Readers’ letters: Learn a lesson from Dundee

In true Blackadder’s Baldrick thinking, I’ve come up with a plan more cunning than a fox with two tails.

If the city councillors Lumsden, Laing, Boulton and Crockett were to pay, say, £20 into a fund every time the EE printed their photos and £10 each time they had a comment printed, in no time at all the city would have no financial problems.

Their latest pie-in-the-sky utterances about Union Street and the beach so-called masterplan are simply beyond belief.

A new path and more unwanted cycle lanes is the limit of their ambitions. New leisure facilities would be welcome, but I suspect – like their Art Gallery, Provost Skene’s House and Union Terrace Gardens projects – will be delivered late and hugely over budget, but then it’s not their money they’re spending.

The one thing in their favour is that they can really talk the talk. They should look at Dundee and see what they are doing at their waterfront to see how to do it but, of course, Dundee is run by an SNP administration which in reality so should Aberdeen had it not been for the unholy alliance of Tory and Labour to keep the party which won the most seats out of power.

David West.

City centre ghost town

RE the story about empty shelves at Debenhams, Aberdeen city centre is going to be a ghost town with no shops to go to when we are back to normal.

I, for one, do not like shopping online and know a lot of people who feel the same would love to see smaller shops like we had before the big designer shops took over. So time to rethink the extortionate rates they charge and give people a chance to get up and on their feet again, and try to bring back a centre to be proud of and enjoy going to and having a day out with friends when we are free.

CR.

Very very sad! I do believe, however, that Covid has been the final nail in the coffin.

People have the convenience of shopping online but so many others still enjoy the experience of shopping in-store.

SW.