Trams report: 'We will all be paying for a generation'

A budget "contingency" set to rise to 600m . . . the council ready to foot the bill by huge borrowing . . . a line that could be delivered in as many as five stages rather than all at once.

But if that seems bad enough, there is a sneaking suspicion that things will soon get even worse. For everything about the council's official report on this sorry saga smacks of a softening-up exercise.

Where councillors are warned that the project may need another 10 per cent funding, you can be guaranteed that the hat soon will be out for the extra cash. And once the taps have been opened, it will keep flowing.

When the report speculates that the money could be found by borrowing money – possibly against future profits of trams and buses until 2031 – you can be sure that, yes, we will all be paying for the trams for at least a generation.

And when the prospect is raised of phasing in the line you can be sure some parts won't be built for years.

Indeed, the admission that "future decisions will be taken within the overall context of funding affordability" sounds like the biggest softening-up of all: in preparation of scrapping large chunks of the project – and possibly all of it.

It's a sad day that even those who initially backed the trams may now say this might be no bad thing, especially if the 350m spent so far can be written off at no cost to the city.

Two weeks ago we praised transport convener Gordon Mackenzie for at least bringing the matter to a head by threatening to force Bilfinger Berger off the contract.

That was long overdue. In our view he and his colleagues now have just days to save the project – and their own political careers.

Last orders

IT is a sad day for the patrons of the White Horse Bar on the Royal Mile.

The popular pub was an increasingly rare example in the city centre of an "old fashioned boozer", in the best sense of those words.

Now its long-standing staff feel they have been left with no choice but to quit and the pub is undergoing a makeover.

It has often been said that you can't stand in the way of progress, but it is a shame for all those who have worked and drunk there all their lives that the White Horse as we know it is now no more.