As most Edinburgh residents are daily made aware, the council, because of the size of our potholes, are Land Rover’s secret weapon. It now transpires that not only the citizens are worried about falling down potholes in our streets but the tourists, who come to our beautiful city and spend their well earned foreign currency are now up in arms.
Some of the qutoes to the Evening News included:
“I’ve been on holiday to Third World countries and I’ve never seen anything like this before. For a capital city, it’s just shameful. Obviously the council are just not doing anything about it.”
and
“The roads here are pretty embarrassing. I lived in Mexico for a while and the roads in Mexico City and Guadalajara were smooth in comparison to Edinburgh. Those cities had lovely, big avenues designed for cars. Some of my customers are surprised that in a city as beautiful as Edinburgh, there are bad road surfaces right in the city centre.”
Of course our deputy leader of the council, Stevie Cardownie doesn’t agree. Whilst it is obvious that he hasn’t been able to swing a free council-funded jaunt to Caracas where his eyes would be opened he tells us:
“I’d be amazed if the roads in Venezuela are that good that they would cause people to say the roads here were poor. The last administration spent more money on roads than any previous administration.”
Prepare to be amazed, what he does not quite grasp is that comparing Scotland to Venezuela where their population is 27 million ours is 5.25 million; their GDP is $316b and ours is only £140b. In fact the roads of Caracas are definitely better than Edinburgh and to boot, they have an amazing Arial Tramway as well going to the poorest districts in the city. It really does say a lot about our deputy leader when he is now comparing us to Venezuela. Is this what we have to aspire to?
His comment on how much money spent on the roads is of course complete stupidity. The facts are not how much money is spent on the roads, the fact is how well that money is spent? His last administration spent more money on trams than any other in history but we still don’t have a tram running on our streets yet! The council spent £1.5m (at least) on a Deliotte report and we are no further forward.
More info: Tourists blast city’s roads as worse than Third World
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