Letters: Parents and police must take firm action over tearaways

However, the solution by “Edinburgh Police” is as per usual nothing more than a pathetic, headline grabbing load of tosh. In fact, your picture on the front page is even more damning – a picture of faceless police officers.

Many people rightly feel that these officers are posted missing whilst all this is going on – hiding behind their closed local police station doors.

Ten thousand pounds’ worth of damage and their answer is educate “at risk” children and offer diversionary activities to keep them off the streets and out of trouble. No mention of parents, schools or even the consequences of their actions then?

Clubs like Musselburgh Athletic and others do their bit to encourage young people in East Lothian. Free admission has been going on for many years and last year the club featured on the front page of your paper (May 28) with hundreds of kids wearing the club’s colours.

Their thanks is to pick up a huge bill with no home game for the next five months and one wonders how they and other clubs are to survive.

Meanwhile, the parents and schools get away with sitting on their backsides whilst their kids and responsibilities run havoc through the streets night after night knowing that whatever amount of damage and crime they commit not a single one of them will ever be held to account for their kids’ actions.

Until parents and schools teach their children how to behave in a civilised society, and the police up their game by catching and prosecuting these criminals, then nothing will change – apart from good honest clubs who will exist no more.

Name and address supplied

Spare us political party newspapers

The proposal by two political parties to close the Council “newspaper” Outlook is welcome news. As an avid reader of the press, whenever Outlook pops though the letterbox, my instinct is to look out for a paper recycling bin.

However, is it necessary to replace it with yet more propaganda in the guise of “local newspapers”? These so-called papers were published all over the city when Labour was last in charge of Edinburgh. They were edited largely by Labour party members, the articles sung the praises of Labour politicians and they were distributed mainly in Labour council wards.

By all means scrap Outlook, but please spare us any more party political PR at the taxpayers’ expense, after all, since when was it the role of a council to produce newspapers?

Gavin Fleming, Grassmarket, Edinburgh

Does SNP think tax is necessary?

the news that Amazon pays no corporation tax in Scotland despite £7 billion of sales is truly bewildering.

Did the SNP government ask them if they paid tax when they gave this multi-billion pound company £10m of Scottish taxpayers’ money? Given that one of Alex Salmond’s economic advisers avoids paying income tax in Scotland I sadly doubt it.

With Mr Salmond trying to save Rangers from paying the full amount to HMRC you really have to wonder what kind of independent Scotland they want. It used to be low-tax Celtic Tiger Ireland that we would be like – it now seems like no-tax Celtic Lion Scotland!

Dave Cochrane, Spottiswoode Street, Edinburgh

Dog breeds all have own traits

Having read Helen Martin’s column in Monday’s News (Collar irresponsible owners, not the dogs) I too agree that most “bad” dogs behave that way because of their owners. However, I don’t agree that all dogs that chase cats can have their behaviour trained out of them.

Ms Martin says that if all dogs were “hard-wired” to chase cats then guide dogs would be a liability to the blind. But guide dogs are chosen from specific breeds, because only these breeds have the necessary temperament.

I believe that terriers, in particular, are “hard-wired” to chase other animals, and even the most well trained terrier will tear off after a rabbit if it catches the scent – and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Veronica Noble, Blackford, Edinburgh