City's budget blow - 'A bitter pill... but what's the alternative?'

NOW we know what it really means. Soon half the Capital's public toilets will close, bins will be collected fortnightly and parking on city centre streets will cost up to a third more.

Despite headteachers' protests, high schools will educate our children on 3 million a year less. And, in a move that will have repercussions in homes across the city, more than 1200 council workers will lose their jobs.

The public spending cuts are now no longer just a figure on a balance sheet, or an abstract argument about the "squeezed middle" of UK society. They are about to have a very real impact on all our lives.

It will be absolutely no consolation to the hundreds of city council employees facing compulsory redundancy that cuts have been even more savage in other parts of the country.

Staff numbers are being slashed by 17 per cent and 21 per cent in Manchester and Bradford respectively, compared with less than eight per cent in Edinburgh.

But the losses here are a bitter pill for those who will lose their jobs, and a significant blow to the city's economy. And more job losses will follow, at the council and elsewhere.

Yet what is the alternative? The only way to avoid cutting spending is to increase income, and that could mean huge increases in council tax, once the freeze ends, or other charges which most families can't afford.

The stark warning today from council chief executive Sue Bruce that the funding squeeze is likely to continue for at least a decade shows that we are in the middle of a sea change and not just a blip.

The only glimmer of light at the end of a long, bleak tunnel is that the cuts will force the entire public sector to find new ways of working.

Here in Edinburgh the result must be a leaner, more efficient council which will stick to doing the basics well and more cheaply.

Spaced out

if the relentless news about cuts and the recession makes you feel like taking off somewhere exotic then the good news is the answer may be at hand in Leith.

The bad news is that it will cost you 125,000 to buy a single seat on a flight into space.

The deal is on offer in the Lothians through Dream Escape, the only travel agent authorised by Richard Branson's firm to sell tickets in Scotland.

They don't expect a queue outside the door, but 410 tickets have been sold already across the world and, as we all know, there are plenty of folk in Edinburgh who could afford the jaunt. And we would welcome most of them back . . .