BUILDING a bridge to Northern Ireland makes no environmental nor economic sense ("Johnson says ‘Boris bridge’ would be a snip at £15bn", The Herald, September 13). A railway, however, carrying all the freight that currently trundles in huge lorries along one of the worst roads in the UK, would be most welcome. The A75 winds through Galloway from wretched by-pass to by-pass while the railway, axed in the 1960s lies waiting to solve the problem.

It is a surely a mark of Boris Johnson’s ignorance of Scotland, his lack of vision and care for the environment, undiluted by any feedback from his newly-appointed Scottish agent, Alistair Jack, that he misses the deep irony of this latest fantastical and theatrical diversion.

Reinstatement of the railway between Cairnryan and Dumfries, with upgraded links to Glasgow, Leith, Rosyth and Dundee, not to mention Aberdeen, is exactly the sort of investment regularly made by the EU within a peripheral, but significant, independent member state.

There’s the vision: just one of the very real possibilities that lie ahead for Scotland. Westminster is not fit to govern: the incompetence and ignorance is plain for all to see and the bridge idea is just one example.

It really is time, in more ways than one, to choose another route.

Frances McKie, Evanton.

Pipe down…

YOUR report that children might sleep through a domestic fire alarm (The Herald, September 13), brought back memories of bagpipes played indoors at home at a wee “do” which roused the three young ones in a state of disorientated alarm in a wild cacophony the like of which I have never experienced in the 50 years since.

Never repeated, responsible parenting resumed after this lapse, social workers were not involved, and surprisingly, the roof remained intact.

R Russell Smith, Kilbirnie.