Opinion

Today’s front page highlighting the amount of rubbish left at the city’s beauty spots over the Easter weekend attracted a big reader response. Here are some of your thoughts:

While the internet undoubtedly offers innumerable ­benefits to our society, it also has the potential to cause huge issues.

Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old Swedish girl, impresses Hayley Matthews with her impassioned speech to a United Nations meeting on climate change.

Devolution has been a disaster for Scottish education – and the SNP are making it worse with obsession over independence, writes Brian Monteith.

Many people living in sheltered housing live rich and active lives, but are we doing enough to respect their demands, wonders Kezia Dugdale.

School league tables based on so-called ‘positive destinations’ for pupils after they leave can create a misleading impression, writes Kezia Dugdale.

On her recent visit to Europe, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, addressed members of Ireland’s Dail (the lower house of the Irish parliament). She was attending an event that marked the centenary of its founding during revolution against British rule. But, beyond the symbolism of the historical moment, Pelosi’s presence signified a diplomatic intimacy between her nation and Ireland in the midst of Brexit-induced uncertainties, writes Professor Liam Kennedy.

The ‘Remain’ parties – the SNP, Greens and Liberal Democrats – could do well in the EU elections in Scotland, writes Ian Swanson.

A chance encounter on a train brought Alex Cole-Hamilton face-to-face with one of the conspiracy theorists putting lives at risk

Political discourse in Scotland needs to be reassessed and politicians from all sides of the debate should stand up to hate and abuse wherever they see it, and in particular online where the tone and temper of debate can escalate to extremes all too quickly.

I was invited to speak to a group of teenagers on climate strike in Oxford recently. Like many scientists, I support the strikes, but also find them disturbing. Which I’m sure is the idea, writes Professor Myles Allen.

Conditions were so bad during the North Russia campaign at the end of the First World War that Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was called in to help, writes Professor Yvonne McEwan.

Edinburgh is not just a city of beautiful, protected, architecture, it is a city whose buildings tell the history of our society and its changes, writes Christine Jardine.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon loves a good read, and I am sure she will recognise this Burns quote: “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” Or in plain English: Oh, would some Power give us the gift, to see ourselves as others see us!

Recorded crime is down 40% in Scotland in the last ten years, but the statistics don’t tell the whole story, warns Tom Wood

I grew up in more innocent days, when hardcore porn was your dad’s stash of Playboy under his bed.

Growing old sucks. Bones, literally, creak when you move too quickly. Stairs you once ran up, two at a time, suddenly take on the incline of Ben Nevis. And 8.30 pm becomes your default bedtime, or maybe 9pm if Phil and Kirstie are on the telly.

It’s time to start the healing process by reaching out to reasonable people on all sides – and marginalising the extremists – says Robert Aldridge