Letters: Funding new bridge shows priorities are all wrong

Your editorial then rightly bemoaned the delay that this will cause to the project and contrasts this decision with the 840 million being made available for two new hospitals in the Govan constituency of health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon.

I don't think that's entirely fair. Why there's no longer money available for the Sick Kids is that the Scottish Government has given pre-eminent place for funding to the proposed additional Forth road bridge.

Prioritising this unnecessary, unsustainable and unpopular project above the Sick Kids - and indeed many other health, education and affordable housing schemes throughout Scotland - says it all really.

Continuing to fix the problems of the existing bridge should instead be the Scottish Government's top priority.

Lawrence Marshall, Chair, ForthRight Alliance, Rose Street, Edinburgh

More to it than saving money

THE ConDem coalition plans to cut the number of elected MPs by 50 in the next election, supposedly to save money.

At the same time, they appoint 53 new unelected people to the House of Lords (42 of them Conservatives and Lib Dems), with immediate effect. What's going on here? It's obviously not about saving money.

Henry L Philip, Grange Loan, Edinburgh

Politicians are so out of touch

DAVID Cameron told the NATO Summit in Lisbon that the British people were right behind the military forces in Afghanistan. I am beginning to think that when people become politicians they sentence themselves to a lifetime of solitary confinement, out of touch with the people.

Since day one, I have never met one person who was supportive of the invasion of Afghanistan or of the continuing occupation of the country.

William Burns, Pennywell Road, Edinburgh

Euro speculators making a killing

A YEAR ago George Soros explained why he had sold all of his euros, and dropped out of any investment even remotely linked to the value of the euro - he thought it was doomed, and predicted that within 12 years it would no longer exist.

It is hard now to expect that the short-term future of the currency will be other than as a vehicle for money speculators to break one weak European economy after another - until the big two find themselves threatened of course, when they will force every other European country to decouple from the euro-go-round, and float their currencies at sensible levels. When that happens the speculators will make a another killing of course.The new currencies which emerge will still be called "Euros" of course (because no politician will admit that the euro-proposition they promoted was flawed) but preceded by the name of its home country - the Dutch euro, Irish euro etc. And the euroticians will put forward plentiful false, but agreeable, arguments for doing it. It may even be worth putting aside a few euro notes and coins today - one day they may become collector's items. And everything in the garden will be rosy again. Until the next time. Thanks George!

David Fiddimore, Calton Road, Edinburgh

Silence in the air over drop-off fee

EDINBURGH Airport was crass and insensitive in imposing their drop-off charge on the public. It is good to see that Tory MSP Gavin Brown is keeping up the pressure on the Airport over this.

Meantime the silence from the Lib Dem MP and MSP for the area is deafening. They clearly care nothing that the public are outraged by this. Why are they so silent?

Stewart Geddes, Silverknowes Crescent, Edinburgh