Letters: Helpful bus drivers just the ticket during freeze

If we are a laughing stock when it comes to the tram fiasco, we should be darn proud of Lothian Buses and sing their praises from the rooftops.

I wouldn't have been able to go to work for three weeks before Christmas if it hadn't been for them. Staff at the ticket office were friendly and helpful when I bought a month's bus pass, and bus drivers have to be commended for keeping calm and carrying on under difficult circumstances, and being patient and kind to boot.

We're all quicker to criticise than to praise, but credit where credit's due.

Sophie Gilbert, West Montgomery Place, Edinburgh

Limits restricting new city chief

YOUR article "Audit questions city management of trams project" (News, January 27) raises the spectre of new chief executive Sue Bruce getting involved by "launching a review of the project", but can she do so given that her employment contract contains the same clause that led to "Paul the Bin Man" being dismissed?

Clause 12.2 says: "It is the responsibility of the councillors to determine policy aims and objectives. It is the responsibility of the Chief Executive and Senior Officers to provide professional management and impartial advice that these policy aims and objectives are carried into practice. It is the responsibility of all employees to support the implementation of these policies. In all cases it is the duty of employees to maintain political neutrality in the conduct of the duties of the job."

This clause contains some very restrictive conditions not least of which is the fact that regardless of what has transpired to date including the gross mismanagement of the project it must be seen as "policy aims and objectives set down by the councillors".

Given that the incompetence exhibited by the Lib Dem/SNP council will be attributed by other parties as political, it would be difficult for Ms Bruce to do a review without some of what should be "impartial finding (advice)" attributed to the Lib Dem/SNP administration, thus breaching the "political neutrality" part of the clause .

John R T Carson, Kirkliston Road, South Queensferry

Paying the price for budget deficit

MARGO MacDonald (News 26 January) is right in that some city schools with falling pupil numbers will have to close and that successive administrations have delayed the inevitable.

It should be remembered that in 2007 Labour left the Children and Families department (which covers social work and education) a budget deficit of more than 10 million and as the city revenue reserves were exhausted only a drastic package of cuts could save the situation.

Despite this, most councillors voted for a vanity tram scheme rather than spending taxpayers' money on education or other core services.

Calum Stewart, Montague Street, Edinburgh

Recycling gets taken to extreme

WE are all aware of the current economic climate, cuts here, there and everywhere, so I wonder if someone at Edinburgh City Council could explain what I witnessed on Friday morning.

At work in the Grange area of town I was extremely amused to see a council gritting lorry, it being approximately 9.30am and the temp gauge in my car reading 5 degrees, so I thought maybe it's just some extra grit they have got to shift to make way for more supplies coming.

It would have been much more appreciated if they had thought about doing this round about mid-December!

If this wasn't a complete waste of time and money then what happened an hour after this really has to take the biscuit – a road sweeper vehicle cleaning the road.

This must be the council taking recycling to the extreme. Has everyone at the roads department gone mad?

Colin Irvine, Abbotsford Crescent, Edinburgh