Readers' Best Comments

Police officers have teething problems with criminals, while there's all sorts of controversy at the Capital's schools

Two dozen police officers were treated in the last year after being bitten while on duty – half of the attacks came from humans!

I'm willing to bet that a lot of those biting policemen are either drunk neds or junkies. Bring back throwing them to the lions for public entertainment or the stocks.

Helmut the happy nudist

Think how you'd feel if some wee ned bit you. And it's their job to be on the receiving end of this every day. The police should be allowed to do what they need to do to subdue neds quickly and without receiving things like bites. If that means smashing them in the face with a baton, so be it.

Softly spoken mellow North Korean gentleman

Send the biters to the vet to be put down. Scum.

Big Doddles

If you bite a police officer or police civilian, that officer should be allowed to pepper spray you in the face, kick you in the gentleman's area and smash his baton into your face as many times as he or she likes. We can't rely on the courts so the police should be given a free hand to retaliate. Simples.

Rugal

Controversial plans to swap Broomhouse Primary with St Joseph's RC Primary are to go ahead after the Catholic church threatened to block moves for shared school space.

Councillor Marilyne MacLaren, the city's education leader, said: "We understand that this is a very sensitive issue and we always want to be sure that pupils are at the centre of our considerations." Well that would be a first, normally MacLaren is only interested in saving money and spending 35,000 instead of 7,800 smacks of being a further waste of money, but I guess that's what CEC is good at.

Thinner Bob 79

Any religious schools should be funded by their own money and should not be part of the public school system. At the end of the day the Catholic church is loaded. I thought the council was trying to save money?

Keith Mack

If a religious body can use an automatic right of appeal to effectively block a rational proposal like this by threatening an expensive court case, then it's time the Scottish Parliament amended the law. No religious body should be able to hold the democratically-elected government to ransom.

Duncan in Edinburgh

If the non-denominational school were threatening legal action what an outcry there would be of prejudice.

Jams, Edinburgh

So the church can block using the courts, but the others can't, shocking, where is the balance

Amenemhat

As the first flights in a week landed in the Capital, some schools were closed with teachers stuck abroad.

It is disgusting that teachers may lose money by having their salary docked due to not being able to work. Teachers have no choice regarding holiday dates and cannot take this as annual leave.

izzie, dundee

Why should teachers or anybody else in the public sector be treated differently from anybody else? Nobody ordered any of them to go abroad on holiday!

Big T

Teachers are probably the most under-worked and overpaid people in modern society. This bout of skiving is obviously following on from the "snow days" many took during the winter. Each school should be made to publish how many days each teacher has missed.

Uninterested Spectator