Letters: Durability of private school buildings must be a lesson

HAVING read that the new Portobello High School building budget is £41.5 million, it would be interesting to find out the likely lifespan expected of the building.

Looking at the schools built since the 60s in my own area alone, the existing Portobello High, Holy Rood R.C. High School and Castlebrae, it would appear that the lifespan of new school buildings is on average around 40 years.

How is it that the bulk of the private schools in Edinburgh are housed in buildings well in excess of 100 years old and function very well with some renovation having taken place.

The original Portobello School on Park Avenue was converted to flats as is proposed for the original Niddrie Mill Primary.

This would suggest that these buildings were of a far superior quality.

I would suggest that many of the problems with schools built since the 60s for years has been lack of routine maintenance, which also applies to Meadowbank Sports Centre.

Barbara C. Tulloch, Duddingston Park South,

Banging the drum for live pub music

ONE thing that has saddened me greatly about the credit crunch and subsequent recession is the cutting back of live music in Edinburgh pubs.

I remember a time when you could walk down Rose Street or the Royal Mile and every pub would have a live act in the window, every night of the week.

Now you're lucky to see any, and I think it really damages the atmosphere of the place. I appreciate times are tight, but I wish owners would just persist with music, because when people see something going on – especially tourists – they flock in.

You can't beat going to a pub with a band or a singer on, and I think it's ever so sad that this appears to be dying in our city.

D Scott, Newington

Scaremongering over NHS job cuts

NOBODY wants to read about job cuts, particularly in the NHS. What I dislike even more are attempts to scaremonger and to sensationalise the issue.

The recent suggestion by Labour's Jackie Baillie that "patient safety" is being jeopardised is utterly hypocritical, and completely out of order.

There are currently more than 800 extra staff working in Lothians NHS compared to when Labour last controlled the Scottish Executive. Across Scotland there are more than 10,000 extra NHS staff than in 2007.

Despite cuts in Scottish Government expenditure imposed by the last Labour government in London, the NHS in Scotland has enjoyed increased NHS spending year on year.

Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon has made clear that there will be no compulsory redundancies and that at the end of this four-year term, there will still be more NHS staff then when Labour left office.

Furthermore, the Scottish Government is expanding the "Releasing Time to Care" programme across all NHS boards, which will allow nurses much more time to concentrate directly on patients instead of paperwork.

Recent trials of the scheme showed it resulted in an increase in time spent on direct patient care by up to 40 per cent, as well as improved leadership, efficiency and staff morale.

The Scottish Government is investing in NHS Scotland and Lothians NHS. If Jackie Baillie thinks patient safety is being jeopardised now then she must accept that patient safety was a grave problem when Labour last ran the Scottish NHS.

The truth is that patients are being well served by the current Scottish Government.

Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP, Scottish Parliament

Sales should have funded new homes

THE right-to-buy policy of the Thatcher government was popular at the time and might still be workable if the revenue from council house sales had been ploughed straight back into building more houses.

The money should have been spent on affordable houses for rent instead of being squandered on illegal nu-killer weapons such as Trident.

Andrew J.T. Kerr, Castlegate, Jedburgh