Readers' letters: New holiday let rule will hit council tax

Those providing holiday lets will soon require a licence.

Part of the new legislation allows councils to set short-term rental zones, which were originally intended to limit the numbers of homes taken out of the local housing market.

When a zone is implemented, all short-term lets will require planning approval. Provided they meet the standards these should be passed.

Most will then qualify for full business rates relief and will not be required to pay council tax.

They will operate free from local tax and pay nothing towards local services.

If every holiday let did this, it would result in thousands of properties being removed from local taxation. What effect will this loss of council tax have on services and others who pay?

Alastair Murray, Edinburgh.

Road pollution levels are not dangerous

The report by Ian Swanson on the Low Emission Zone and the alleged toxic hot zone of St John’s Road in Corstorphine complete with an apparent smog-laden grainy picture in the mode of downtown Shanghai on a hot day really does take the biscuit (News, 25 January).

I am sure he has read the council report derived from the chemical analysis gathered by the big grey box at the junction with Clermiston Road, which is about as close to an exhaust pipe as one can get and enhanced by the fact that the traffic light sequence holds buses and lorries for a few minutes to maximise the desired result.

But the Council Transport Convener is even sneakier because the "danger" level of particulates is entirely bogus, because the actual levels have been reducing year on year.

To further cement this scam, the levels are below the EU and UK government danger line and are quite ordinary, indeed safe, but the council and the Scottish Government have altered that safe level for their bogus report to an absurd and unscientific amount so that they get the scary headline they desire for their politically motivated and nefarious anti-car and anti-human "green" agenda.

Looking at where this anti-car, anti-human policy derives from and who is behind it, I am unsure whether Ian has read the conclusions of the Global Sustainable Transport Conference, held in Turkmenistan 2016.

This is where the solution of the UN plan was disseminated to all world governments which eventually filtered down to town council level and impacts our daily lives, which in my little world means the lunatics from CEC are stealing my car.

Gary Smith, Edinburgh.

The secret life of the Bard, Rabbie Burns

I was struck by the activities of a group of Scotland’s leading female poets, publishing new work highlighting the negative treatment of women by national bard, Robert Burns.

For many of those from the past who we celebrate, removing the tartan blinkers and acknowledging aspects of individual’s lives we find uncomfortable can prove challenging.

In addition to Burns’ attitude to women, and unbeknown to many, it is worth remembering that the Bard, author of The Slave's Lament, had he not been rescued financially through the success of his Kilmarnock Edition of poems, would have sailed like many Scots to Jamaica for a job as an overseer on a slave plantation.

While we as a nation re-evaluate our past, we should not shy away from the hard truths about individuals that we have often put on a pedestal and venerated. As Burns said, “O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us; To see oursels as ithers see us!”

Alex Orr, Edinburgh.

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