Readers' Best Comments

Council chiefs are planning 20 million of secret cuts to education.

This council lurches from one crisis to another. Roll on the council elections.

Xena – Warrior Princess

Perhaps Marilyne could ask her buddy Jenny about teaching kids in the trams while we wait for the line to be built?

Thinner Bob 79

At last a department in public office is facing up to the fact there is no money in the public coffers. The council and education department should be applauded for getting on with this now.

Ecto

People should do well to remember it has been the LABOUR party running UK plc for the last 13 years and prior to 2007 council elections LABOUR who ran Edinburgh for 23 years. It is far too easy to blame the current council leadership for impending cuts because they inherited a financial mess from LABOUR both nationally and locally.

The Sheriff

Education should be one of the last things considered for serious cuts; there has been years of rationalisation of schools already; budgets are already tight. Time to focus on something else – like improving the appalling record on collecting council tax from everyone.

JFW

With the council already borrowing 21m to prop up the tram line and cuts from central government, things will only get worse. The city is just going have to get used to massive cuts in frontline services. The tram line won't pay for itself and they can't raise council tax.

Rugal

Having Higher and Advanced Higher in one class is ridiculous – they are entirely different courses, with different skills and different teaching objectives. Cuts in education are shortsighted. Maybe cuts should be coming from within the council itself.

pebblesld

The new tram livery didn't improve the mood either.

Mandy Doodah Lickspittle said: "Yes, they're painted white to reflect the elephant they were modelled on."

Frondulate

17,000 public servants being bullied into accepting new terms and conditions; 20m cuts being considered to the city's schools budget; but, hey, the tram livery is considered "crisp and clean". Well, that's all right then.

Sarah B

I suppose it will make them easier to sell off later when the project collapses if they're mostly white!

JulesF

I like the colours – clean, minimalist and with a nod to the past. Although I'm sure they're going to end up covered in adverts anyway.

Softly spoken mellow North Korean gentleman

I thought the trams were going to be painted in the new "traditional" madder and white colours now being applied to the buses. We would then have had a universal colour scheme for buses and trams. Wouldn't that have made more sense?

Craigie Boy

We don't do sense round here. Finally, house prices in the city are up 14 per cent.

This is great news why? Very few people's salaries have risen 14 per cent in the past 2 years, this just makes housing more unaffordable.

The cheerleaders for housing inflation are just as responsible as the reckless bankers for all the cuts we're going to have to stomach.

A Friend of Fernando Poo