Edinburgh Sucks! | Chamber of Commerce blew it for their members

Chamber of Commerce

Chamber of Commerce blew it for their members

By The Basa ⋅ January 12, 2008 ⋅

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The Great Chamber of commerce U-Turn

It seems Edinburgh’s Chamber of Commerce are as good at fighting for their members as the Council are for businesses and that is pisspoor.

After a few days of guffawing over who should get the cash windfall and a reduction in business rates the Council and EDI have caved in and brought the cut-off date forward to February 2007.

The big question that isn’t being asked is why did the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce agree this date with the Council. Surely they should be sticking up for businesses and get the cut-off date as late as possible. Graham Bell, the head honcho at the Chamber has obviously taken a politician’s night class and came out with a statement which has never been uttered before during the disagreement “We know the three different schemes do not reflect the total cost of disruption, but TIE and the council always said they would be willing to change things as we went along.”

Where did he pull that porky from? What a cracker! If he thought that they would be willing to change as things went along then why not continue to push to bring the date forward to 1st January 2008. EdSucks wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Mr. Ding-a-Ling may well want to stand for Council himself with quotes like that. Is that he was caught with egg on his face because his competition over at the FSB pushed for the change and won?

Interestingly City leader Jenny Dawe said: “Trams will be a huge asset to the city, but we recognise that there will be some short-term pain” - let’s hope that the only short term pain comes from the backsides of the people who had the bungs stuffed up there.