Readers' Best comments

We're painting a portrait of the city's mood, with art centre delays, a bank branching, er, in, and celeb furniture!

Let's start with a little bit of culture today. The City Art Centre will reopen in April after a year-long refit, but will then close again two weeks later, after the science festival, for more works. Our online commentators were not impressed.

There should have been no second phase, the job should have been done from start to finish on the original refurbishment.

The Real Alfonsa Pedrosa, edinburgh

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Pretty poor project management, nearly up to the trams standard. Any consultants involved?

Mallory, Edinburgh

"After this, we will be further enhancing the visitor experience . . ." A cry for help there from Deidre Brock.

VIOLENT ANGRY SHOUTING KOREAN GENTLEMAN

Computer generated PR speak.

The Rubik Cube

The Bank of Scotland is to cash in by closing some of its branches. Estate agents say restaurant and pub chains are keen to take up the space on offer.

"They say the ground floor could be split up to form two retail units, which would most likely be aimed at the tourist market" – that's tartan tat shops to you and me . . .

Busy as usual, Bonnyrigg

Sell off two branches for whatever purpose, and open a new one, sounds like the Bank of Scotland at its best.

The Real Alfonsa Pedrosa, edinburgh

You should put this wisdom to good use. You could do a range of Alfonso Pedrosa Fortune Cookies: "Anything worth doing can be done, you can do it if you put your mind to it"; "An admirer will shoe up at your door today, dressed as Mahatma Ghandi, and carrying an inflatable castle"; "The shortest distance between two people, is a smile, it takes less muscles to smile".

Kishefmakher

Haha! One of these spare retail spaces could be opened up as an Alfonsa Pedrosa novelty shop.

digestive biscuits V

And after all that, well, it just got a little bit silly really. Moving on, and we told you that estate agents reckon the Capital has enjoyed a 124m shot in the arm as house sales picked up. Ok, so the phrase we used was "124m fillip" What of it?

Who is 'fillip'???

Big Stu

Boom and, indeed, boom. Now, are you listening carefully?

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A few important points. Sales are still massively down on a few years ago. The first-time-buyer market, from which everything else feeds, is pretty much dead with continuing price falls and very few sales. The rest of the market will eventually level out with this – as these people are the ones who will eventually trade up in the future. What we are seeing today is many people barely surviving due to low interest rates. Even with such low rates, the actual amount paid by most people is probably still more like 5-6 per cent. The market is almost dead, with a small number of sales between those already with a chunk of equity. That can only go on for so long. Getting a bit boring now.

Funny, that's exactly what we were thinking.

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