Letters: City's attitude to tourism must be brought to book

We have six letting bedrooms, all en-suite. I own about half the property, and I have a mortgage on the rest. I gave up a 25-year career in sales and sold everything to buy the place.

This year I will start my sixth year in this hard game. I have yet to take one day's wage from it. I have put it in my pension, I have put in seven days a week and it still comes up short.

I can show you many years of booking diaries that show the trade is just not there any more. I usually have a full book (and house for the rugby weekends and booked months in advance). For the upcoming Welsh weekend, I have one room.

But if small guest houses disappear, what would happen to the price of a room?

Edinburgh exists on tourism, and without it the place would just be another small town. Everywhere now has a fireworks display at New Year, everywhere is trying to emulate Edinburgh with comedy festivals and book festivals, etc.

If you want the tourist to wake up and only know where he/she is by opening the curtain, then let the budget guys have their way.

If you wish us to remain unique and a world class destination, then help the wee folk.

Graham Mills, Craigmillar Park, Newington, Edinburgh

We always knew TIE lacked tools

So Audit Scotland has announced that it doesn't think TIE has the skills to finish the tram project (News, February 2). That couldn't have taken long and we didn't need Audit Scotland to tell us.

It's been very obvious for quite a considerable amount of time that TIE didn't have the skills to design, start or run the project.

I can't wait for the next announcement that the line to Haymarket can't be done for 545 million, because that's obvious as well.

This project has been allowed to get out of control of its costs and timescales. We cannot afford to continue to throw money at TIE until the Scottish Government's 500m is reached and there's no trams running.

Peter Chalmers, Farne Court, Kirkcaldy, Fife

Unionists letting Scotland down

The united unionist opposition parties (Lab-Lib-Con) are determined to battle at Holyrood for the rights of the big four supermarkets and to support the big alcohol suppliers against efforts to deter binge drinking.Evidently, if the SNP minority government were to propose a bill in support of motherhood and apple pie, let alone the interests of the Scottish people, the Lab-Lib-Con unionists would vote against it.

Robin MacCormick, Dalkeith Road, Edinburgh

MacAskill's plans are just criminal

I AM less than amused by the soft-touch justice reforms of Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

He is going to scrap prison sentences of three months or less and impose community sentences.

Already very few community sentences are carried out because the criminals do not turn up.

Well, the judges and sheriffs can frustrate MacAskill by imposing all sentences over the three months. "I sentence you to three months and one day."

I am also perturbed that as an excuse, the anti-prison lobby say that keeping each criminal in jail costs 41,000 a year and implying that we would save this by not jailing them.

Oh no we wouldn't.

In simplistic terms, regardless of the number of prisoners, there are the fixed costs of a prison, such as property and to a degree the number of prison officers, electricity, maintenance, vehicles and the like.

Increasing the number of prisoners only increases the food element.

It is about time politicians stopped playing with the public's safety and stuffed the jails full and then the costs per head would drop.

Overcrowding and fewer perks would stop them re-offending, not a bit of light community service gardening work or knitting.

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow

Do you agree that more must be down to help the Capital's small guest houses survive?