Friday 27 June 2008

Trams - what are they good for?

Edinburgh trams. The SNP opposed them, the other parties all backed them. The combined votes of the other parties forced the Scottish Government to hand over the money and forced Edinburgh Council to crack on with the project.

In October I pointed out some of the problems with the case that had been made for trams.
In March I indicated some of the problems with construction.
In May I lifted the lid on the project shaving.
Earlier this week I pointed out the lack of anything concrete in the tram presentation.
Having taken a wee while to think about it, I'm absolutely convinced that this unnecessary vanity project is already out of control, that the business case is mince, and that we're going to resent the actions of Labour, the Lib Dems, the Conservatives and the Greens in pushing this madness on us.

In the hope of persuading people to try to salvage something from this, I'm going to do the following:

1. We were told at the briefing that the business case was so shiny that the entire cost could have been raised in the financial markets with one wee trip. I know a retired investment banker who still has excellent contacts in the international money markets so I'll ask him whether he'd fund the tram if he was still making decisions. I'll publish what he says.

and

2. I'm going to use the Freedom of Information legislation to get proper details about the state of the tram project.
Right, then, that's me off to ask.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting use of pictures. Your party is keen on motorways, despite there being countless more gory pics of motorway pile ups than tram accidents.

Calum Cashley said...

Motorways in the centre of Edinburgh? That's almost as daft an idea as trams!