Letters: Where were the wardens to keep our streets clean?

YOUR story "Parking ticket slump leaves city facing £1.2m revenue shortfall" (News, January 6) demonstrates the folly of putting too many eggs into one basket, as the council seems to have done in this case.

While it is disappointing that we have to depend upon the authority raising funds by penalising people for breaking the rules, there are a couple of areas the council should look at which could prove lucrative.

Accompanying snow on our pavements through most of December was dog dirt, as clearly plenty of pet owners used the bad weather as an excuse for their lazy ways.

And the cold has not discouraged smokers from discarding their cigarettes after they have finished with a complete disregard for their surroundings and other people.

Cigarette butts are rubbish, they are not protected by some special law.

I thought there were wardens whose job is to enforce these restrictions.

They should be made to earn their wages and help make the Capital a cleaner place in which we can take pride.

Roger Howden, Dalry Road, Edinburgh

We need each other to survive

DAVID CAMERON and Nick Clegg's idea that modern society can be just individuals conjures up a vision of being in complete control of our lives and decision making.

But the recent bad weather illustrates how dependent we are on each other to provide the normal needs of day-to-day living.

We depend on the people working in the gas and electricity services for our drinking, they in turn depend on the oil and mining industries.

We depend on the people employed in the water supply services for our drinking, washing and cooking needs; they in turn depend on water collection and purifying services.

We depend on the people employed in all the food industries; they depend on the distribution services, road and rail.

We depend on transport, public and private, to get us to and from work, and the transport industry needs petrol and oil services.

There is no way individuals and families can exist in isolation.

Provision of major services such as the NHS and education are a collective and social responsibility, that is the only way the majority of us can have peace of mind.

The destruction of services under the present coalition government and the promoting of private provision, if you can afford it, is a backward ideology leading to a breaking-up of democratic decision making expressed through local elections.

A Delahoy, Silverknowes Gardens, Edinburgh

Miliband must accept the blame

labour leader Ed 'The Red' Miliband's basic argument is this: the nasty Tories are deliberately making people suffer.

Now, that may appeal to the simple-minded and lifelong Labour voters, but the reality is obvious to everyone else.

The Labour government racked up 1 trillion debt and brought Britain to the brink of economic apocalypse.

I remember Labour putting VAT up from 15 per cent to 17.5 per cent, but it did nothing for the economy, so they put it back to 17 per cent.

So, Ed, what are your policies? When the coalition took over, Labour had left a note saying 'sorry, there is no money left'.

They left our country skint and we are all going to pay for boom and bust.

Peter Curran, Dick Place, Edinburgh

Good to read an uplifting story

HOW reassuring it was to read the story about former alcoholic David Duke, who has been trying to help the homeless with street soccer (News, January 6).

So many stories we see in the papers are a result of young people in bad circumstances taking the option of turning to crime. So it was good to see David turning his back on heavy drinking, pulling himself "out of a very dark hole" and helping others.

D Hunter, Northfield, Edinburgh