Ding dong merrily on high

Council meeting yesterday went on for an awful long time to not much effect. Perhaps the only two debates worth mentioning...Meadowbank and The National Concordat...both highly attributable to the SNP.
Meadowbank is going nowhere and if it wasn't for the amusement of watching the Administration dancing on the point of a thousand hot needles there would be nothing to smile about at all.
Now, I will be the first to admit Labour's decision in the dog days of the last Administration to review the plans for Meadowbank has contributed to the current debacle...if we had remained resolute in the teeth of local hostility the plans would have gone ahead ...it wouldn't have been good community politics but it certainly would have moved the agenda forward...and if the new Administration had accepted the recommendations of the Christie Inquiry then the plans would have gone ahead too... but they bottled their chance too.
So now, due to the vacillation of councillors of all parties, the city's sports strategy is in tatters - you can't blame folk for thinking the City of Edinburgh Council couldn't run a church tombola!

The National Concordat is an illusion of democracy: over the twenty years I have been in local government there has been attempt after attempt by Central Government to circumscribe the autonomy of local government: rate capping; sending in the commissionars; local government re-organisation - you name it...and short of actually scrapping local government altogether...they've tried it! But the Tartan Tories...oops I mean the SNP...have come up with the best wheeze of all...they'll now set local government spending priorities and they'll set 100% of local government income...we are one short step away from scrapping councils altogether

Ding dong merrily on high!