Letter: Treasured land

The "disused airfield" you refer to in your account of the climate-change camp (21 August) does sound as if it might be a candidate for some development, although open-cast coal mining would not be many people's first choice.

However, the "airfield" which many of us on the border between Midlothian and East Lothian wish to protect from just this development is part of a lovely area of farmland and woodland, and a much-treasured piece of countryside used by people in Cousland, Ormiston, Elphinstone and beyond; East Lothian Council has rightly rejected two applications of this type in recent years and also objects to this one.

The sacrifice of a large swathe of landscape for years to prop up an obsolete technology for energy generation is to misunderstand how the future must be.

There is a good messagesometimes to be seen as we travel -that sign which reads: "Changed priorities ahead."

Aubrey Manning

Ormiston

East Lothian

On Monday I did start to feel a bit sorry for the protesters who camped near RBS over the weekend. At the beginning of their weekend there was a sunny, festival atmosphere, but by Monday it was all a bit damp and cold. I wonder if they wished for some global warming.

DAVE McGILL

London Road

Edinburgh