Conversions

A momentous decision at the Special Council meeting today. The tram, after all, will be completed to St Andrew's Square, but at a significant cost. An additional £231m to be precise, although there are no guarantees that it won't increase further. That level of borrowing, as voted through by the SNP/LibDems, will cost the city £15.3m per year to pay back, for the next thirty years ! We backed the St Andrew's Square option but only if the SNP Government provided the additional financial support. It was their intervention after all, via Transport Scotland, that had created the circumstances for the decision to be revisited. The local SNP Group duly voted in favour of the tram to be completed to SAS with the Edinburgh Council Tax payer picking up the tab. The Council's SNP Group have now had more positions on this than the Kama Sutra ! More seriously it was actually a decent debate, in recognition of the seriousness of the situation, I suspect, with contributions a bit more measured than in the past. If anyone wants to dig through the detail of today's events and the background papers I recommend Andrew Burns blog on this link.