Letters: Bus appointment typical of city's clueless council

It was with total disbelief that on reading the Evening News (March, 3,) I discovered that the new chairman of Lothian Buses is to be based in London.

In view of the difficulties experienced within the combined situation of Lothian Buses, the tram firm TIE and Transport Edinburgh, would it not be better to site the new chairman in Sydney, Australia, as he would be better equipped to escape the "lynching" by the disenfranchised public.

This new situation, 3000 per meeting, indicates just how far removed from reality our current council representatives are, and perhaps why the past chairman David Mackay fled from the difficulties he was encountering.

Is there any possibility of the people of Edinburgh being listened to? It appears not.

I am fortunate to be able to remember the trams, and was even old enough to travel independently on the first route to be discontinued, the number 24 from Flora Stevenson's School to Princes Street and back.

I was also driving in Princes Street on the final night of the trams, and understood the logic of ending their service.

The reasons seemed clear at the time.

It was too expensive to extend the lines into the new housing areas, and buses were very much more flexible.

Would the solution to this farce not be the issuing of electric bikes free to every man, woman and child in the Edinburgh area? There would then be no need for this continual upheaval of our streets.

John Yule, Camps Rigg, Livingston

Take care over Calgary invasion

APPARENTLY a Calgary-based company wants to demolish historic buildings in Edinburgh (News, March 3). Well, the Scots came to the right prairie town.

Calgary developers have gone to amazing lengths ensuring nothing older than an iPod mars this glittering city of mine. Soon (ohhhh happy day) Edinburgh will have the same seizure-inducing malls, pitiless parking lots and vast tracts of windswept roads that we in Calgary have come to so love and enjoy.

Liam Wilson, 11th Avenue NE, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Lib Dems have no sense of direction

YESTERDAY a copy of a Lib Dem election leaflet called Edinburgh City News dropped through our letterbox.

Apart from giving us both a good laugh over their usual dodgy bar graph and "two horse race here", "Election too close to call" claims (even more ironic in the light of the Barnsley Central result), it confused us a bit, seeing as how it was promoting the Lib Dem candidate for the Edinburgh Central constituency and we live well within the boundaries of the Edinburgh Southern constituency.

It looks like the Edinburgh Lib Dems have lost more than their moral compass.One of the horseboxes in this alleged two-horse race may be making its way to the wrong racecourse.

David and Mo Clater, Polwarth Gardens, Edinburgh

Elsie Inglis was a peaceful pioneer

YOUR correspondent Mike Fiszer, director of MSc advanced leadership at Edinburgh Napier University, lists among his favourite leaders with an Edinburgh connection Elsie Inglis, describing her as a pioneering surgeon and suffragette (News, March 1).

In fact, she deplored the militant activities of the suffragettes.

Elsie Inglis was a leader of the Scottish suffragists, women who sought the vote by strictly constitutional means.

A council plaque at St Andrew Square similarly mistakenly uses the word suffragette.

C Wilson, Pentland Drive, Edinburgh

Gaddafi's call to British arms

SUCCESSIVE Westminster governments have been arming Colonel Gaddafi for decades.

The chickens are coming home to roost in a big way.

Andrew J T Kerr, Castlegate, Jedburgh