Letters: Badge doubters must open eyes to range of disability

IN RESPONSE to the letter by Ivor Birnie, (Change criteria for Blue Badges, News, July 26), am I the only person in Edinburgh with a disability who is sick to the back teeth of reading about how someone who can walk, talk and move their arms cannot possibly be "disabled"?

Mr Birnie is welcome to try my disability at any time because it has cost me my house, my job, my car and my entire way of life. Had it not been for the steadfastness of my loving wife, Shirley, it could perhaps have cost me my marriage.

On June 25, 1987, an excellent surgeon at the Western General Hospital saved my life by removing the right temporal lobe of my brain which had become diseased. This part controls memory and emotion.

However, the epilepsy with which I have been left for the last 23 years precludes me from working and, by law, from driving. It also means that I can have a seizure at any time and I get no warning. Fortunately, the medication I take daily keeps this under some control.

The Blue Badge on my wife's car allows her to drive me to and from my destination and to collect me should I require attention. Should Mr Birnie see my wife on her way to collect me from somewhere she might be alone in the car, so must she remove the Blue Badge?

Mr Birnie should perhaps turn his thoughts to those drivers who park in disabled spaces but do not have a Blue Badge, and who therefore stop disabled people of all types from comfortably reaching their destinations. I think this is far more important.

Derek Cochrane, Ferry Gait Crescent, Edinburgh

Wide waists are straining the load

I WAS shocked when I read that the waistline in trousers for some children is to increase from 28 inches to 41 inches as if no-one would notice.

This size of waistline should not be normalised, and any child requiring this size of trouser should be told they are overweight. Most people would call this, in plain and simple terms, fat.

On Monday, it was reported that Britain's fattest woman died because of her obesity, aged 40. She weighed in at 45 stone. Was this not another preventable death of a young person?

We have been told that we have a ticking timebomb because of obesity, and our health services are going to be unable to cope in the future.

Is the time not right to bring back proper physical and dietary education in our schools? Anyone taking a walk through our city just now is bound to see the growing problem of obesity that appears to be only getting worse in our country. Government needs to start acting now by educating the young and the older generations by telling them that these are preventable diseases.

Andrew Murphy, Royal Mile, Edinburgh

How to stop bed bugs from biting

regarding your front page story on Saturday (Filth and the Fury), please refrain from writing about the existence of bed bugs as biological fact.

Insects come from outside into the property. An obvious source of entry for minute creatures would be a slack window which urgently needed repairing. These properties are no longer wind or water tight and attract creatures that enjoy moist conditions.

Not attending to repairs contributes in no small way to the human social catastrophe caused by an unstoppable invasion of insects from outside.

There is a common belief that council accommodation is the best in the land, but this is not always true.

Margaret McSeveney, Halmyre Street, Edinburgh

Pupils get too much freedom

It IS all very well to complain about the conduct of school pupils (Teachers' rape threat terror from yob kids, News, July 26), but why are they being allowed to behave in such a manner?

It is the political parties who decided to scrap all forms of punishment, including the belt.The authorities were warned.

C.J.R. Fentiman, Polwarth Gardens Edinburgh