Readers' letters: Spaces for People is window dressing

"The cost in terms of delay and inconvenience to the majority of citizens and businesses far outweighs any perceived benefit”

Controversial: Spaces for People

Spaces for People is window dressing

On reading Lesley Macinnes’ Spaces for People article (News, June 2) one has to wonder why advocaters believe that they are beneficial to many people except their own egos.

The traffic chaos they cause around the city is unbelievable, which must result in more pollution than when the traffic was allowed to move more freely. Some of schemes are nothing short of farcical.

The cost in terms of delay and inconvenience to the majority of citizens and businesses far outweighs any perceived benefit.

I am sure like many people I have looked at the pavement widening schemes and wondered what on earth this is all about, given at most times the low number of people around.

You would have to also question why a company installing super-fast broadband cables around the city has been allowed to undertake the project at this time, given the reduction in space this creates.

We also have to question the Covid science on the basis that thousands of Rangers fans congregating after the match and Palestine protesters gathering in Glasgow has had apparently no effect on the increase in Covid cases.

One could suggest the CEC is simply using the SFP issue within the Temporary Traffic Restriction Orders to phase in implementation of its longer-term goals against the will of the majority of Edinburgh citizens.

Eric Anderson, Duddingston, Edinburgh.

Football has sold its soul to TV companies

The almost knee-jerk paranoia of a section of Scotland football fans was predictably out in full force after Wednesday night’s international friendlies.

STV was lambasted for showing the England game via their ITV link and basically the complaint was that only cable or satellite service Sky – which must be available to over 90 per cent of the population these days – showed the Holland-Scotland game live.

Are they only now realising that football authorities across the world long ago sold out to the highest bidder and that money controls the game these days? They felt it a matter of financial necessity. Sentiment did and could not have come into it. Grievance will, however, always be found by those who seek it. That this comes as a surprise to apparently so many of them is in itself a bigger surprise.

Alexander McKay, New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh.

So just what does Labour stand for?

Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership (twice) campaigning on a platform of free university education.

Millions of young people continue to pay massive tuition fee debts. The burden is causing some to resort to gambling and prostitution.

During the recent council and by elections Labour candidates turned up in a red rosette and said "vote for me, I am the Labour candidate". What did they say about tuition fees? I heard nothing.

Political parties on the left need to say what they are in favour of. They need to offer a positive vision of the future, a realistic way out of debt and a road map to prosperity.

Currently the left is defining itself by what it is against, not what it is for. But even there the message is mixed. The Labour Party is against closing local A&E departments for example, until they are in government, when they have a record of closing them.

Sir Keir Starmer chose this issue to begin his Hartlepool campaign. Gordon Brown shut down Hartlepool A&E in 2008.

If the trumpet gives forth an uncertain sound, who will answer the call?

Nigel Boddy, Darlington (former Holyrood researcher).