POINT OF VIEW

loss, they have been seeking ever since to renege on their undertaking and on any pretence that they accepted the democratic decision of the Scottish people in 2014.

These people are obsessives whose commitment to democracy is conditional on its bringing them the success they crave. Voters should demonstrate their contempt for the SNP at the ballot box.

JILL STEPHENSON Glenlockhart Valley, Edinburgh urban renewal schemes such as those of Sir William Chambers and Sir Patrick Geddes in the Old Town, and the Colonies schemes of Stockbridge and Haymarket.

After the 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act came into force the grammar of Scots vernacularism was retained in council developments such as Northfield and Macmerry, and would continue into the 1950s with such well laid-out schemes as The Inch, but disaster struck as councils were persuaded that the ferroconcrete International Style would provide cost-effective shortcuts in housing.

The pernicious effects of Le Corbusier’s megalomaniac blitz-and-build doctrines have been exposed in such documentaries as Adam Curtis’s Great British Housing Disaster, while a Scottish angle on the terrifying mindset of the likes of Glasgow housing chairman David Gibson is reflected in Andrew O’hagan’s novel Our Fathers.

Perhaps Salvador Dali had a point when he described Le Corbusier as “a pitiable creature working in reinforced concrete”. The continuing destruction in central Edinburgh suggests our politicians have learnt nothing from the disaster of the 1960s.

DAVID J BLACK St Giles Street Edinburgh

S. BECK Craigleith Drive, Edinburgh rent relationship between the Ussr/russia and the United States has maintained nuclear restraint since the Soviet acquisition of a balancing force in 1949.

Heretically, in view of the prevailing liberal norm of nuclear non-proliferation, it could also be pointed out that after three full-scale Indiapakistan wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971, none has recurred since their mutual acquisition of a minimal nuclear force after 1974, despite numerous flashpoints such the continuing situation in Kashmir, the Mumbai terror attacks and each other’s meddling in Afghanistan.

Similarly, after full-scale wars between Israel and its neighbouring Arab states in