

I agree completely with Allan Massie (Comment, 15 December). Scottish politics have gone crazy.

Is it really true that whenever there is a forecast of overnight ice, snow or some other nasty weather, a transport minister of no relevant experience will spend the night in the road traffic control centre to "take charge"?

Surely it is better for him to keep out of the way and let professionals do the organisation without interference based on salting roads of marginal constituencies?

Iain Campbell

Pentland Terrace

Edinburgh

Athol Duncan of BBC Scotland (Letters, 16 December) asks readers of The Scotsman to judge for themselves the accuracy and fairness of his organisation's coverage of the weather story. The treatment of Stuart Stevenson on Newsnight Scotland last Monday was disgraceful and the most aggressive interrogation of a politician I can remember.

There was no attempt to establish facts but merely to hound him into apologising. It was personal and crude.

How can we possibly attract smart people, who have had real jobs like Stevenson has, into public life if the media treat them so disrespectfully?

The talented and clever will stay well clear of frontline politics and the nation will suffer.

Kenneth Paterson

Priory Road

Linlithgow

That was an overdue piece of realism by Joan McAlpine ("BBC Scotland must do its homework", 15 December).

But let us not forget to add to the charge sheet the deficiencies of the BBC travel news purveyed by Good Morning Scotland.

I suggest we add the mangling of the geography of transport routes, the capricious and inconsistent approach to what is mentioned and sheer wrong or misleading information.

Does anyone remember years ago when the rail travel news came from a knowledgeable and authoritative man, actually seated alongside the controllers in ScotRail's control office?

You couldn't get much closer to the horse's mouth than that.

Is there a lesson there for today on using professionals to handle the travel news on the different infrastructures?

Jim Summers

Westerglen Road

Falkirk