Cyclists beware

When I was growing up in Edinburgh in the Fifties and Sixties, I cycled everywhere and never once came to grief over tramlines – and there were a lot more of them then.

Every cyclist was well aware of the risk and if I had got caught in the rails I would have been embarrassed by my own clumsiness. The idea that “I bore no responsibility” for my own lack of skills would never have occurred to me.

The recent ruling in court against Edinburgh Council illustrates yet again that in modern society some groups can do no wrong while others can do no right.

In my cycling days people who couldn’t ride safely from A to B without injuring themselves were considered to be the architects of their own misfortune. But personal responsibility is so 20th century. GRAHAM M MCLEOD

Muirs, Kinross