The City of Capital
Edinburgh’s decline into a theme park has been charted for years, and the recent victory to Save the People’s Story stands out as an exception against a backdrop of relentless social cleansing, homelessness (the Scottish capital is home to the largest number of people living in temporary accommodation) and culture-washing.
The city’s problems are structural – it is a city of capital rather than a capital city. It’s purpose is hard-wired into its streets and architecture. As William McIlvanney writes in his novel Strange Loyalties, Edinburgh was:
“…built to be a Hanoverian clearing-house of the Scottish identity. The very street names declare what’s happening, like an announcement of government policy in stone: you have Princes Street and George Street and Queen Street with, in among them, Hanover Street and Rose Street and Thistle Street. Any way you count it, the result is the defeat of Scottishness. This was an identity superimposed on the capital of Scotland, an attempted psyche-transplant: ‘Scottishness may have been a life but Britishness can be a career.’
But if Edinburgh’s problems are historic, and symbolic, it is not helped by its current leadership. We know that Cammy Day was forced to resign from his job as leader of the Labour administration in the capital following allegations he had bombarded two Ukrainian refugees with multiple messages on social media. The councillor, who was suspended by his party last weekend, faces a police investigation into claims he acted “inappropriately”.
Amazingly, Labour continue to run the city council with just ten councillors.
Day’s suspension from the party amid a police investigation has left the Labour group – which has been in minority administration of the city since 2022 – with just 10 out of the council’s 63 seats. As the Evening News reports: “Labour took control of the council after the last local elections in May 2022 thanks to the votes of Lib Dem and Tory councillors, thwarting a rival power bid by an SNP-Green coalition. Some Lib Dem and Tory councillors were given “non-political” roles in return for their support.”
Now, in keeping with the city’s entire raison d’etre, the Daily Record report: “The former leader of Edinburgh City Council is being investigated by the local authority following a claim he was acting as an unregistered landlord…It can now be revealed that Day faces another council probe into whether he is renting out properties in his ownership.”
“In a leaked internal email seen by the Record, council chief executive Paul Lawrence said council officers had visited a property owned by Day. The local authority boss wrote: “It would appear that it is indeed tenanted and there is no landlord registered. Cllr Day is the owner of the property.”
Nothing could be more appropriate for a city run by and for those that own it, not those who live in it. As I wrote back in March:
“The housing crisis – in its many dimensions – means social cleansing, in the case of Edinburgh this has an added element of art-washing and a city re-designed almost exclusively for the tourist industry. Huge numbers of people have moved to, or are stuck in the periphery and operate through precarious work and in the gig economy to service the theme park that has transformed much of the social fabric of the city.”
“What we are witnessing is the culmination of years of problems exacerbated by the end of council housing, an unregulated and deregulated rental market and the rise of a rentier class with a powerful clandestine political and legal clout.”
With the Cammy Day resignation Edinburgh Council is now in full crisis, but this is an opportunity for a revolt against the failed leadership of the city. The city’s housing crisis is not some mistake, it’s the strategy they have implemented over years.
The dark paradox is that Edinburgh is not short of money, it is awash with it.
As local campaigner Jim Slaven has written (Edinburgh: From Enlightenment To Chronic City, Local government in Scotland’s capital is broken): “The Council has recently agreed to spend £500k on Edinburgh 900. A celebration of the 900th anniversary of the city becoming a royal burgh. Privately councillors and officers will admit this project has been a disaster. The starting point seems to have been to spend the money on a logo design and signage and a few events in the expectation this would leverage in some corporate funding. It has not. Which is unsurprising because there seems to be very little thought went into why the Council are doing it. What is the purpose? What outcomes for citizens can be expected? How are these outcomes to be measured? And, crucially for our discussion, how does Edinburgh 900 fit into the ‘telling of Edinburgh’s story’? It will surprise nobody who lives in Edinburgh to know the Council do not have answers to any of these basic questions.”
The city needs direction beyond the relentless accumulation of resources by a few and a purpose beyond servicing the hordes of visitors flown in to Turnhouse.
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Another excellent article. City of Edinburgh Council’s plans to build so-called “affordable housing” in West Granton (still unaffordable for most of us), destroying West Granton Ponds in the process. says it all. If the vast number of AIR B&Bs were instead rented out as affordable long term lets, it would go some way towards sorting out the housing crisis. It breaks my heart to see all the homeless people on the streets of Edinburgh at any time of year, but in this freezing weather, it is even more inexcusable that they are left in this situation.
Well said
ach dutch or german, yous lot are close inuff
DAN’S XMAS MESSAGE PART 2
Dear Sir/Madam, Thank you for your timeous reply & for your clarification of the situation regarding my entitlement to a full reimbursement & refurbishment if not to cover the cost of every trip then at least every 2nd trip to the Department for Work & Pensions via public transportation which, as I’m sure you are more than aware, would involve me taking the bus. A bus by the way which is run by a private company whose ethics I strongly disagree with. Perhaps, like myself, you will have signed your name to the recent grassroots campaign seeking to commemorate the 60th anniversary of that final rail passenger journey between Lossiemouth & Elgin with a renewed persistence & insistence by the local authority to put all of their considerable weight behind those longstanding youthful but resourceful challengers to our centralised parliaments who shall not rest until all has been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. For is it not the case that for many years the promise has been mooted & would it not be a terrible shame if we all failed after having failed miserably so many summers previously & to have what was envisaged fall at the last hurdle & be witness whilst that promised reward was snatched away only to be replaced by some would say a more shoddy, dodgy, or shady, booby style prize or pie in the sky notion of this great miraculous reset to those not so wonderful days of yore where everyone was free to roam as they pleased, leaving doors unlocked, yet firmly hinged, there were picnics on the tables, hankies knotted to the scalps, striped red & white deckchairs up, down & along every shoreline & seafront in the lands. One really has to ask oneself why anyone in their right mind would wish those days away & while we’re at it also ask how in heaven’s name there cannot be that so oft promised modest investment required to reignite at the same time that so easily salvageable, far less ecologically damaging great Morayshire railway of not so long ago & have it restored to within the nearest inch in all its former glory.
The city council is rightly in crisis, and from a democratic point of view has been for many years. Run by egomaniacs who couldnt care less about the views of the public they are meant to represent, beholden to small minority groups with far too much influence, and responsible for creating an utter mess of the city – with deliberately created traffic congestion, roads that would shame a 3rd world nation, rubbish and litter everywhere, the wilfull damage to the green spaces around the city, and values and priorities that have no relevance to the welfare of those who actually live in the city !! Even the Disneyfication of the centre for the benefit of tourists is only surface deep, and the centre is largely scruffy, dirty and full of tat shops – let alone the areas that the tourists never see. It is a broken city – starting with the shambles and money grabbing airport and continuing with a city that no longer caters for ( or considers), the local people. This is the result of a succession of councils who have proven untrustworthy, lying, happy to waste our money on pet ego-driven projects, and who are unwilling to properly consult, and act on, the views of local people. They have abdicated responsibility to outside unaccountable agencies such as Sustrans, to the extent that the whiff of corruption over transport policy is strong….and now these suspicions of abuse of power and self enrichment at the publics expense. The entire council needs to go – and new elections should be held so that the public can install people who will put the needs of residents first.
honestly I think it’s time for a cull, shoot the suits & start from scratch, nay elections, charlie & his crew of muppets call the tune, end of
Scottish local government, at least in the cities and large towns, is stuck in a spiral of decline. Since 1975, its autonomy has been massively reduced. In most respects, its job is to implement policies decided above; e g when Humza Yousaf decided unilaterally on a council tax freeze. This amounts to administration not government. Much time and effort in Glasgow and Edinburgh has been devoted to increasing cycle lanes.
In these circumstances, capable people show no interest in standing for election to the council. Added to this is an electoral system which hardly anybody understands.
None of this looks likely to change any time soon.
In which lugubrious trolling approaches its apotheosis.
I still think much more needs to be done on promoting awareness of where the tax take goes, my own level of distrust and dismay at what is being done in my name makes me deliberately seek employment where I fall below the income tax threshold simply because I do not believe in what the authorities are doing in my area & everywhere else I travel to & from regularly which is essentially doing half jobs on the cheap, for example traffic lights that don’t give people enough time to cross the road & allow accidents to continue happening or a new bridge across the mouth of the river where the money apparently ran out leaving the bridge too short at the beach end so that the tide washes right over it at that side when the sea is up high. It is almost surreal in its absurdity. The impression you’re left with is that these ‘authorities’ are simply ripping the pish. Meanwhile almost 15 million quid is supposed to have mysteriously vanished because the orbex company based in forres, moray, ex-tory leader doogy ross’s old stomping ground, has thrown their hands up & walked off the park with a wee smirk on their less than aesthetically pleasing phizogs. What the actual fk is going on. Why are ex air force/brit military & those associated with a foreign tradition that still seeks to colonise & exploit the scottish highlands & islands being allowed to continue their exploitation/colonisation at the expense of the public purse & to the detriment of indigenous folk, often leading to tragic consequences for all involved. There is no sanity here, & I really do think we all need to ask ourselves why exactly we live in a society which promotes the mentally incompetent up out of the road simply because no one can tolerate their madness at ground level.
Oh look1 A new troll, offering a festive kaleidoscope of bewildering randomness. Quelle surprise!
nob
Homeless, yeah even if I had a nice flat on the bridges, I would feel homeless in Edinburgh, it’s fucked now, long time coming for Euro Disney North Britain department, it’s been coming for decades, Hogmanay celebrations, the Edinburgh I loved closed down years ago with the fountain bridge brewery and Diane’s pool hall, not sure the 24 hour bakery made it either, and Leith was a shit hole nobody wanted to go to except leithers. Oh well maybe one day in north by north London they’ll make a theme part scheme to exhibit the last of Mohicans with a Scots pie in hand a sneaky bottle of thunder bird tucked away in his jacket. (That’s a bit of subject, but it’s a nice excuse for a moan )
do you still even get the thunderbird, far superior tae thon cheap ciders that used to be on the go, white lightning, etc. ruff as a dog’s rod cove
I think it’s been banned along with don Johnson’s wardrobe, nae justice!
lol, socks at this time of year quite important tho