Letters: SNP should have ensured tram money was well spent

Nevertheless, Mr Salmond had the power these past four years to have chosen to have played more than the role of a mere spectator to the car crash that this project has become.

The well-known fact that the SNP opposed the trams at Holyrood does not diminish the past Scottish Government's responsibility to have ensured that, once agreed by the Scottish Parliament, public monies going to the tram project were well spent.

Mr Salmond should not for one moment have taken his eye off this difficult ball. Shouting from the sidelines was never an appropriate stance to adopt.

Indeed, careless talk on his and his colleagues' part has undoubtedly cost us real time and money. What was rather needed - especially given a coalition administration in the City Chambers riven in two on this issue - was pragmatic political leadership to enable us all to see something worthwhile for our money.

To sit back now and still predict that this money will all be for "nothing" betrays a dereliction of duty upon which I hope voters will rightly reflect as they go to the polls next month.

Mr Salmond was quick enough to get folk round the table following the recent disgraceful scenes after an Old Firm match. We should expect no less of him in his approach to the catastrophe of the trams.

It is immature of him to in effect ask us now to cut off our nose to spite our face.

Lawrence Marshall, Chair, Capital Rail Action Group, King's Road, Portobello

Fear over further job losses on way

NEWS that unemployment fell by 7000 between December and February has been greeted enthusiastically by our politicians as evidence that Scotland's economy is on the mend.

Less widely reported were figures published this week showing that employment in the Scottish construction sector fell by 6000 in the last quarter of 2010.

More generally, I question the accuracy of official figures which suggest Scottish construction employment grew by 14 per cent last year.Scottish Building Federation members up and down the country have been telling me a different story of shrinking order books and finances under serious pressure.

In the short term, building firms are faced with the prospect of plummeting public capital spending and a private sector that is still struggling to recover.

My fear is that indications of construction employment falling at the end of 2010 are a portent of further job losses to come in 2011.

Michael Levack, chief executive, Scottish Building Federation, Edinburgh

Labour's pledge a missed target

THERE was more than a little irony in Labour's pledge that called on people to back its "two-week cancer waiting time guarantee".

Labour set the 62-day referral-to-treatment target (95 per cent of patients) in 2001, but never met it when they were flung out of office in May 2007.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement for Labour's pledge this time.

In contrast, the SNP not only met the targets Labour set within a year of taking office, but have gone further by bringing more patients into the target category and also abolished the hidden waiting list.

Alex Orr, SNP list candidate, Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh

Coalition U-turns betraying voters

DAVID Cameron and Nick Clegg keep telling us that they aren't breaking any of their promises on policies they canmpaigned with.

They have instead said that they are simply compromising with each other because they have different beliefs, which means they can't always give their voters the policies they campaigned with.

No, gentlemen, what it means is that in order to grasp the power you so desperately craved, you formed a coalition and your voters are paying the price for your betrayal with your never-ending U-turns.

Alan Lough, Dunbar