Bill Jamieson: Edinburgh's civic luvvies in need of a wake-up call

"As well as celebrating the successes of the region", the blurb continues, "the event will also explore how the Edinburgh city region can effectively collaborate to achieve critical mass and compete on an international stage."

We're promised an outline version "of a shared vision for the future development of the region" and, of course, "a regional economic framework".

Councillor Jenny Dawe, leader of Edinburgh City Council, says the region "has many successes to celebrate including a strong economic foundation, excellent quality of life and proud historic legacy".

There's more, much more, in this vein, with a passing reference to economic uncertainty, "most recently seen in the recent situation with HBOS". Well, that's one way of putting it.

The blunt truth is that Scotland's capital city is one almighty economic and financial mess. Not one but two giant banks to which it is home have collapsed into state ownership and stand to be dismembered with the loss of thousands of jobs.

Thousands more supplying ancillary services such as legal advice, accountancy, custody services, IT help and asset management now face a deeply uncertain future.

Building and property companies are going bust, the latest being Gregor Shores in Leith. To this, Dawe has responded by setting herself up as a Mortgage Angel. But with who's money, exactly?

This brutal recession will carve a swathe through the retail, service, tourism and leisure sectors.

Sector by sector, the city is falling victim to a slump that will pulverise not just financial services but every sphere of life.

And at the centre of all this is a city whose vital arteries are daily blocked by an epic shambles of road repairs, pipe and cable laying, drainage works and, of course, the greatest dislocation of them all, the appalling tramway project, a piece of nonsensical municipal vanity that nobody wants and from which we are all now suffering.

Edinburgh has become a nightmare city. The shortest journeys take an inconsolable time, with delays, blockages, diversions and constant, frustrating, hold-ups.

Edinburgh City Council has allowed the capital to degenerate into chaos. No-one seems to be in charge. Indeed, an unsuspecting visitor would be forgiven for thinking that the council is some small marginal offshoot of a vast highways department that has run amok with the city's money.

If Dawe has any thought that Edinburgh city centre will be a showcase for her international conference on regional development and economic frameworks, think again. She must truly be living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The problem with Edinburgh is not a shortage of collaborative projects and task force initiatives and lack of framework planning. It's the horrific, syrupy surfeit of these, created on the profound misunderstanding that calling all these conferences is as good as solving the problem.

It isn't. And the bigger problem that is Edinburgh Council is not its conference junketing so much as the deep complacency which underlies this self-congratulation. Edinburgh has not stumbled blindfold into this mess. It has waded in with its eyes wide open, convinced that its businesses, its shops and its banks are self perpetuating trees of magic apples that will instantly replenish with every voracious raid.

Civic Edinburgh is a disgrace, from its blocked streets and perpetual state of disrepair to those skyline-ruining projects that now threaten to strip the city of its World Heritage Status. The council proceeds with scant regard for the appearance and function of this city, its heart and grace. But it is ever so attentive to keeping the public-sector elite in the style to which it has become accustomed.

Summing it all up is that ghastly statue outside the new council offices of some model administrator, caught in a pose borrowed from the shipyards of Gdansk. The earnest shirt-sleeved demeanour suggests work, even on the days when the council is closed, or its services unavailable, or its staff on yet another holiday unique to the public sector.

There is nothing world-leading or worthy of emulation about Edinburgh at present. It is facing the greatest threat to its economy in a generation. Its biggest businesses are in deep trouble. Its financial and property sectors are being shaken to the core. Its tourist shops and restaurants are remorselessly thinning out and its artistic life is also set to suffer from the financial tsunami.

Time, surely for a reality check. Yet the council conference season goes on, the earnest Powerpoint task-forcing, the multi-agency collaboration initiatives – the high-fat diet of the municipal marzipan set. One giant beanfeast of a rampant quangocracy follows on another in an orgy of time-wasting, soporific, self-congratulatory piffle.

Excuse me if I don't come along, Ms Dawe, to "Flying High". Good luck with the pneumatic drills and the jack hammers and the traffic cones. The empty seat in the front is me.