Letters: Capital commuter trains are like Third World experience

Are these commuters different to those who have on many occasions on the Fife line endured being squeezed into two carriages at peak times in the mornings and evenings?

Why are commuters on this service not afforded the same service as the Glasgow line?

I and others do not have many options of travel from my home in Dalmeny to Edinburgh – First Bus only, and no access to Lothian Buses as we should have as we pay council tax to Edinburgh.

I use the train every day to get to and from my work.

This line should be afforded the same standard of service as the Glasgow line.

To be packed into the trains at night is like something out of a Third World country and must breach all health and safety regulations.

If these trains were in an accident there would not be many survivors due to this overcrowding.

Phillip Horwood, Ochil Court, South Queensferry

The rising tide of climate hysteria

To answer Bob Dalgleish (Letters, November 7), the claim of man-made climate change is a hysterical reaction to an unsubstantiated computer-based theory which was seized on by opportunists who then set about uncovering “facts” to support it. Everything about the “save-the-planet” campaign is exaggerated; Gordon Brown was prime minister when he declared we had “only 50 days left to save the world”. Nothing has changed in the interim.

Mr Dalgleish raises the spectre of disappearing Arctic ice cover. All our oceans are interconnected, so unless there are sea hills somewhere, the melted ice water must disperse throughout the globe.

Yet the Maldives, the world’s lowest-lying country at a few feet above sea level, shows no rise: not only that, its government plans to build new airports.

If people in such a supposedly precarious situation don’t fear the results of increased CO2 emissions, why should we?

Robert Dow, Ormiston Road, Tranent

Serving up Apple will slice costs

Gina Davidson’s column wrongly suggested that the council is going to spend more on printing this year despite having introduced iPads for councillors to use at meetings (News, November 8).

The figures she used were taken from an earlier press agency story which related to a three-month period before we were using iPads and while they were being phased in, during which time copies of committee business were still being printed routinely. It is hardly surprising that we didn’t save money during that period, and there was never any intention to do so.

However, since then by using iPads we have cut down on our printing hugely. We are well on the way to saving around £100,000 this year and £160,000 in future years.

Alastair Maclean, director of corporate governance