I WAS heartened to read the piece by Sam Clarke in last Thursday's Evening Times - finally someone puts into words what a great many people have been thinking for a long time.

Time and again it seems drivers are demonised as wholly responsible for accidents involving pedestrians, and a pedestrian has the unalienable right to do whatever they want on a road, with no need to think about consequences.

Successive governments seem to have forgotten that pedestrians are road users too and also have a duty of care. They have a section all to their own in the Highway Code. The Green Cross Code (remember that?) was entirely for them. And no-one seems to use it any more.

Why should they, when a lawyer can take their case and argue that: "Yes, my client was drunk/tired/careless/reckless/stupid, but it wasn't their fault they stepped onto the road without looking. The driver should have been psychic." DAVID MacDONALD Lanarkshire Labour's mudslinging

Labour's most recent scaremongering and negative attack on the SNP (SNP Executive will shut schools and hospitals') is yet another example of its fear-driven election campaign.

By contrast the SNP's policies to make Scotland more successful by lowering school class sizes, keeping vital health services local, and reducing business rates are increasingly winning support amongst Scots.

That's why our vote is thriving and Labour is floundering, especially in Glasgow. For clarity, an SNP government will match the current school and hospital building programme brick for brick, and will also offer a Scottish Futures Trust as a new, better value option for future capital funding. We want a scheme which doesn't take money away from front line services.

Where the SNP has positive policies, Labour has nothing new to say.

It's time for a real debate about how to make Glasgow and Scotland a better place to live, rather than more of Labour's negative and inaccurate mudslinging. Nicola Sturgeon MSP via e-mail Charges add insult to injury

WITH the implementation of car parking charges at Glasgow hospitals, we would like to raise some further points.

Car parking charges will mean some nurses will need to work for two hours simply to pay for the daily charge.

Most nurses in Glasgow are still waiting for their back pay from Agenda for Change due from October 2004. No interest will be paid on this.

Our pay increase this April is below inflation - equivalent to a pay cut. Car parking charges add insult to injury. Ruth Cantlay, Cheryl Cowan, Marian Gahagan, Morven Kent, Andrew Rankine, Iona Simpson, Frances Staunton, Margaret Tough, Lynn Trearty Real cost of dropping litter

THE Evening Times is to be congratulated on its high-profile approach to focus public attention on litter.

When people are challenged by police or council officers about dropping litter, their usual replies are: (a) There wasn't a litter bin handy. Solution: Hold onto your waste until you find a litter bin!

(b) Why aren't you catching criminals; sorting the holes in the road; improving schools? Answer: If we don't do something drastic about litter soon, it will be totally out of control.

(c) Dropping litter keeps people like you in a job. Answer: Actually, we'd prefer to see the millions of pounds spent each year on litter removal and street sweeping transferred to other services.

JOHN F CRAWFORD Scottish Centre of the Chartered Institution of Waste Management WRITE: Evening Times, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB. Please include your name and address. E-MAIL: letters@eveningtimes.co.uk Please include postal address. TEXT: key in the word 'etletters', leave a space then send your comments to 88010. Max 160 characters. Please include your name or initials and where you're from. Texts cost 25p at all times.