Letters: Service decline should be matched by council tax cut

It’s sad to say, but the streets are also a disgrace with litter already, and with the new pick-up service they are going to be worse, and vermin will be attracted to our streets.

Does this mean that our council tax drops in cost? We pay this for one of the main services, do we not?

The council needs to put money to good use for the public services, not for holiday makers’ attractions such as trams. All the money that’s been wasted on them, I feel that’s why they have cut back on a lot of things like closing schools which we desperately need for our children, and now the cuts on rubbish collection.

Miss J Broadley, Edinburgh

Better uses for taxpayers’ cash

ALEX Salmond has hired the Army and Navy Club in London during the Olympics at a cost of £400,000 and has called it Scotland House to wine and dine dignitaries.

Is this really a justifiable cost to the taxpayer to drum up support for independence? Or can Mr Salmond tell us what new business he will be bringing to Scotland as a result of this grand gesture of Scottish hospitality?

The Scotland Office in London has a bird’s eye view of Olympic beach volleyball, so surely it would have been a perfect venue for Alex Salmond’s hospitality and at no additional cost to the taxpayer, who could easily find more beneficial ideas for Scotland to spend £400,000.

Jill Gordon, Dudley Avenue, Edinburgh

Drugs for addicts, but not sufferers

DRUG addicts in the Lothians have been given syringes worth £700,000 and are now being issued with the drug Naloxone yet the drug abiraterone isn’t given out to those with prostate cancer (News, August 1).

This is disgusting. Drug addicts brought the curse on themselves, while men with prostate cancer have to suffer.

Gina Maxwell, Sighthill Drive, Edinburgh

Brewers were a glass apart in city

With reference to Mr McAra’s letter about the trades of Edinburgh (August 4), the brewers and printers have not been unfairly omitted from the convenery of trades exhibition currently at Ashfield.

Neither of those bodies were incorporated trades and were not members of the convenery.

The brewers were a society with a preses, not an incorporation with a deacon.

The printers were not numerous enough to form a body corporate until all the incorporations had been in being for a couple of centuries or more, and therefore were never an incorporation. Much as one would love to include all these bodies, and others besides, that is not the purpose of the present exhibition, which is designed to raise the profile of the incorporated trades which formed the convenery.

For the record, the incorporated trades of Edinburgh, as defined by the Act of Sett in 1583, were surgeons, goldsmiths, skinners, furriers, hammermen, wrights, masons, tailors, baxters, fleshers, cordiners, weavers, walkers, bonnetmakers and dyers.

The history of the trades is clearly laid out in the free exhibition, to which all are very welcome. For further information see the website at www.edinburgh-trades.org

Henry Steuart Fothringham, historian to the Convenery of the Trades of Edinburgh

Propaganda is blowing in wind

The shale gas revolution has transformed the energy landscape in the US and shale gas contributes a third of America’s gas supplies.

There is a 100-year supply.

Natural gas prices are now half of what they were three years ago, lowering electricity prices, stabilising manufacturing costs and attracting foreign investment.

So why is Britain not “fracking” on with this source of energy which would create much needed employment and lower our electricity prices?

The answer my friends is blowing in the wind.

The wind industry is hell bent on stopping shale gas and using their propaganda machines to spread unfounded allegations since shale gas needs no subsidies and wind turbines would become obsolete.

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow