Letter: Plans for trams

IT WAS perhaps the excellent article by Allan Alstead (Comment, 24 August) which stirred Malcolm Chisholm (Letters, 25 August) to seek to produce a means of getting the scheme finished.

Unfortunately, his suggestion will certainly cost far more than there is money available to pay for. No doubt, Mr Chisholm is now regretting his support for the scheme, which helped to force it through parliament. I am sure he is not alone in having strong feelings of guilt on this score. Hence his poor attempt at suggesting a way out.

He talks airily of "someone else completing part of the route" by "imaginative new funding arrangements that do not involve extra cost for council tax payers". What a fine idea.

The same council tax payers are already aware that there is a shock coming when the real costs are eventually made known. The "tax increment financing" still cannot conjure up money from nowhere, so it will still have to come from somewhere.

I am sure there is no possibility of the government showing sympathy to any such appeal; they were totally against the scheme. The best Mr Chisholm can expect from Mr Swinney is something like "we told you so".

Mr Chisholm is correct when he agrees the scheme has been badly managed, but has he only just become aware of this? Surely he cannot have missed all the reports which have clearly shown how bad things have become?

He would now be much better engaged in pressing his colleagues on the council to pull up their socks and find a way out of this mess - the cleanest and best way would be to end the adventure right now.

JR Hall (MCIT Retired)

Colinton Grove

Edinburgh