Letters: Put the brakes on funds to promote bike use in Capital

These will be placed in public places, on pavements, outside tenement buildings, to allow cyclists to keep their bicycles locked up in them.

All to make cycling more attractive? This is over and above the £100,000 for more cycle facilities.

Who is going to police the use? How much will it cost to rent a shed? On what basis will these sheds be given out? The council can’t afford to keep existing infrastructure, so why spend money on more daft projects? This money could go towards keeping Leith Waterworld open, providing funding for libraries, or more importantly maintaining existing local amenities.

I am in favour of cycling as a hobby, I just don’t think cyclists should expect so much and give so little in return.

A Murray, Edinburgh

Right to freedom should be sacred

WHEN we live in a society that embraces a plethora of beliefs where few of us are rarely to be seen in church and religion is on the wane, isn’t the banning of Christian prayers at council meetings a rightful move?

This progressive step means that no one belief system is allowed to have a disproportionate influence on decision making in our democratic process.

In my opinion, most of us now recognise that opposition to prayers at council meetings has nothing whatsoever to do with religious intolerance from militant atheists or militant secularists and all to do with fair play.

Shouldn’t we all live in a society where religious freedom is an absolute right and where freedom from religion is also an absolute right?

Jack Fraser, Clayknowes Drive, Musselburgh

Stepping stones to independence

JIM Taylor (Letters, February 18) asks “Why would Scotland, freed from Westminster rule, but remaining within the European Union, be regarded as ‘independent’?”

Even if Mr Taylor cannot fathom the idea, I am sure that your other readers can understand that, as things stand, the existing 27 member states of the European Union (including the United Kingdom) are independent states. The addition of a post-referendum Scotland will not change this fact.

Perhaps Mr Taylor believes, like UKIP, that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union now. However, if he wants Scotland alone to cease being a member of the EU, he will have to wait until Scotland is free from Westminster before he can propose such a course of action.

Robin MacCormick, Dalkeith Road, Edinburgh

When greenway is the right way

DRIVE any evening or early morning on greenways and you will find most motorists hogging the outside lane, mistakenly thinking they cannot use the bus lanes.

Often as not they drive well under the speed limit and infuriate other drivers who eventually risk being stopped by the police for overtaking on the green lanes.

If they can’t understand a sign that informs them when the bus lane is in use, perhaps they should not be on the road.

David Blackburn, Morvenside Close, Edinburgh

Ill wind blowing from turbine plan

THE cold weather gripping Europe has forced Germany to restart several nuclear reactors, which were taken off-line after the Japanese tsunami.

Did Germany’s 22,000 wind turbines go on strike or did the wind not blow?

The National Grid has announced it is to spend £1 billion on the world’s longest under-sea interconnector between Ayrshire and Cheshire.

Supposedly this is so that Scotland can export electricity to England but why would the English pay much more for Scottish wind electricity when they can buy nuclear from the French at a cheaper price?

I suspect the real reason is that when Alex Salmond has closed Scotland’s nuclear and fossil-fuel power stations and the wind does not blow we will need to import nuclear electricity from France and fossil fuel electricity and nuclear from England.

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow