Chugger crackdown - 'Most would have liked to see a total ban'

THE so-called charity muggers who operate on Princes Street must rank as one of the biggest bugbears involved in visiting the city centre.

Wouldn't most of us put up with the constant drone of bagpipes from tartan tat shops and the worst of the winter weather if we could just walk the length of the street without being hassled by these chuggers?

The long-overdue crackdown on their activities announced today will be almost universally welcomed, although most people would probably have preferred to see them banned altogether.

But a new limit on the number who can swarm the street at any one time and restrictions on where they can work should go a long way towards curbing their excesses as long as they can be properly enforced.

The proposal to ban them completely on weekends when Princes Street can be pretty crowded anyway also makes sense.

The chuggers should also be forced to display details of the commission they earn for each donation they elicit and it should be made abundantly clear to them that their sales pitch must stop whenever they are met with a simple "no thank you".

And to help make sure they stay in line how about a sign on their jackets declaring: "How is my chugging? Call the hotline number below to report any complaints" .

Shifting sands

The plan to spend 60,000 moving sand from one end of Portobello beach to the other is one of the most bizarre the News has recently reported.

The idea is to "re-nourish" the beach to take it back to how it was after sand was dredged in off the Forth in 1988.

It is claimed that the move will protect people living along the east side of the waterfront from flooding. If so, then there is a clear safety reason for the work, expensive though it seems for such a project.

But we can understand why there may be a good deal of scepticism among locals who cannot recall even the threat of flooding along the east beach in recent years.

Ewan Aitken is one who is bemused, not least because campaigns to invest council money on the promenade and in local services such as the library have come to little.

Portobello folk are notoriously protective of their part of the world and they will need convinced this latest plan has a grain of sense in it.