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DERBYSHIRE, - JANUARY 30: A woman collects grit from a grit bin as she walks her dogs in the village of Tintwistle in the High Peak district on January 30, 2019 in Derbyshire, United Kingdom. Travellers face delays as snow and icy conditions have hit parts of the United Kingdom. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

City grit bins need filling urgently

I note that sub zero temperatures are forecast over the next few days with sleet and hail forecast for today and heavy snow forecast for tomorrow.

Yet despite it having been reported the grit bins in the southern reaches of Ward 10 remain empty. This has been the case since the turn of the year!

Cllr Lesley Macinnes again stresses the support for her Spaces for People and safe cycle routes (News, January 13). I can only think she only listens to her sycophants and not the general population. I am sure that nurses etc after a gruelling shift on the covid wards will relish cycling home in sub zero temperatures.

Many key workers live at a distance from their work. Currently government advice is not to use public transport unless essential.

People in the outer reaches of the city are becoming more and more isolated. Not everyone is capable of cycling or walking long distances. Walking becoming more difficult if pavements are not gritted and local residents cannot do it themselves if grit boxes are not replenished.

I yet again request that the grit bins be replenished as a matter of urgency! Surely this is more important than expanding the cycle network which is scarcely used.

Ian Vandepeear, Pentland Grove, Edinburgh.

We need an elderly National Care Service

We’re all taught as children to respect our elders, to cherish and value the people who are our veterans, nurses, teachers, parents; the people who gave us our world and in whose position we will eventually find ourselves.

But some see our elderly as cash cows waiting to be milked; their vulnerability and age, not reasons to care but to exploit. These are the private care home profiteers.

Their unparalleled ability to sweep the abuses that happen in their homes under the rug proves their priorities are not with our elderly but with their own pockets.

Scotland is making a name for herself on the international stage as a country with an eye for progress. Her mentors cannot be left to the wolves.

The Scottish Socialist Party’s proposal of a free at the point of need style National Care Service could be the opportunity we need to revolutionise the current failing system.

By putting care into the hands of the public, care homes would be under the order of those who live in care homes, those who have family members in care homes, and those for whom residential care is in their future.

Sophie Amkhan, South Sloan Street, Edinburgh.

Salmond inquiry limits are worrying

The SNP has refused to widen the remit of the committee of inquiry into whether Nicola Sturgeon broke the ministerial code in the matter of the Salmond affair.

Why is it up to the SNP to decide the terms by which its own leader should be judged? Why were the terms of reference drawn very narrowly in the first place?

Why has this refusal occurred after John Swinney recently promised that the inquiries into this affair should be able to cover whatever their members deemed appropriate? Why is this happening when Ms Sturgeon assures us that she has nothing to hide?

This is the conduct of a government that has already been shown to be less than transparent in it dealings. It is hard to resist the feeling that this is a government, and a leader, who are desperate to constrain the inquiry and for truths to remain as dormant as sleeping dogs.

Jill Stephenson, Glenlockhart Valley, Edinburgh.