Readers' Letters: Potholes prevalence is problem caused by council choices

Transport Convenor Stephen Jenkinson said: “We’ll continue to do the best we can for the city with the resources we have available”. I take issue with this statement. This is a problem created entirely by the council – in recent years they have prioritised a range of vanity projects – the lowering of kerbs, the use of plastic bollards to create makeshift and largely unused cycle lanes, the closure of roads to create community spaces (again, largely unused), the replacement of pavements that had very little wrong with them in the first place, and the repainting of lines over obviously broken roads.

These are either entirely wasteful or extremely niche priority calls effecting the few when the majority cannot use the roads for driving or cycling safety. The council shouldn’t be allowed to start any new projects until they have sorted out the basics.

Gavin Neilson, Edinburgh

Share bus lanes

Harold Tobermann, Chair of Edinburgh Bus Users Group, is being disingenuous (Letters, 7 June).

No one that I am aware of is objecting to the idea of bus lanes as a means of helping traffic flow in the rush hours.

What is ridiculous is the proposal to extend the working of the bus lanes as a 24/7 proposition. The prospect of queues of cars crawling along the outside lane while the bus lanes lie largely empty for the whole day is simply stupid. It will create congestion and it will create pollution and it will certainly not “go some way to reallocating the communal road space more fairly”.

This experiment was tried several years ago and abandoned as a result of total unfairness to car users.

Brian Bannatyne-Scott, Edinburgh

Reform on track

The most interesting thing about the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election for Holyrood is not who won, Labour, nor the fact that the voting was a three-way split between them, the SNP and Reform UK, but where Reform’s votes came from.

Compared to their vote share in the constituency in last Holyrood election four years ago, the SNP vote dropped by almost 17 per cent of the votes cast and the Tory vote by 11.5 per cent. Labour’s vote-share actually went down by 2 per cent as well. This means that Reform UK’s 26 per cent of the vote came more from parties of the Left than the Tories. Clearly Reform are not just a threat to the Conservatives.

In the climate of dissatisfaction with the established parties, Reform is on track to be a force at Holyrood next year.

Otto Inglis, Ansonhill, Fife

Farage rejected

Many valid and intelligent conclusions have been drawn from the result of the Hamilton by-election. However, there is one conclusion that doesn't seem to have been given much airing, ie that three-quarters of the voters in Hamilton want nothing to do with the pernicious, far-right poison preached by Reform.

David Hamill, East Linton, East Lothian

Apology needed?

Why did Dawn French feel the need to apologise for calling out the genocide in Gaza? Why was Gary Lineker punished by the BBC for doing the same? Yes, the Holocaust should never be forgotten but it doesn't justify one against the Palestinian people.

Gail Kirkland, Bowmore, Islay

Remember heroes

As the British Army was forced to retreat on 12 June 1940 the 51st Highland Division – mainly Black Watch, Seaforths, Argylls, left under the command of the French – were ordered to stand and defend to the end the perimeter of Dunkirk, against overwhelming odds, to allow the evacuation of around 331,000 soldiers. This they did.

During the ten-day battle 20,000 were casualties and the remaining 10,000 were forced back to St Valery-en-caux, where they were trapped by high cliffs behind and the full weight of Panzer divisions in front. No ships could get near to take them off, there was no longer any ammunition, and two days later, on 12 June 1940, surrender was unavoidable. Nearly all men were captured and marched off to Stalag 344, in occupied and destroyed Poland. Those who survived the forced labour camps (only officers went to POW camps) were not released until May 1945.

This was all kept hidden so that the morale boosting “miracle” of Dunkirk would not be undercut by the disaster of the 51st Division’s sacrifice only ten days later. Relatives did not get news for years, some not until the war ended; the lives of many of the survivors were shortened; and the men whose actions had made Dunkirk possible were ignored. Every Highland village lost men, and yet little was made of St Valery – apart from those immediately connected – for the next 80 years.

During their long imprisonment the 51st Division, with many pipers, produced much music, including the “Reel of the 51st Division” and later “The Heroes of St Valery”, written by Pipe Major Donald MacLean (who died in 1964 aged just 56). In 2020 three Scottish Armed Forces charities organised a tribute, and pipers (and others players) all over the world brought the memory of these men, mostly long dead, to mind.

Every year since 1940 much attention is rightly given to the courage of those involved in the Dunkirk rescue, including many who perished on the “little” boats. Such commemoration should also be paid, every year, perhaps by playing “their tune”, to the men who fought on, to guaranteed disaster, with no rescue, in order that so many could be saved at Dunkirk – the heroes of St Valery-en-caux.

Remember the Heroes of St Valery-en-Caux: The 51st Highland Division, on 12 June 1940.

Susan FG Forde, Scotlandwell, Kinross-shire

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