John Gibson: The prof’s leaving it like a tip

Not so nutty, the professor talking out loud and clear on chucking it as top man of Edinburgh World Heritage. I agree with his every word on the Capital.

Charles McKean is having a good old go at the city council leaving Edinburgh looking like a tip at peak times, everybody’s Aunt Sally the trams, the Old Town’s insanitary closes, the shambolic roadworks.

The visitors’ experience here, he’s saying, is “one of the worst in Europe.”

As a special case he homes in on the tragic Tron Kirk, lying forlorn, near forgotten these past six years. The Council hasn’t got the funding to do anything with it. Nor does it have the councillors with the savvy to do anything at all, seems to me.

We can barely wait till May and the elections to see what the next bunch of numpties will do about Edinburgh the tip and what’s wrong with it – and that’s plenty.

Meantime, don’t let this lot smother you with propaganda. You voted ‘em in, now vote ‘em out.

It’s gone to pot

We’re drinking 165 million cups daily. Mostly from tea-bagged mugs. Teapots have become taboo, reckon Debenhams, tears in their eyes.

But they’re doing their best to save the teapot with their Campaign for Civilised Tea Drinking. You’ll find in its Princes Street store tea served in a teapot, then into china cups.

That’s the age-old custom, the bags in teapots from their own “non-spill” pots.

Afterwords . .

“Valentine’s Day has been hyped into an occasion when couples send each other costly tokens they don’t mean and pretend they still fancy each other. What utter hypocrisy!,” grumps Janet Street-Porter, and she’s right. A woman after my own heart.