Mortonhall Rose Garden: 'Final resting place must be restored'

IT IS easy to sympathise with the council over its care and maintenance problems at the Rose Garden in Mortonhall.

On the one hand it is the final resting place for hundreds of young tots and must as such be treated with some respect. But on the other it must upset some parents for whom it holds poignant memories to see it fall into disrepair and decay.

Such are the sensitivities surrounding the burial site that the council has sympathetically turned a blind eye to parents who leave personal mementoes of the brief moments they spent with their children on their graves.

And maintenance workers trying to keep the garden in a state of good order are in many cases understandably loathe to move them.

But it is good that the council is now to step in and spend money landscaping the older section of the garden which is in most need of upgrading.

And it is to be hoped that once parents of children laid to rest in other parts see the improvements that they will be more amenable to sensitive landscaping being carried out in other areas.

It would be a far more fitting tribute to these tragic youngsters to see their final resting place restored to a standard that was envisaged when it was first opened.

Guts and good grace

IT OFTEN seems that politics, rather than love, means never having to say you are sorry.

Too many scandals and mistakes have rumbled on, at Westminster and at Holyrood, without the politicians involved having the guts and good grace to stand up and apologise.

It says much for Nicola Sturgeon that she did so yesterday, after she wrote a letter to a court in support of a convicted fraudster. Anyone who didn't already think the Deputy First Minister was one of our smartest politicians will surely do so now.

That doesn't make it right that Ms Sturgeon asked a sheriff not to send Adbul Rauf to prison. In fact, she admitted she was wrong to do so. And cynics will suggest she only saw the error of her ways when pressure mounted for her resignation.

Either way, the black mark will not be forgotten for this mistake – or for the two-week delay before she acknowledged it. But the bottom line is that belatedly she did say sorry.

The health secretary also asked that all politicians be a bit more understanding of one another's mistakes in future. She and First Minister Alex Salmond will now be expected to show the example she seeks.