Letters: Avoid festive rubbish crisis by binning your bad habits

Surely people need to use a bit of common sense and think about how they can adjust their habits over the festive break, especially when they are told that an even bigger problem could be looming?

OK, the council’s waste collection strategy is rubbish but why add further to the problem with self-inflicted misery?

John Addison, Roslin, Midlothian

Brownfield site is quickest solution

In your article “Green for go in Porty fight” (News, December 10), it is claimed that a Private Bill of Parliament to circumvent the legal ruling that Portobello Park cannot be built on will achieve a new school within three years’ time.

There is absolutely no foundation for this claim, as the passage of the Private Bill is by no means certain. Even if it did go through smoothly, it is unlikely that the new school would be delivered in three years. If the council continues to pursue this course of action we could find ourselves four or five years down the line, with no new school in sight.

The quickest way to get a new school is to pursue one of the alternative brownfield sites suggested by the council, be it at Craigmillar, Baileyfield or on the current school site.

It is time for the council to stop wasting time and taxpayers’ money to get around the law and focus its energy and our money on building a new school on a legal site.

Clare Kyndt, Edinburgh

Fracking should have our backing

It is great news that the UK ban on fracking has been lifted. It will lead to warmer homes, cheaper gas and more jobs. As many power stations run on gas it will mean cheaper electricity too. In the United States fracking has led to a halving of gas prices over the last few years. When did we last see our gas or electricity bills going down?

Fracking means that Britain will be self-sufficient in gas for decades. Also, the vast reservoirs of shale gas under England mean that the SNP won’t be able to sustain their grievance around oil.

Notice the lack of wind the last few days, whilst we had all that frost? The wind turbines weren’t working very hard, were they?

If we want full time electricity rather than the part-time stuff offered by the wind lobby, then our options are hydrocarbons or nuclear. Given the unjustified hysteria cynically built up around nuclear power, shale gas from fracking is the next best answer.

Who could be against fracking? Well the subsidy farmers of the wind industry and the politicians who have foolishly backed them have a lot to lose. Also, the Greens who want to enforce austerity, rationing and poverty upon us won’t like it one bit. Frack on, I say!

Otto Inglis, Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh

Hopefully US will throw down guns

One can only hope that New York mayor Michael Bloomberg will be successful in his call for gun control in America. I have said all along that if President Obama had spoken out about gun control, he would have been a dead man walking because of the powerful gun lobby in America.

One can only hope now in light of America’s Dunblane something will now be done.

John Connor, David Henderson Court, Dunfermline

Reward up for return of the ring

Last week I spent a lovely time in Edinburgh on a visit with my family. On a bus journey on Wednesday I was very sad to notice that I had lost a silver ring that my four children had given me for my 60th birthday a few years ago, so it has great sentimental value.

It is quite chunky and has embossed squares around it and is inscribed on the inside with the names that each of my children call me: Mum, Mummy, Mama and Mamma.

I was in various places around the city that day, including Blackford Hill, on several buses, and in North Queensferry, and I suspect that it may have slipped off when I took off my gloves at some point. I wonder if anyone might have found it? I would love to have it back and would be very happy to offer a reward.

Hazel Richardson, Romany Cottage, Village Road, Coleshill, Amersham  HP7 0LR