LETTERS
Aggressive begging
THE ARTICLE IN your last edition regarding the Evening News campaign against aggressive begging is extremely one-sided and inaccurate.
Your reporter claims to have contacted me and then says I was unavailable for comment. She can't have it both ways. The truth is that I was told I would receive a call from The List which never came, That is certainly not the standard of ingurryl would expect from one of my reporters.
As for the allegation made in the article about the El't.’lilll_(] News, I can only say that it appears from CounCIllor Cavanagh's language it isn’t the Evening News that is ’deranged'
Cllr. Cavanagh obViously thinks anti- social behavrour by a rninOrity lS something we should tolerate. Are we to pre5ume that he also condones shoplifting, common assault and mugging simply because the perpetrators are usually from the bottom end of the social scale? Of course not That would be silly.
Cllr. Cavanagh is at odds With several of his senior colleagues, who agree that anti-social behawour has been tolerated by this City for too long. That is why the housing department is toughening up its procedures to tackle
AGENDA
l Councilor attacks anti-beggi
“Mic l' w'
bad tenants. Or is Cllr. Cavanagh opposed to that as well?
He also has an extremely short memory. The Evening News gave whole-hearted backing to the Councrl’s rough sleeper initiative, and we have long argued that proper facilities are needed to tackle Edinburgh’s homelessness problems.
Our suggested by-law against aggressive begging was drafted by a team of lawyers after the police said a new law was needed, since their prevrous powers had been removed in the reorganisation of local government
I can't see what is so despicable about an attempt to show exactly what the police are talking about and to give the public an idea if Councrllors wrll support it,
We back the police because their posmon Is not Simply a desue for a crackdown. Their View is that the extra
l l I
ng ‘anfics’
powers they seek should be in conjunction with Council measures to tackle homelessness, and a charity scheme to allow the public to make donations. Nothing hysterical in that, I’m sure you’d agree.
Mr Nauman's view is also strange, He says that the police have enough powers . . . to deal wrth those who breach current laws. Well of course they can deal With those who break current laws, it's when there isn’t a law that they can't act.
Too many do-gooders and do- nothings would rather the Evening News ignored the City’s problems, or rolled over like a poodle when the Council ordered.
It might irk Cllr. Cavanagh and others, but the Evening News is not an extension of their pUblK relations department John McLellan.
Editor, Evening News
Hope and charity
'WHEN I GIVE food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask "why" they have no food they call me a communist.’ These are the words of the little known Dom Helder Camara, a one-time archbishop in the north- east ol Brazrl for over twenty years.
Mother Theresa and Princess Diana did indeed have much in common. That dangerous word 'why' was never on their lips. Perhaps this explains in part their iconic stature. Both were sweet, sincere, but most of all, safe, and in the long run utterly irrelevant to the 35,000 innocents who die each day because we live in a world which Violently TCJGCIS any notion of sharing wealth in a more equitable manner.
I don't doubt that the world needs compassion But it needs justice more than charity and perhaps for every embrace it needs the question ’why'? Paul Laverty.
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