Letters: City retailers need to get fresh with their produce

For some time now I have been watching various television programmes about the quality of local produce, the importance of supporting your local community and the difficulties faced by farmers and small shops today.

While I try to buy local it galls me when I try supermarkets as the first place to go for basic fruit, veg, eggs, milk and so on. Often the quality just isn't there, or the prices are inflated to an extraordinary level when the product is actually 'in season'.

Of course, I know about the wonderful Saturday market that occurs in Edinburgh, but often I find myself unable to go. I found it shocking that when I googled Edinburgh Local, the top hit on businesses here was Sainsbury's Local.

While I know of a few different veg box schemes that deliver, I realise now that I do not know where I can shop in Edinburgh to get local Scottish produce.

I've seen a few grocers dotted around, particularly in Marchmont, but simply am unaware of which ones are better and what peculiarities differentiate them.

Furthermore, back home in Aberdeen it used to be possible to get proper old-fashioned bottles of milk delivered, a prospect which still leaves me excited. When I tried to look up something similar here though, it seems to simply not exist.

Surely this cannot be so? Eggs and milk straight from the farm seem like such a good benefit for farmer and customer alike.

Natasha Bairstow, St John's Hill, Edinburgh

Working classes need the unions

Although I'm usually very much in sync with letter writer Robert Dow, I was disappointed by his attack on trade unions (Interactive, 6 July).

As a committed trade unionist who constantly appreciates what trade unions have done for me and my family over the years, I would suggest that in these difficult times where greed and unfairness have never been so prevalent, our trade unions have shown admirable restraint.

If trade unions are emasculated as Mr Dow seems to suggest, where now for the working classes?

Jack Fraser, Clayknowes Drive, Musselburgh

Story shows how much young care

Thank you so much for that moving story in the News last Wednesday which described how the teenagers who attend 6VT (the City Youth Cafe in Victoria Terrace) are raising money to help their peers in an impoverished village in Tanzania.

Young people tend to get a bad press these days because of the undesirable behaviour of a small minority.

The younger generation is often written off as selfish and self-centred, and yet here we have a large group of teenagers who are far from well off themselves but are prepared to recognise that what we describe as poverty in this country is nothing compared with real poverty in some parts of the world.

Nor is this an isolated example. Your article should reassure us that, although our young folk can often be "difficult", they are fundamentally good at heart. They might be even better if we older folk set them a better example at times.

HL Philip, Grange Loan, Edinburgh

Thanks for help from taxi driver

I AM a native from Edinburgh who has been living in Italy for the past 20 years. I am staying at Heriot-Watt University with a group of 41 Italian students who are here on a study holiday for 15 days.

Unfortunately, one of my students aged 14 had to go to hospital for emergency treatment.

In the rush to get to the Western General Hospital, I left my mobile phone in the taxi.

I would really like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the taxi driver for returning my phone without charging me and for the wonderful assistance, kindness and care I received from all the doctors and nurses in Ward 42.

Bruna Crolla