Caltongate - 'It's a golden opportunity for the Capital'

Just when we feared Caltongate might start rivalling Greenside Place, Castle Terrace and all those other past contenders to be Edinburgh's longest-running gap-site, fresh hope arrives that building work might finally begin.

Canadian investors are said to be keen to pick up the existing plans to turn the ugly hole in the ground into a hotel, shops and homes.

That is fantastic news at a time when every city in the UK is crying out for someone - anyone - with the financial muscle to make something happen on this scale.

Thanks to the imminent 850 million reinvention of the St James Centre, the Caltongate site is the last remaining major blight on our city centre.

We know that restrictive lending by Britain's high street banks means there will be few, if any, UK investors ready to step into the breach if for any reason this deal cannot be sealed.

One of the potential sticking points is understood to be the Bank of Scotland's understandable reluctance to write off too much of the 74m it is owed following the collapse of previous Caltongate developer Mountgrange.

The bank has its own pressures to deal with of course, and it is presumably too much to hope that the wider interests of its home city will remain important to its thinking.

But this is a golden opportunity for Edinburgh which would reap dividends across the city. As such, it is one we might all regret letting pass if we do not grab it with both hands.

Grave mistake

it is hard to think of many more shocking and insensitive acts than seizing a gravestone from someone's final resting place.

Yet that is the indignity which Rachel Muirhead and her family have had to suffer after failing to pay the final 90 for her late husband John's 1300 memorial stone.

She had been suffering depression following the loss of her husband two years ago when she received a letter from Liberton-based Robertson Memorials to say they had taken back the grave marker.

Times are tough for any business right now and every penny counts, but surely there were other ways to approach what was undoubtedly a tricky situation.

Was any attempt, for instance, made to contact another member of the family when letters to Mrs Muirhead went unanswered?

Firms will rightly say they cannot lightly write off even a relatively small sum like 90, but surely that would have been better than stooping to action like this?