Correspondents

MEANINGFUL Vote Three has been rejected by the Commons. The majority for those against the deal has reduced each time but was still a large number. Will we expect to see a fourth episode of this saga next week? We are still faced with the threat of leaving the EU without a deal if Parliament fails to come up with a proposal acceptable to both the Commons and the EU in the next fortnight.

DR Charles Wardrop suggests (Letters, March 23) that billions of pounds are wasted on curbing CO2 emissions. In scientific terms the debate over climate change has been analogous to the cigarette smoking controversy, probably since both have tended to employ statistical arguments to relate cause to effect. In the case of smoking, the question has been whether or not inhalation over time could lead to lung tissue change and cancer.

YOUR article on Edinburgh’s St James Centre development (“The beast is slain, now St James beauty is rising from the rubble”, March 27) describes the site as “mostly hidden from public view”. Oh, that that were so, and that beauty was rising from the rubble. The centrepiece ribbon hotel is described by the developer as “a coquettish Victorian lady”. A far more accurate description was given by the author Candia McWilliam (in a letter to the Herald in 2015) who described it as resem

I HAVE commented about “the utter folly of the targets culture in the Scottish health service” (Letters, The Herald, November 7). A feature of this folly is that specialist review appointments, that is second and subsequent appointments, are not targeted and are therefore sacrificed (rationed) in favour of new (targeted) referrals.

MORE than 50 years have passed since the 1967 Abortion Act.

WELL done Alison Rowat for defining the awful predicament of the UK “between a rock and hard place” on Brexit and for nailing the truth about how we came to be in this mess (“Shame on Conservatives for putting party before country”, The Herald, March 28). A frighteningly rigid prime minister, excluding devolved governments from discussions, driving her agenda only on the basis of what was best for the Tory Party, has pressed on (it seems now quite manically) to this disaster.

THE trial in the Spanish Supreme Court against the leaders of the Catalan independence movement has much more to do with an act of faith than with a 21st century trial in a developed, democratic country in which citizens’ rights are respected.

IN a column in The Herald about John Finnie’s Bill on Equal Protection for Children, Kevin McKenna wrote that, when I was policy chief of Aberlour children’s charity, I advocated that the right to assisted suicide should be lower than the proposed age limit of 16.

I AM sorry Hugh McLoughlin (Letters, March 28) appears to miss the actual trouble with “so”, which is its overuse in opening a reply, doubtless generated by the habit of BBC reporters to so begin their slot, thus setting a bad example to other contributors to a discussion.

IF you were a citizen of one of the other 27 EU nations, would you want the UK to remain as a member (“Brexit chaos continues as May offers to stand down”, The Herald, March 28)? Throughout much of our 46 years in the EU, we’ve been awkward, carping, and only rarely fully committed. Over the past two years, we’ve been endlessly needy, insisting that the rest of Europe focus on our doubts and indecision. The other EU leaders must have had enough by now; there are other things going on in