Letters: Please provide surfaces fit to travel on for road users

I had to dodge round all sorts of holes, cracks and bumps in the road.

Luckily it was during the day when there was little traffic, but I would not have been prepared to cycle the same route had buses and taxis been in the same lane with me.

It would have been far too dangerous because I would have been forced into potholes and ruts.

The condition of the roads in this city is a major safety issue to cyclists and they are appalling.

Edinburgh City Council rightly wants to look at making cycling as safe as possible in the city.

The first and most obvious thing that it needs to do is provide all road users with roads that are properly maintained, not broken, cracked and potholed.

Donald McBride, Edinburgh

SNP avoiding the difficult issues

MARTIN Hannan (News, March 6) surely has a rather strange notion of how a parliamentary democracy should work, since he obviously thinks it is only valid when things go his party’s way.

One would have thought that having lost the democratic vote on the Edinburgh trams in the Scottish Parliament, the SNP group, as part of the ruling coalition with the Lib Dems in Edinburgh, would have been even more determined to scrutinise the project.

But no, the SNP both at Holyrood and at the City Chambers took the huff, and refused to be represented on the board of TIE, the organisation formed by the council to deliver the project, allowing it instead to childishly carp from the sidelines, and to adopt an “it wisnae us” stance when things began to go wrong.

So no Mr Hannan, please don’t bleat about an apparent lack of democracy, when your party was not mature enough to accept the result of a democratic vote, and get on with what it was elected to do on behalf of the people of Edinburgh.

Sadly this very selective responsibility by the SNP is all too common, preferring as it does to take all the easy, populist decisions and leave the more difficult issues to others. Heaven help us if it were ever to secure independence.

Bill Goodall, Baird Drive, Edinburgh

Will workers be the wheel deal?

THE 60-metre Wheel of Edinburgh planned for West Princes Street Gardens would, I’m sure, liven up that end of town (News, March 5).

Not wishing to get involved with the debate regarding if I would sooner see the rooftops of the city centre properties and the Castle Rock face versus the panoramic view of the city and Forth beyond from Portobello, the powers that be are delusional if they believe we can compare this structure with the likes of the London Eye or Wheel of Manchester.

What the council must first address is the standard of the operatives. I had the misfortune of experiencing their standard of customer care over the festive period, and don’t intend using this attraction again, wherever it ends up.

David Cumming, Morningside Drive, Edinburgh

Tax offer excludes those who pay

I RECEIVED notice of my council tax, water and sewerage charge from the council yesterday, and slipped into the envelope was a lovely little offer stating that if I changed my payment system to direct debit I would be entered into a draw, the first prize of which was a year’s free council tax.

Unfortunately I already do pay by direct debit, so am excluded. It is my intention to cancel my direct debit in favour of a monthly actual payment, but re-establish a direct debit the month after in order to get into the draw and teach the silly beggars a lesson.

I encourage all other direct debit council tax payers to do the same. Discriminating between citizen clients in this way is simply wrong.

The council has to come up with a method of getting the money in which does not discriminate against the honest, prompt payer.

David Fiddimore, Calton Road, Edinburgh