I enjoyed the BBC documentary about the relationship between US president Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
The saddest part of that relationship was the failure to reach agreement over nuclear disarmament with Russia, due to Reagan’s insistence on keeping his doomed Star Wars missile defence system.
Then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev was up for changing Russia, and he oversaw the dismantling of the old Soviet Union, which was incompetent, corrupt, and blew billions on weapons of mass destruction.
Reagan presided over the wholesale destruction of American industry and spent billions on his crazy Star Wars project, which was a doomed attempt at shooting down ICBM weapons in space.
Now we have a throwback to the Cold War days, with a former KGB officer in Putin. Nuclear war seems as big a threat as ever.
Andrew Lamb, West Road, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire
Wrong track
I read the piece in the EE about the Campaign for North East Rail with a sceptical eye, as it seemed to me very much a case of politicians just not wanting to say no with elections so close.
The refurbishment of the 40-year-old HST diesel train sets for main city lines north of the central belt cost more than £50 million and they were only fully introduced in 2021. The tragic crash at Carmont highlighted the basic fact that these trains were never built to modern safety standards and as such Aslef, the train drivers union, has called for the entire fleet to be withdrawn by August 2023.
This could mean drivers refusing to drive them and a requirement for new trains to be introduced, at more huge expense. But these would still be diesel trains with all the pollution implications of fossil fuels (and this proposed rural route to Ellon and beyond would probably be served by similar old diesel stock).
Only the central belt has widespread electrification of rail services. Surely the electrification of railways between all the main cities in Scotland should be a higher priority than even considering a new-build service to rural locations that was closed because it wasn’t economically viable in the first place.
Ian Craig, Aberdeen