The Whole Nine Yards
The Edinburgh Evening News is running a big campaign - unsurprisingly - over the scandal involving the city's trams, or the lack of trams - to be more precise.
The newspaper is calling for control of the project to be taken out of Edinburgh City Council's hands - and handed over to the Scottish government, presumably.
Now the obvious question is: 'Why would the government accept such a poisoned chalice?'
But in the circumstances I think that is probably the right call.
Because sadly local government has shown that it is simply not up to the task.
Regular readers will recall that the trams project only came about - because of political interference in the Scottish Parliament.
Where Labour and Lid Dem MSPs ganged up to force a minority SNP government to stump up £500 million - of taxpayers money to fund the doomed scheme.
Edinburgh City Council also chose to hand the project over to an arms length company or ALEO - a practice which has attracted great controversy in Scotland's largest council - Labour run Glasgow.
So the whole thing is a mess - not just a bit of a mess - but The Whole Nine Yards of a mess.
And the Scottish government is probably the only organisation with sufficient clout and expertise - to restore some sanity and public accountability.
In the meantime, I wouldn't spend another single penny of taxpayers' money - until the way forward is clear.
The newspaper is calling for control of the project to be taken out of Edinburgh City Council's hands - and handed over to the Scottish government, presumably.
Now the obvious question is: 'Why would the government accept such a poisoned chalice?'
But in the circumstances I think that is probably the right call.
Because sadly local government has shown that it is simply not up to the task.
Regular readers will recall that the trams project only came about - because of political interference in the Scottish Parliament.
Where Labour and Lid Dem MSPs ganged up to force a minority SNP government to stump up £500 million - of taxpayers money to fund the doomed scheme.
Edinburgh City Council also chose to hand the project over to an arms length company or ALEO - a practice which has attracted great controversy in Scotland's largest council - Labour run Glasgow.
So the whole thing is a mess - not just a bit of a mess - but The Whole Nine Yards of a mess.
And the Scottish government is probably the only organisation with sufficient clout and expertise - to restore some sanity and public accountability.
In the meantime, I wouldn't spend another single penny of taxpayers' money - until the way forward is clear.
