Letters Page

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Hard-won freedoms

SIR, – You were right to say “Tory deserves an apology over arrest” in your editorial Comment (November 29) on the arrest of Conservative frontbencher Damian Green.

It should be deeply worrying for all who value our hard-won basic freedoms such as parliamentary privilege – importantly so when other happenings are taken into account like threats to our free press by extending “privacy”.

It goes without saying that we all condemn terrorism, but aren’t democratic freedoms at risk of being undermined if anti-terrorism laws are used in a Draconian way?

Often it is said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Perhaps a warning from the German philosopher Hegel is more apt: “What experience and history teach us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history.”

It is up to us ordinary people to speak out.

Ellis Thorpe,

Albany,

Old Chapel Walk,

Inverurie.

Destruction of a cycleway

SIR, – The cycleway/path which runs between Forres and Brodie alongside the A96 is being dug up to improve drainage and facilitate a new 1metre hard strip at the edge of the road. If the work had been carried out at the other side of the road, it would not have been necessary to dig up the cycleway/path.

For the last few summers, I have contacted Transport Scotland and Bear to try to have the overgrowth cut back, so the cycleway/path could once again be user friendly. Both organisations failed to respond.

It seems that because someone forgot to map this path, it does not exist in the minds of Transport Scotland. Bear even wrote that the path was only 300metres long and went nowhere. This was untrue: the cycleway was linked into Number 1 Cycle Route (North Sea Route) at Brodie level crossing.

In a week in which we had the death of a pedestrian at the Dalcross area of the A96, Transport Scotland has issued advice that we can use the 1metre hard strip at the side of the road instead of the cycleway/path which is being destroyed. This is very dangerous advice. The strip is not nearly as safe as a separate cycleway.

The road upgrade is suppose to make it safer for drivers, not create an extra hazard for them.

The sections of path that remain are being buried with topsoil.

Neil Jeronim,

Arrowdale,

Loanhead,

Dyke, Forres.

Personal finances

SIR, – What a crazy country we live in, with a crazier chancellor and government in office.

It makes no sense to me to hand out more money by way of VAT reductions and lower interest charges to encourage spending by those who, by living outwith their means already, put the UK in its serious financial situation.

Those who spend what they can afford and live within their means and accumulate savings are penalised by falling values of houses and investments and by having their incomes reduced through lower interest rates. Then, in a year or two, the government will penalise them further by increasing tax on those investment incomes.

Perhaps I am old fashioned and missing the point.

J.W. Cradock,

King’s Gate,

Aberdeen.

Council bureaucrats

SIR, – While reading with mounting incredulity the ongoing saga of the Culter Theatre Club pantomime, I cannot help thinking that if the bureaucrats who administer the accounts of Aberdeen City Council were as pedantic as the bureaucrats who administer the licensing regulations, maybe the council would not be £51million in debt.

Ian Micklethwaite,

40 Redcloak Drive,

Stonehaven.

Nuclear waste storage

SIR, – I was interested to read (Letters, November 29) of R.D. Don's past association with the Lochaline silica sand mine and thank him warmly for his good wishes for our attempt to keep the mine open.

In response to his suggestion that in the event of its closure the mine would be suitable for the long-term storage of nuclear waste, I fear the geology of Loch Aline is even less suitable for the purpose than that in Caithness. We must, therefore, leave him to continue to look after the waste produced by Dounreay in his own county.

Iain Thornber,

chairman,

Morvern Community Council,

Knock House,

Morvern.