Letters: Proposal for supermarket is right up council's street

For years the people of the Old Town have been calling for decent shopping and a fair sized supermarket in the city centre. This has always fallen on deaf ears. The supermarket in the St James Centre closed down years ago, and any other decent food shops that were in the Old Town closed down with no signs that the retailers mentioned wanted to move in to the area.

Anyone living in the area would realise that a mini market being built in East Market Street is not the answer for decent shopping in the Old Town.

Is our council not planning this supermarket because its own staff will use it as this new building will be right across the road from its Waverley Court headquarters?

This area needs some decent food shops with choice and not mini markets.

Andrew Murphy, Royal Mile, Edinburgh

The trend now is for consumerism

IN response to Dolores M Dangel's letter (News, August 26) regarding the delayed opening to Primark, it's a sign of the times when a person can become 'incensed' because this company which makes millions in profits due to hiring Bangladeshi staff for as little as 3p an hour (as reported on BBCs Panorama) should be angry that Edinburgh City Council is squeezing a relatively meagre amount from them.

To call herself 'one of Primark's biggest fans' and to suggest this is one of the biggest local authority shambles in her lifetime is simply failing to put things into perspective and demonstrates our consumer obsessed society. It's a pity Primark didn't choose to locate to an out of town retail park and spare Princes Street another blow to its distinctiveness.

Michael Brock, Gilmerton, Edinburgh

Look to the US for bombing answers

ROSEMARY Baratta from Pennsylvania castigates Cardinal O'Brien for saying that the US has a "culture of vengeance" (Interactive, August 24).

Aren't we all sick fed-up of American citizens bleating on about vengeance while insinuating they are religious, and it's the US itself that is responsible for many breaches of human rights?

Such as the death penalty which just has to be a cruel and unnatural punishment.

Or Guantanamo Bay, which to my knowledge doesn't raise a murmur on the scale of protest by US citizens. It continues in operation despite President Obama's pledge to close it.

Or the USA's appalling treatment of Cuba over the last 50 years, treating it like a prison colony and holding back its citizens' contribution to the world.

And foreign policy which sees US troops rampaging all over the globe denying countries the right to self-determination.

Now the US would dictate to us? I don't think so.

When those who lost family members have expressed their doubts about the conduct of the trial; the lack of a jury; the evidence presented; the evidence not presented; and the sentence itself - then shouldn't we all have real concerns about the integrity of the process in this case?

Until it has gone through every appeal process and public inquiry to ensure there was no miscarriage of justice, we will never know what happened.

Perhaps the irony is it's Mrs Baratta's own government which likely knows all the answers. Shouldn't she be venting her ire on it?

Jim Taylor, The Murrays Brae, Edinburgh

Bus drivers are playing pinball

THE other day I saw a 49 bus driver give a pensioner (with two walking sticks) five seconds to sit before slamming his foot down. She fell.

The day before, a 26 driver failed to notice a woman waiting to get off, braked heavily just after the stop and sent her careering down the aisle. Is this a new sport - human pinball?

I'd provide routes and times for the bus inspectors if I thought there was the remotest chance of them acting on it.

Mark Fleming, Argyle Crescent, Edinburgh