Edinburgh Sucks! | Anderson leaving the councilgets my (our) vote

Donald Anderson

Anderson leaving the council
gets my (our) vote

By The Basa ⋅ February 18, 2006 ⋅

OH joy! Your report that Councillor Donald Anderson has decided not to seek re-election to our Council next year is a welcome one indeed (News, February 17).

That his tenure has been an unmitigated disaster for Edinburgh has been widely and continually reported down through the years.

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His responsibility for squandering huge sums of taxpayers cash and his failure to hold the unelected officials to account for failures in social work, planning and city development etc are the stuff of legend.

Now he’s jumping ship to seek election as an MSP, is he to be allowed to wreak the same havoc at Holyrood?

Methinks that unless he is allowed to sneak in through the back door of the list system, Donald Anderson will be political history and Edinburgh South’s incumbent MSP must be rubbing his hands with glee.

However, I would like to thank him for giving me a huge incentive to actually cast a vote. And, it won’t be for his party of high taxation, compulsory ID cards, summary justice, recording DNA samples of the innocent and myriad draconian, nanny-state bans.

Jim Taylor The Murrays Brae, Edinburgh

More Info: http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=255562006

UPDATE: Sunday, February 19, 2006

It seems as though Alan Cochrane in Scotland on Sunday agrees with Mr. Taylor:

IN A week that has seen dire predictions of the death of the British high street, there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about why this should be so.

Needless to say, the supermarkets and out-of-town shopping malls are getting all of the blame. However, the reality is that the culprits are much closer to home.

The reason the centres of our towns and cities are becoming like ghost towns is that the people we stupidly elect to local councils have decreed it so.

How else could you explain why, in Edinburgh for instance, one of the city’s busiest shopping areas, George Street, is fast becoming a virtual no-go area for car-bound shoppers, because of the predatory ticketing policy of the parking wardens.

Egged on by the council, the wardens have made George Street a nightmare for anyone who dares to drive there. No fewer than 21,000 drivers got a ticket there last year, and I bet that’s 21,000 who won’t shop there again.

While that will no doubt please the car-haters, such a policy will inevitably lead to businesses going bust or simply moving elsewhere.

Edinburgh is not alone in this idiocy – all of our cities suffer from the same shortsighted policy – but there is little doubt that the council in the nation’s capital has made an art form out of driver-harassment.

And marshalling all of this nuttiness in recent years has been Donald Anderson, the council leader. Not only has he urged the wardens on to their present levels of ferocity, but he was also responsible for two of the biggest disasters in recent local government history.

These were the huge sums squandered on the Edinburgh congestion-charge proposal, which was so decisively rejected by the residents, and the millions more wasted on the traffic management scheme for the city centre – a scheme that caused so many bottlenecks and so much confusion that it had to be abandoned a few short months after being introduced.

Edinburgh’s residents will be relieved that Mr Anderson – almost certainly because he’d get thrown out by the voters – is not offering himself for re-election to the council next year.

Don’t cheer too soon, however. He’s trying to get into Holyrood instead.

Edinburgh’s gain might well become Scotland’s loss.