Today we return to one of the capital’s most enduring debates: the future of Princes Street.

As far as we can tell, people have been wringing their hands and crying out that Princes Street is going to the dogs since at least the beginning of the 19th century, when it started to turn from its original purpose as a residential street into one of the city’s main commercial locations.

Now, more changes are afoot, after city councillors agreed a new “ambitious pragmatic” plan for its future, designed to open up the Gardens and the south side of the street.

If you were hoping for a ‘big bang’ change, like cycle lanes on Princes Street or a concert arena in the Gardens, then you’re going to be disappointed.

But Euan McGrory has been looking at the plans for us - and he is getting quite excited.

More on that below, but first your regular midweek news roundup and your cultural highlights for the week ahead.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

‘BEAUTIFUL SOUL’: The family of 58-year-old Linda Patterson (pictured above in a photo released by Police Scotladn) who was killed in an alleged hit-and-run near Edinburgh Airport have described her as “a beautiful soul”. A 32-year-old man and two women, aged 19 and 23, have been charged in connection with the incident which took place on Glasgow Road near Newbridge shortly after rush-hour on Monday morning.

T-DAY FOR NEW LINE: Today’s meeting of the city council’s transport and environment committee will vote on the business case for building a new tram line from Granton to Little France via the city centre. They are widely expected to shelve the northern section of the proposed line in the face of the local campaign against the Roseburn Path route. A number of organisations and individuals – including the chamber of commerce, Granton and District Community Council, Transform Scotland and Capital Retail Action Group as well as five former city council leaders (Ewan Aitken has been in touch since we published on Tuesday to add his name to the list) - have now urged councillors not to completely abandon the option, stressing the huge benefits it could bring vital to local populations and businesses in north Edinburgh.

TRAM LESSONS: Sarah Boyd, chief executive of the Lothian Group, which runs Edinburgh Trams and Lothian Buses, has backed the idea of potentially opening a tram facility at Newhaven to make services in the north and east of the city more resilient. The Princes Street fire left Leith and Newhaven cut off without tram services for nearly two months. “Those are absolutely the things that we would look at,” she told The Herald. “If you think about Hogmanay, we stable trams at Newhaven. That works for the short term, because we know that that’s planned, we know when it will reopen and when trams can return to the depot.”

SACKING TRIBUNAL: An employment tribunal begins in Glasgow today to determine whether Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games unlawfully sacked 31 workers from its Edinburgh base or not. The Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union will argue that the firm blacklisted and targeted the staff members for union activities, while the company is maintaining they were dismissed for breaching confidentiality agreements. The new instalment of the franchise is due to be released later this year.

NEW NAME PARTY: Tomorrow sees the start of a ten-day mini-festival put together by Scottish designer Charles Jeffrey for the launch of the St James Quarter under its new moniker, Westfield St James Quarter by owners Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW). Entitled “Westfield Days: The Sound of Style” the programme will be a celebration of fashion, music and culture and runs till 20 September. The Capital venue is the third branded Westfield alongside Westfield and Westfield Stratford City.

TO SCOTT: We can all raise a glass to this. Watsonians has launched a new beer to honour the club’s popular Scottish international rugby legend Scott Hastings, who passed away in May. Watsonian FC has partnered with Harviestoun Brewery to introduce Hastings 13 Lager into its Myreside Pavilion.

Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

The August madness may be behind us, even if the arguments about it continue to rage — and if you missed them, my own thoughts on the fallout can be found in last weekend’s Edinburgh Inquirer long read. Meanwhile, a quick word to the wise: if you’ve spent the past month treating any of the city’s temporarily unused tram track as an open-air pedestrian plaza, pay sharp attention when crossing the sets lest you be flattened by a two-hundred-tonne carriage gliding towards Newhaven!

The capital’s cultural calendar is already firing on all cylinders, though. This week’s chart takes us on a proper journey: from scandalous French aristocratic mind games on the big screen and moving solo wartime drama, to monumental symphonic blockbusters, golden-age Broadway sparkle, and an improbably wonderful classical gathering across East Lothian.

Let’s count them down...

Honourable Mentions: Six - The Musical, NYCOS Gala, Jacob Collier & City Art Centre

Just bubbling under the main chart, there is plenty of quality to be found across town. On Nicolson Street, the global Tudor pop-concert phenomenon Six -The Musical arrives at the Festival Theatre (September 15th – 26th), remixing 500 years of historical heartbreak into an 80-minute pop showdown. Dropping into the honourables from last week’s chart thanks to the unsleeping ambition of Edinburgh’s stages and halls of culture, Sunday sees the Usher Hall host the roof-raising NYCOS 30th Anniversary Gala Concert, with a massed choir tackling Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Later in the month, multi-talented musical prodigy Jacob Collier lands at The Queen’s Hall on September 20th. Finally, visual art lovers should head to Market Street for Gifted: New Acquisitions at the City Art Centre (from Saturday), a fresh showcase of recently acquired Scottish works from the city’s collection. Don’t miss ‘em!

New in at Number 5 is... NT Live: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (The Cameo, from September 17th)

Taking the fifth spot is a masterclass in cruel aristocratic gamesmanship and weaponised seduction. Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s scandalous 18th-century novel pits Lesley Manville’s calculating Marquise de Merteuil against Aidan Turner’s magnetic Vicomte de Valmont in an escalating war of sexual deceit. While nothing quite replaces the electric charge of sitting in a packed London auditorium, catching this filmed production from the plush velvet comfort of The Cameo - with a box of popcorn in hand and change left over from a train fare to Euston - is the next best thing to being in the West End.

New in at Number 4 is... Private Peaceful (Royal Lyceum Theatre, September 17th – 19th)

Landing in fourth is a moving slice of solo stagecraft. Michael Morpurgo was my favourite author growing up, and it’s a joy to see this master storyteller’s work on stage outside of the commercial behemoth that is War Horse. Adapted by Simon Reade, this one-person production charts young Private Tommo Peaceful’s final night on the Western Front as he reflects on his rural Devon youth, first love, and the unbreakable bond with his brother Charlie. My colleagues in critical circles have labelled this an intimate, beautifully focused piece of theatre that confronts the tragic, real-life wartime injustices faced by young soldiers executed for cowardice.

New in at Number 3 is... RSNO Season Opener: Mahler Six (Usher Hall, September 18th).

Grabbing the bronze medal is a monumental orchestral blockbuster under the dome! The Royal Scottish National Orchestra kicks off its season under Music Director Thomas Søndergård with Gustav Mahler’s colossal Sixth Symphony - the “Tragic” - famous for its terrifying, fateful wooden hammer blows that literally shake the hall. Just as enticing is guest soloist Alexander Malofeev tackling Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto. A former child prodigy who shot to international fame at just 13, Malofeev is also a remarkably courageous artist who publicly condemned the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine at considerable personal and professional risk. Hearing a pianist of such fiery brilliance paired with Søndergård’s symphonic forces will blow the cobwebs clean off the Usher Hall. The cleaners can throw rocks…now.

New in at Number 2 is... Annie (Edinburgh Playhouse, September 15th – 20th)

Securing the silver spot is pure, unstoppable musical sunshine. Nearly fifty years since it first debuted at Connecticut’s Goodspeed Opera House in 1976 before conquering Broadway, Annie continues to put bums on seats like almost nothing else in musical theatre history. That kind of enduring staying power is no fluke: Charles Strouse’s infectious melody-writing, Martin Charnin’s witty lyrics, and Thomas Meehan’s airtight book create an irresistible piece of entertainment. Following the indomitable red-headed orphan through Depression-era New York as she outwits the gin-soaked Miss Hannigan, you can expect Nikolai Foster’s lavish West End production to deliver timeless standards like “It’s the Hard Knock Life” and “Tomorrow” with enormous heart and infectious energy.

Straight in at Number 1 is... Lammermuir Festival (Across East Lothian, until September 20th)

And taking the top spot of the pops this week! There is something improbably wonderful about the Lammermuir Festival. What began as a pure, determined passion project has blossomed year after year into a genuinely world-class cultural gathering conjured out of the East Lothian landscape. This year’s programme is stellar, bringing the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Scotland’s own Dunedin Consort, and the virtuoso lutenist Thomas Dunford and Ensemble Jupiter into some of the country’s most atmospheric heritage spaces - including St Mary’s in Haddington, the 14th-century mediaeval stones of St Mary’s in Whitekirk, and Dunbar Parish Church. Experiencing music of this pedigree in such intimate, acoustically sublime rural settings is nothing short of transcendent. Chuck a warm jumper in the boot, take the short run (or bus) down the coast, and immerse yourself in something truly special. Brilliant stuff!

And that’s your Top 5!

Put the kettle on, crack open that digital calendar, and ready those box-office finger-taps - autumn in and around the capital is off to a stormer. Grab your tickets, support our fantastic venues, and let me know in the comments what’s got your name on it this week. I’ll let you know if I missed it, or if you and I simply have very different tastes!

Until next week: Stay bright!

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A beautiful Spring evening in Princes Street Gardens? Count me in

Later opening hours included in plans to open up the Gardens

by Euan McGrory

The sight of the Princes Street Gardens gates being locked shortly after 5pm on a beautiful Spring, or autumn, evening has been one of the city’s great mood-killers for years.

The curfew is 6pm from the end of September until the end of May, compared to 10pm in the summer, but the gates are always shut much earlier to start clearing any late afternoon stragglers.

Many of the world’s great parks - Berlin’s Tiergarten, most of London’s finest and our own Holyrood Park and the Meadows - are open either 24 hours a day or late into the evening in all but the darkest winter months. Not so Princes Street Gardens, which spends most of the year ushering visitors out before most people have even finished work.

That is about to change as part of a plan to open the Gardens up to more people. A largely overlooked part of the plans agreed by city councillors yesterday, will see the closing time outside of the summer months pushed back by three hours to 9pm. It’s a small detail within a larger plan, but the possibilities it opens up are, well, slightly magical.

Beating the ‘bus stop crush’

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“Bicycles came in hordes, like locusts, upon the university towns. The bicycle is one of the main causes of traffic congestion. A few locusts are of little importance. A swarm is a plague.”

That sounds like a warning against the cycling city. It is the reverse: the planner Thomas Sharp, on Oxford, in Oxford Replanned, 1948. He was complaining that Britain had too many bikes.

Almost every British town and city was a “cycling city” within living memory. By 1936 we owned over 10 million bicycles and 1.8 million cars. Then came the great swap, two wheels for four, and Edinburgh made it in plain sight: driving to work climbed from 28% in 1971 to 45% by 1991. It never came back down. Home working has receded since the pandemic and the car took the returning commuters with it: two-thirds of Scots who travel to work still drive, a bigger share than in 2011.

We did not stumble into this; we planned it. Cities were redrawn, towns were built, railways ripped up and services pushed to the edges, all on one assumption: everyone drives.

“If you asked a politician whether a new hospital should be inaccessible to one-fifth of the population, obviously they’d say no,” says Alan Tapp, who studies how driving bends our judgement. Build it on the edge of town instead and few see a problem. Neighbourhoods sprawled. High streets emptied. The car did not just fill our roads; it rebuilt our lives around itself.

The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary left an easy-to-get-to, city centre site, next to the Meadows, for poorly connected, car-bound Little France in 2002.

And it rebuilt our heads. We can name it: motonormativity, or “car brain”. 75% of Britons agree nobody should smoke where others must breathe the fumes; change two words to car exhaust and only 17% agree. A society built for one machine starts to feel like the way things have always been.

It is not. We built it inside two generations, and here it is already slipping. Fewer than half of Edinburgh’s commuters drive, less than any other Scottish city, and this May Spokes counted single-occupancy car use at a record low. What was built can be unbuilt. This part is the alternative: what a cycling city is, and the proof it works in harder places than ours. In part one of our series, we looked at why it is needed.

The Eight-Year-Old Test

A cycling city is not one where everyone cycles. It is one where anyone can: an eight-year-old, a pensioner, a wheelchair user, without a second thought. Trams, buses and trains cover the distance, and the car is kept for the journeys that need it: the trades, the carers, the weekend’s Munro bagging.

What the bike takes is the middle. Too far to walk, too short to be worth a car. The commute. The school run. The food shop. The gym. The football. The daily trips which can easily be substituted, making us happier, healthier and less poor.

Forget the lycra look. People ride for the same reason you drive: it is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to get around. Transport is the second biggest bill a household pays after housing; a bike shrinks it to pocket money each month. That is transport poverty cut at source, and opportunity opened up.

Fewer engines: quieter streets, cleaner air, children on the school run under their own steam. Less parking: space handed back to people, and better places to eat, meet and shop: customers on foot linger and spend, drivers only pass through.

“A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can’t be both,” said Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor who rebuilt Bogotá. If you never touch a bike, you still win: every one on the road is one less car in the queue ahead of you.

The Supposed Transport Hierarchy

Scotland’s transport hierarchy, set in 2020, ranks walking and wheeling first, then cycling, then buses and trains, and the single-occupancy car last. Given its well-documented harm to our society, the thing we built our lives around should be the lowest priority.

I’ll let you make up your own mind whether that is true.

Cycling earns the ranking on merit: three times faster than walking, up to five times as many people down a single lane, and 27 times less energy than a car (the engine is you, running on breakfast). Most urban car trips are short, 26% under five kilometres. In Edinburgh, walking and cycling already prevent nearly 1,400 illnesses a year and deliver £336.7 million in benefit.

And none of that changes with an electric car. Same congestion, same parking space, no less lethal outside a school.

The Small Print

The hierarchy says one thing; the money says another. Scotland’s 2026-27 draft budget gives active travel around £163 million, 3.9% of transport spending, below 4% for the first time in five years and a long way from the 10% we were promised in 2021. Trunk roads go up by nearly £90 million, a rise the government’s own carbon assessment rates “high negative” for the climate. We pour billions into the mode we have declared comes last, and starve the ones we say come first.

It is not just the amount. I work in active travel, and the deeper problem is how the money arrives. Roads get multi-year funding; you can plan ahead. Active travel comes one financial year at a time.

Councils bid in January 2026 for money to spend between April 2026 and March 2027, and at time of writing (August) those bids are still unanswered, delayed in part by May’s election. The deadline has not moved with them. Whatever is finally awarded must still be designed, consulted on, built and paid for by 31 March 2027, or handed back.

Councils and consultancies struggle to build experienced, well-resourced teams that way, sitting idle waiting for a decision and then scrambling, unsure if funding is coming the following year. And the region is carved up between authorities, each with its own small team and its own residents to answer to. A council’s remit ends at its boundary.

A commuter’s journey does not. So the routes that should link us rarely get built.

The promises keep lapsing too. In 2009 Edinburgh signed the Charter of Brussels, pledging 15% of trips by bike by 2020; we are at a third of that. The 2021 Bute House Agreement promised a fixed share of the transport budget for active travel, and never delivered it.

The Harder Places

None of this is theory. It has been done in cities hillier, colder, bigger and more car-bound than Edinburgh. In almost every case the recipe was the same: a crisis or a catalyst, then a politician who held their nerve and built the alternative before restraining the car.

Paris: The Bike Overtook The Car

Mayor Anne Hidalgo staked her office on the bike from 2014, then used the empty roads of lockdown to lay pop-up lanes in Paris which she later made permanent: €250 million of protected track, and more than a thousand kilometres of it since 2020. Cycling has more than tripled since 2010, and the bike has overtaken the car, 11.2% of trips against 4.3%. That took a decade, not a generation.

The city changed with it. Paris has closed more than 100 streets to traffic and taken out 50,000 parking spaces.

Its air is transformed: nitrogen dioxide down 50% since 2005, fine particles down 55%, and deaths attributable to air pollution down by a third between 2010 and 2019. Traffic is not the only cause, but Airparif puts it first. If a capital that size can do it, the idea that Edinburgh, a tenth of it, never could is hard to take seriously. Parisians re-elected Hidalgo in 2020, anti-car programme and all. And in March 2026 they went further, electing her former deputy Emmanuel Grégoire to carry the cycling plan on.

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Andy Burnham is keen. John Swinney is keen. All of a sudden everyone wants to hand more power and money to the Edinburgh city-region.

Over the last week the Prime Minister joined the First Minister in publicly declaring his support for devolving decision-making and funding to the region, confirming The Inquirer’s exclusive last month. The regional devolution bandwagon is rolling.

So does that mean that Burhamism or Manchesterism - whatever those terms mean - is on its way to Edinburgh? Well, not quite. We can expect some parallels with what happened in the north of England, but Edinburgh’s version of devolution is likely to be quite different.

Who’ll be our Burnham? Well, no one actually. There is no appetite to appoint a mayor, or a “back-door” regional council for that matter, as that is seen as creating another layer of government bureaucracy. Instead, we can expect a decision-making committee with representatives from all the region’s local authorities. Think of it like the Jedi Council, but for South-East Scotland.

Who’d be on ‘the Jedi Council’? The governance put in place to oversee the ongoing and successful Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal is the favoured model. That’s the six leaders of six local authorities - Edinburgh’s Jane Meagher (the only woman), East Lothian’s Norman Hampshire, Midlothian’s Russell Imrie, West Lothian’s Lawrence Fitzpatrick, Fife’s David Ross, and Euan Jardine representing the Scottish Borders - plus business and university representatives, including Edinburgh University Principal Sir Peter Mathieson. Together they’ve overseen £600m of UK and Scottish government spending, plus £1bn in local authority, university and private funding it helped leverage. The City Deal Joint Committee met on Friday to discuss progress.

Won’t that be a bit cumbersome? One memorable descriptions of Andy Burnham’s role as Manchester mayor was “knocking council leaders heads together”. Who’ll do that if there’s no over-arching mayor? Much may depend on the region’s political line-up. If we ignore for a moment next May’s elections, we’re heading for a committee dominated by five Labour politicians (the Conservatives’ Euan Jardine in the Borders being the exception). However, the local elections could change everything.

Does it mean cheap bus fares? Burnham might be best known for delivering cheap bus fares and giving beds to the homeless in Manchester, but under his leadership it built the strongest city economy in England outside London. The Edinburgh City-Region would decide its own priorities.

Economic engine: The City Deal’s investment in key projects, such as data tech innovation, major housing development at Winchburgh, regional bus services and more, is credited with supporting the capital’s recent economic success. The Edinburgh city-region economy has been growing twice as fast as that of Scotland in the decade to 2023, contributing a third of the total Scottish economy with just 20% of the population. If this area’s economy was to slow and grow in line with the decade’s Scotland-wide growth, the economy would shrink by more than £12 billion.

What difference will it make? With a new ability to pool resources and commit to projects over the longer term, the City-Region would be able to deliver major projects in a way local government can’t without Holyrood or Westminster sign-off. Six key priorities have been identified in a proposition in the process of being drafted, and which is due to be discussed in detail by each of the local councils over the next few weeks. These are: housing delivery; transport infrastructure and planning; skills and labour market; business and innovation; climate resilience and natural capital; tourism and culture.

More brownfield building: So in tackling the need for more affordable housing, for example, expect greater collaboration and co-ordination over all public land, improved access to funding streams for brownfield sites, and regional development corporation powers.

What happens next? John Swinney had promised three months of “intensive talks”, but most of the principles have been agreed over many months of negotiation between the local authorities and the UK and Scottish governments. Expect a detailed plan to be signed off by the councils next March, to be taken to the Scottish and UK Governments, with Scottish Government enabling legislation likely to come into force in 2028.

Cummings-linked group behind aggressive online campaign for Granton extension

A London-based campaign advised by Dominic Cummings is behind an aggressive online drive in support of extending Edinburgh’s trams to Granton, The Inquirer can reveal.

The Looking for Growth campaign has attacked the Save the Roseburn Path protesters as “a small group of NIMBYs” in a series of online posts in recent days. They accuse the local campaigners of using their “wealth and influence” to try to stop the extension and thereby denying the residents of Granton the jobs and opportunities the trams would bring.

Looking for Growth is run by Lawrence Newport, an ally of Boris Johnson’s Brexit advisor Dominic Cummings, through his company Something Completely Different, based in London’s South Bank.

The 35-year-old academic turned campaigner told Politics Home that he regularly gets advice from Cummings - “I come to him a lot. He knows his stuff” - and that he is determined to campaign “relentlessly” for economic growth.

Crunch vote: The online campaign comes ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the city council’s transport and environment committee which is due to vote on the business case for building a new tram line from Granton to Little France via the city centre. Councillors are expected to agree to shelve the northern section of the proposed line in the face of the local campaign against the Roseburn Path route. They may also vote to remove the option from the local authority’s plans.

Influence in Westminster: Newport is well connected in Westminster. He has reportedly been invited into 10 Downing Street, while Labour MP Chris Curtis, Shadow Housing Secretary Katie Lam and Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf have all spoken at Looking for Growth conferences.

Viral action: Looking for Growth typically organises stunts designed to go viral. Its previous campaigns have included cleaning graffiti off the Tube in London with Tom Harwood from GB News.

Support for the route: Extending the trams to Granton would be expected to bring significant social and economic benefits to one of the capital’s most deprived neighbourhoods. The Granton and District Community Council have written an open letter in support of bringing the trams to the north of the city, while the Chamber of Commerce has backed the move for the economic benefits it would bring. The council has examined an alternative route for the northern line over Dean Bridge, but it Is more

South Bridge warning: Sticking with the proposed tram extension, Edinburgh World Heritage has reiterated its concerns about proposals to take the trams over South Bridge. It says its concerns have not been properly addressed ahead of Thursday’s meeting and points to a council-commissioned report saying the structure is “not suitable to carry tram loading”.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

SHIRLEY GOES NATIONAL: Portobello’s own Shirley Manson has teamed up with with the National Theatre to create a short film as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations. The Garbage singer turned Hollywood star narrates Smoke which imagines how a future Scotland might look. It will be shown at the Filmhouse in October, before being distributed for free on the BBC’s digital channels and the iPlayer from January.

BACKING THE FESTIVALS: To say the Festivals and the city’s oldest conservation charity the Cockburn Association don’t always see eye-to-eye would be an understatement. So their backing of the Festivals in their battle for more funding, and a fairer deal from the city’s new Visitor Levy, feels significant. The Association has published a thoughtful response highlighting the importance of maintaining affordable access for the kind of experimental and up-and-coming artists who have made the Fringe what it is today. What’s that noise? Is it the sound of tectonic plates moving beneath Edinburgh’s cultural life?

MINIMUM WAGE NON-PAYERS: A number of Edinburgh and Lothians businesses have been named by the UK Government’s Department for Business and Trade for failing to pay staff minimum wage. Highest was Mrs Fiona Burgoyne, trading as Horsechoice just outside the Capital in the Pentlands, who owed four workers a total of more than £22,000. The DBT accepts that not all underpayments are intentional, but names all employers who fail to meet the minimum wage requirements with the full list published here.

STOLEN CHURCH CROSS: A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a man who stole a cross from the altar of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Lauriston Street. Gordon Shields from East Lothian failed to turn up for sentencing this week for the theft carried out in 2022.

PUFFIN DANGER: Puffin numbers on the Isle of May has fallen significantly as a result of falling food supplies and increasing extreme weather conditions in the Firth of Forth. The number of burrows occupied by the seabirds on one of the UK’s biggest colonies has fallen by 30% in the last two years, to 36,500 from 52,000. NatureScot described the survey results as “disappointing and concerning”.

UNI FIRST: Heriot Watt University has appointed its first female principal, Professor Nola Hewitt-Dundas, who joins from Queen’s University Belfast. She is an internationally recognised academic in innovation and science policy and currently serves as a non-executive board member of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

GREENS DREAM: The Greens were the biggest winners in last Thursday’s city council by-election. Their candidate Lorenzo Martinico was voted in as a councillor for Portobello-Craigmillar and the party narrowly missing out on the other seat that was up for grabs in Newington-Southside. It was the Greens first ever council by-election win in Edinburgh and the first time the Greens have had two councillors in any local authority ward in Scotland. The full significance of the results will only become clear after next May’s local elections, but they have led a number of informed commentators to wonder whether the Greens might become the largest party on the city council.

Labour up, SNP down: It was also a good night for Labour as they cemented their hold on ‘the people’s republic of Edinburgh South‘ when Ruth Elliott was elected in Newington-Southside. It was a disappointing night for the SNP who were defending both seats. A watershed moment? Heck, we don’t know. We’ll find out next May.

£1.4M DRUGS RAID: Police have recovered cannabis and cocaine worth £1.4m in raids on properties in Leith, Granton and Uphall in West Lothian. Two men, aged 37 and 62, and are due to appear at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in connection with the haul which police described as “significant”.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Grant support for city exporters

The Capital’s exporters are being urged to use available support to help them access of grow overseas trade.

Business Gateway Edinburgh is offering fresh financial support, with grants of up to £2000 available to companies of any size through The Export Support Grants scheme, which it is running on behalf of the city council.

The scheme is designed to help local businesses develop opportunities in new or existing international markets, while supporting employment and investment in the city. The funding is open to businesses of any size, provided they are already trading, registered in the UK, headquartered within the City of Edinburgh Council area and applying for the grant for the first time.

DATA CENTRES: Efforts to impose a Scotland-wide moratorium on data centres appear to have failed, reports Daily Business. Scottish Greens had been pressuring the Scottish Government to pause the development of all data centres – including in Edinburgh - but during First Minister’s Questions last week John Swinney told Greens leader Ross Greer that he believed the government had already taken sufficient action when introduced guidelines to protect community interests.

CAPITAL AWARDS: Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce has launched its 2027 Annual Business Awards, the Capital’s biggest, with submissions now open. The event, which will take place early next year at the EICC, last year saw more than 170 entries, and 611 business leaders and entrepreneurs from 180 organisations attended the awards event.

GROWTH ON MENU: Edinburgh Food and Drink Academy, formerly the New Town Cookery School, has appointed leading chef and culinary educator Aisha Elshani as head teacher. With wide experience in the hospitality sector, including several years as a culinary arts lecturer at Edinburgh College, is looking to expand its professional cookery courses, interest classes and events as it builds towards its aim of supporting Scotland’s food and drink sector across the UK and internationally.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

TILDA TICKETS: Tickets to see Tilda Swinton return to the Traverse stage and reprise her role in the landmark production Man to Man go on general sale on Wednesday. The Oscar-winning actor starred in the original production nearly 40 years ago at the Traverse, before successfully transferring to London’s Royal Court Theatre, in what were her last live theatre performances.

ART WALKING: Porty Art Walk Weekends continue this Saturday and Sunday. Enjoy the work of artists in their homes and studios by the seaside.

THUNDERING HOOVES: The spectacular Riding of the Marches returns on Sunday with thousands of spectators expected to greet the horse riders re-enacting the historic tradition when they reach the Royal Mile.

TALKING GREEN: Author and journalist Vicky Allan will be discussing her work and environmental issues in a special online event tonight at 6.30-7pm. Anyone is welcome to join the talk for Humankind by signing up in advance at Vicky Allan on the Environment.

QUICK BITES

PROST! Edinburgh’s Brewhemia, which lays claim to being Scotland’s largest indoor hospitality venue, is to hold Oktoberfest from 19 September – 4 October over its seven bars across five rooms. The Bavarian extravaganza will include beer, naturally, but also a packed programme of events, brunches and late-night entertainment at its Market Street venue.

MISS STEAK: Sad news for steak lovers. Popular city centre steakhouse Bar + Block at 121 Princes Street has closed its doors for good as part of a major UK-wide restructure by owners Whitebread’s, which is closing all of its standalone branded restaurants.

Some will have breathed a sigh of relief, others will be counting the days until it all begins again. But if there’s one thing that we can all agree on then it’s surely that the greatest inconvenience to the city this August had nothing to do with the Fringe.

No, that was down to a building on Princes Street, owned by a billionaire and home to rotating cast of shops with a loose grasp on their tax-paying duties, which caught fire and cut the city in half.

Leith suffered from the resulting blockade. Buses were rerouted onto George Street, but at the expense of the Assembly Festival’s annual expansion into the street, and all the businesses, such as local gems Alandas, who were expecting to feed hungry Fringe-goers all month at their pop-up gelataria and fish and chip stall.

The council swiftly said yes to Assembly Festival decamping with a bar and some street food vendors to St Andrew Square, much to the chagrin no doubt of those who had celebrated the blocking of The Famous Spiegeltent’s popular (going by ticket sales and their success in 2025) return there this summer.

This happened because the council refused to simply bulldoze a burned-out husk - on a street already vandalised by decades of horrifying planning decisions - to make the area safe. The city’s transport convener Stephen Jenkinson has been lambasted as “Trumpian” in the last few days for suggesting precisely that.

I don’t think Trump would give two hoots for either the smooth running of the world’s biggest performing arts festival arts or the small businesses who were caught up in the mayhem. At least he made plain where his priorities are. Personally, I expect a Labour-controlled council to value people over buildings.

Shrinking Fringe show audiences

The Fringe Society has officially released its figures, boasting more than 2.8 million tickets issued - an 8% bump on 2025 (for almost 9% more shows, and 14% more performances) that culminated in a record-breaking single-day attendance mid-month. That certainly chimes with my own experience of an August that started briskly and peaked in week two, before falling off a cliff as September loomed.

Being a former statistician, I couldn’t resist a brief dive into publicly available Fringe sales data to try to puzzle this out - and I think I have. While the Fringe Society’s touted 2.8 million sounds healthy, it’s still roughly 200,000 tickets shy of 2019’s high-water mark.

When you spread an overall smaller audience across an expanded programme of 4,232 shows and more than 61,000 performances - both records - average sales per performance (not show) are around 9% less. I’ll spare you the (rough) calculations, but we can attribute around a quarter of that drop to more supply diluting the audience.

Ticket prices have (allowing for inflation) changed little in the past decade. While sales for the entire runs of shows were similar to last year, those for each individual performance were down by more than 5%. The take-home message seems clear: More isn’t better.

Still, assuming mid-month really was breaking records, the remaining 7% deficit had to come from somewhere, and it seems likely the final stretch took the brunt.

That could explain why, barring only one, every show I was booked to review on the 31st cancelled their final performance; the bums on seats simply evaporated. The big commercial beasts and runaway hits were still packing them in, of course, meaning they didn’t absorb that pain. No, it would have been pushed down the food chain to hammer the smaller fry and unknown quantities - explaining the tumbleweed I watched roll past many doors.

Not so the Edinburgh International Festival, which seemed packed from start to finish - though their audience and the Fringe’s aren’t quite cut from the same cloth, are they?

We could spend a few thousand words teasing out why the Fringe seems to have suffered, but the truth is very simple. The Festival was built on the assumption of low-cost, cheap, and not-so-cheerful accommodation for high-risk art.

Two decades of wage stagnation and an escalating cost-of-living crisis take their toll. Fringe-wise, it’s a simple equation: people with less money buy fewer tickets - particularly if they are tourists subject to exorbitant hotel prices.

The newly implemented 5% Visitor Levy hardly helps matters on this front. While it is certainly laudable that the revenue is being ringfenced to secure long-term cultural infrastructure like Leith Theatre, slapping an extra premium on exorbitant room rates further squeezes audience budgets and prices out performers. All this, while the council seems entirely blind to the strain this has incurred, particularly to the Book and International Festivals, which have responsibility for housing their invitees.

That, I believe, is the entirety of the problem; not a ‘late’ Fringe, which still terminated on the English Bank Holiday, which has traditionally helped fill the basements and converted lecture theatres. Tweaking the dates to maximise overlap with Scottish school holidays would likely help some. However, if you want a healthier Fringe, believe me, the only answer is to vote in more competent governments who can put more money in the audiences’ pockets.

When Professor Murray Pittock delivers the findings of his current study of the economic and social impact of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, we will have a clearer idea just how valuable it really is to our city, and why fostering a robust Fringe is in everyone’s interests.

In other news, it was also the first year that I attended Fringe shows at the EICC, thanks to a Pleasance takeover, and even if the glorious visuals and almost absent narrative behind Dracula-inspired Lucy’s Dream underwhelmed, I made a glorious discovery. Greens on the Go, a few metres up the road, contains a Fisher and Donaldson bakery. In a month that demands more than 300,000 steps and over 400 flights of stairs, you’d be amazed at how delicious one of their fudge doughnuts can be.

Edinburgh Festival Reviews: Theatre, Comedy, and Standout Shows

My bold band of Quinntessential Reviewers and I witnessed some extraordinary highs throughout the month. From the magical thrills of GLOB in the McEwan Hall, to the genre-defying brilliance of Elf Lyons. The Fringe remained rich with exceptional work. Outstanding theatre such as Paul Howard’s darkly hilarious The Shit Table, and Maxwell Caulfield’s bravura outing in Pilate: The Lost Gospel continued to bring West End-quality work to student unions. You could even catch a simply exquisite cabaret show from Liberace and Liza (A Tribute) in a repurposed lecture theatre.

The city’s theatres came alive with internationally elite work plucked from around the globe and down the street, thanks to the International Festival currently helmed by Nicola Benedetti. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s deeply personal and highly ceremonial exploration of identity, memory, and violence deserved nothing but standing ovations at the Festival Theatre, whilst local piano hero Steven Osborne’s deeply felt piano tribute to the late Alfred Brendel stunned a packed Queen’s Hall.

Not to be outdone, the Edinburgh International Book Festival delivered its own luminous moments, peaking with a divine collaboration between poet Len Pennie and composer Paul Leonard-Morgan that filled Greyfriars Kirk with heart-stoppingly gorgeous spoken word and strings. Add in the deeply charming insights of literary treasures like Colm Tóibín and Ali Smith, and it was a month when the city’s pages refused to be upstaged. Oh, and of course, the Edinburgh Art Festival, newly headquartered in Leith, opened gallery doors citywide (most often for free) to anyone needing respite from the crowds.

Artistically, 2026 threw up a few bizarre thematic trends and venue innovations. For reasons entirely unknown to science or logic, female comedians and theatre makers repeatedly confessed childhood crushes on Disney’s animated Robin Hood. Meanwhile, the trauma dump survived another year. Despite widespread critical fatigue, performers continued to look to personal tragedy for a USP.

On a uniquely immersive front, the UK’s first sauna theatre, co-founded by James Grieve and Lucy Osborne, welcomed swimming-clothed patrons into a variety of theatrical experiences at Summerhall (I did not attend!). Over on the musical side of the street, 2026 found producers continuing to launch ‘the next big musical’ during August, but aside from the exceptional The Real Kyle McCarren (think Tick, Tick... Boom! but more personal and wryly amusing), there was nothing to set the heather on fire.

This summer also fomented a genuinely global media circus, with Gilded Balloon hosting Amanda Knox’s comedy show, Cartwheel. Bravo to both the Fringe Society and Karen & Katy Coren of Gilded Balloon for resisting the 9,000-strong cancellation petition. My glowing review of Knox’s measured, fascinating, and compassionate show has been read by folks from across the globe, posted to forums across Reddit and elsewhere, and met with everything from erudite praise to impassioned castigation.

The state of Fringe journalism and ‘Travgate’

In the midst of August, the Traverse Theatre, not content with a superbly critically-received Fringe programme, decided to foment ‘Travgate’. For the unaware, the Traverse withheld standard press tickets for Tilda Swinton’s return in Man to Man. Aside from three legacy print titles, they expect every other critic to pay their own way. Cue outrage from certain parties, but for me, it showed that venues could rediscover their power to say ‘NO’. My Christmas wish (in September) is for venues, performers and PRs to seize this power next year, and to say no to poor-quality journalism. The Fringe Society may proudly announce a record-breaking 1,090 accredited media professionals this year, but I believe taking stars for a poster from just anyone devalues the work done by a diminishing pool of genuine professionals and aspiring professionals.

Which brings me to The Edinburgh Inquirer - it’s in large part thanks to The Inquirer’s rigorously ethical approach and commitment to financially compensating writers that I have been able to expand my coverage, and that of the team that helps me with The Quinntessential Review, without any loss of quality. That’s only possible because of subscribers who appreciate the critical importance of truly professional journalism. So, thank you!

Until Next Year

For all its problems and economic headwinds, Edinburgh’s summer Festivals continue to bring some of the most remarkable performance art in the world to town. The sheer variety on offer remains staggering; as does the preposterous idea that all I have to do is walk 10,000 steps a day to experience some of the best, weirdest, and mind-boggling shows made around the world. It does not come without its inconveniences, but the fact that it exists at all should continue to amaze us all.

For today’s long read, we return to the subject of the trams. The potential route of the city’s proposed new tram line has been dominating the headlines, but an important development elsewhere means the prospect of the north-south route actually being built is looming larger than ever. More on all that below, but first a catch-up on the main news headlines.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

NHS SHAKE-UP: NHS Lothian is set to be subsumed into one of two “strategic health boards” covering mainland Scotland. The Lothians would be lumped in with Aberdeen, Dundee, Fife and the Borders in a single east of Scotland board. However, John Swinney has confirmed there will be no compulsory redundancies, although jobs will be cut, as part of the merger aimed at making the health service more efficient.

CASTLES BOSS OFF: Chief executive Katerina Brown is to leave Historic Environment Scotland, the Newington-based agency which oversees the care of 300 historical properties including Edinburgh Castle, after two tumultuous years (Racism, toxicity and twerking: What’s going on at Historic Environment Scotland?). The Prospect trade union has welcomed her departure blaming her for low morale among staff.

PUNK RESCUE: Four casualties were helped by lifeboat crews after an emergency call-out to the Cramond Island of Punk festival on Saturday. The crews helped a woman with an ankle injury stuck on a rocky slope before assisting an unconscious reveller, someone with a head injury and someone who had hurt their back falling from a height.

MUSLIM CEMETERY: A dedicated cemetery would be established near Dalkeith to serve Edinburgh and the Lothians growing Muslim community, under plans to be considered by Midlothian Council. The Edinburgh-based WAFA foundation hopes the site, between the King’s Gate and Lothian Bridge at Newbattle will be able to accommodate 2,000 plots over the next 100 years.

KNIFE ANGEL: Scotland’s First Minister paid tribute to “inspirational” Edinburgh mother Lisa Petrie in backing her campaign to roll out bleed-control kits in communities across Scotland, after her 22-year-old son, John Mcnab was stabbed to death in Leith last September. Her campaign aims to ensure people have access to life-saving bleeding control equipment while awaiting emergency medics. Earlier this week, Lisa spoke at the opening ceremony of the anti-knife crime sculpture Knife Angel in Kirkgate, photographed here by Inquirer reader Ross Addy.

Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops

Greetings, Pop Pickers! Miss me?!

The temporary plywood bars are finally coming down, the flyer-carpeted cobbles have had a jet-wash, and we can once again stroll down the pavement without having to swerve a drama student balancing on a unicycle. August has officially left the building! But if you think the capital goes into cultural hibernation the second the festival circus packs its bags, think again. This week’s chart serves up an eclectic post-Fringe feast for September, featuring a massive choral celebration, a chilling psychological thriller, big-budget Broadway sparkle, and independent cinema.

Alright? Let’s get on…

Honourable Mentions: Artie’s Singing Kettle, Best of the Fringe, Michael Ball & Urzila Carlson

Just outside the main chart, we have some proper local treats! Over at Church Hill Theatre (September 13th), the legendary Artie’s Singing Kettle - Live! rolls into Morningside to celebrate a decade of solo touring; the last Singing Kettler standing must certainly know what he’s about by now, promising all the nostalgic classics from “Tattie Soup” to “Shove Yer Granny Aff a Bus”. If you’re missing the festival buzz already, Best of the Fringe hits Monkey Barrel (September 10th) hosted by the exceptional Liam Withnail - while you won’t know the exact lineup in advance, taking a punt on a mystery bill is half the fun! Over at the Usher Hall (September 13th), West End royal Michael Ball brings his On With the Show tour, serving up unmatched stage warmth and vocals that remain remarkably intact for an artist with so many miles on the clock. Finally, South African-New Zealander powerhouse Urzila Carlson brings her deadpan tour Fatty on a Yacht to the EICC (September 11th), bringing her tried-and-tested arena chops to one of Edinburgh’s largest rooms.

New in at Number 5 is... The Incomer (The Cameo, from tomorrow)

Kicking off our post-Fringe chart with a well-earned trip to the pictures! Independent cinema doesn’t get much more intriguing than this darkly funny, offbeat Scottish folk tale arriving on Home Street. Written and directed by Edinburgh’s own Louis Paxton, the film follows two eccentric siblings (Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke) who have lived in self-sufficient isolation on a remote island for decades, hunting seabirds and fiercely defending their home against “incomers”. Their insular world is upended when an awkward mainland council worker (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives with orders to relocate them. There is something uniquely satisfying about sinking into one of The Cameo’s plush, worn, velvet seats while the September chill begins to creep in outside. Word from trusted sources on the film festival beat has been glowing, singling out its sharp wit, evocative coastal photography, and big-hearted charm.

New in at Number 4 is... NYCOS 30th Anniversary Gala Concert — Carmina Burana (Usher Hall, September 13th)

Taking the fourth spot is a massive choral celebration under the dome! The National Youth Choir of Scotland is marking three whole decades of stage excellence, and they’ve chosen Carl Orff’s thunderous, dramatic Carmina Burana as a fittingly grand, roof-raising score for the occasion. NYCOS has spent thirty years nurturing some of the finest vocal talent in the country and regularly bringing international audiences to their feet. Hearing those iconic opening choral blasts of O Fortuna reverberate through the acoustic bowl of the Usher Hall with a massed choir and full orchestra promises an absolute cracker of an evening.

New in at Number 3 is... The Silence of the Lambs (Festival Theatre, September 8th – 12th).

Grabbing the bronze medal is a brand-new, gripping stage adaptation of Thomas Harris’s infamous psychological thriller. Stepping into the formidable, chilling shoes of Dr Hannibal Lecter is stage and screen star John Partridge (EastEnders, Cabaret), going toe-to-toe with Mollie Gallagher (Coronation Street) as FBI trainee Clarice Starling and Oliver Farnworth as Jack Crawford. Translating that intense, claustrophobic cat-and-mouse dynamic onto a grand proscenium arch is no easy feat, but friends on the review circuit have singled this out as a slick, spine-tingling adaptation backed by a terrific cast. If you fancy edge-of-your-seat tension in the grand surroundings of the Festival Theatre, this is well worth your attention.

New in at Number 2 is... The Tailor of Inverness (Royal Lyceum Theatre, September 7th – 8th).

Taking the silver spot is Dogstar Theatre Company’s acclaimed play about displacement, identity, and survival in war-torn Europe. When an independent piece of new writing finds such enduring longevity across international tours without being a commercial West End behemoth or a Shakespeare revival, it’s always for a reason. As reviewer Zoé Manset wrote in her 4-star review of its London run in The Quinntessential Review, “The play is a poignant tale of half-truths and dressed-up lies which cut the cloth of a brilliant one-man show”. This is storytelling of the highest order.

New in at Number 1 is... High Society (Edinburgh Playhouse, September 8th – 12th)

Seizing the top spot of the Pops is Cole Porter’s timeless musical on its major UK tour, bringing a mammoth 28-strong cast, a sumptuous live orchestra, and direction by Rachel Kavanaugh to deliver pure, vintage showbiz glamour to Greenside Place. Led by Helen George (Call the Midwife) as socialite Tracy Lord alongside Freddie Fox (Slow Horses) and Julian Ovenden (South Pacific), you simply cannot go wrong with an opulent score packed with standards like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Let’s Misbehave, and Well, Did You Evah! Best of all (for me), it features the brilliant Nigel Lindsay as Uncle Willie—who co-led one of my all-time favourite theatrical experiences in The Lehman Trilogy. Expect top-drawer singing, Anthony Van Laast’s dazzling choreography, and wall-to-wall class. Brilliant stuff! Yes, indeed! Not ‘arf!

And that’s your Top 5!

Grab those tickets, support our fantastic resident cultural scene, and let me know in the comments what you’re booking for the autumn run!

Until next week: Stay bright!

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A sneak peek into one of this years Art Walk exhibits in Porty

The city centre festivals may be winding down, but one of Portobello’s many festivals is about to kick off. The decade-old Porty Art Walk will return this weekend, rebranded as Art Walk Weekends to allow for an expanded calendar of events. The September festival will remain as usual, with two weekends of art exhibited in homes, studios, shops and on the street across six walking routes through Portobello, open during the day on 5-6 and 12-13 September.

The theme of this year’s seaside art festival is “Shift and Flow,” alluding to intertidal zones and times. Artists are displaying a huge variety of work from drawings inspired by coastlines to art exploring waves of emotion. I met Polly Thelwall, who is exhibiting at Porty Art Walk for the first time with her installation “Changing Tides.”

As we sit on low-slung sofas, looking up at small sculptures and pictures on the brightly coloured walls of Folks Cafe on Easter Road, Polly Thelwall tells the story of each of her pieces. This was after she had been to Finland and all of her drawings featured trees, those were painted during a sailing trip for artists on the West coast of Scotland- looking back, each era of her art connects with an aspect of nature.

As a classically trained artist, Polly studied in the late 90s when art about nature was “pretty much taboo” - but as time has gone on she has developed an art practice that is closely connected to nature.

Having grown up on the Atlantic coast of Northern Ireland, and now a keen kayaker, Polly’s connection to the sea is long-running. Her installation will include sculptures and sketches accompanied by underwater sounds recorded with her hydrophone (and often from her kayak).

Polly doesn’t like to prescribe a meaning to her work - none of her pictures or sculptures are named, only numbered. Even in the months before the installation, she can describe certain pieces which will be in her Art Walk project- namely an enormous papier mache shell as the centre piece- but even she doesn’t know what the finished product will be yet- “it’s a process of hands, it’s not a thinking process,” she says. “I’ll know next year what the theme of my art was this year.”

Polly’s installation is part of Art Walk 4.

Suddenly, Edinburgh’s £2bn tram extension may not be a pipedream

Swinney opens the door on funding and what that might mean for the Roseburn route

by Euan McGrory

The First Minister made no mention of Edinburgh or trams when he outlined his plans for the coming years to the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, as he outlined his Programme for Government at Holyrood, John Swinney offered the clearest sign yet that it might not all be a pipe dream.

The biggest obstacle to extending the city’s single tram line into a genuine network has always been the cost. The proposed next step - the north-south line from Granton to Little France via Princes Street - is estimated to cost anywhere between £1.7bn to £2.9bn, depending how much of it you build and which route you take.

The Scottish Government has stubbornly resisted the city’s proposals on the grounds it thinks the money could be better spent, particularly tackling road congestion and potentially exploring alternatives such as segregated lanes for electric buses.

Read more

Standing on Leith walk with a microphone, it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes for a pattern to emerge. When asked how Leith has changed, long-term residents seem to bring up one specific word.

“It’s become more gentrified. The old industries are gone, the old character’s gone,” says Robert, who’s lived at the top of Easter Road for 73 years (and points out that means he’s not a Leither, by the way).

Elizabeth has lived in Leith for forty years and shares a similar view: “I suppose it’s been gentrified in areas, the more upmarket housing that’s been built, the shops that are here, just a different clientele.”

Speaking to more recent arrivals, we get straight to the word in question. Do they think Leith is gentrified?

“It will be [gentrified] at some point for sure. Not just yet, but in a couple of generations. Or one generation probably,” says Stefano, who has lived in Leith for just over a year.

Haleema and Amelia have lived at The Shore but “not for very long”:

“I’ve spoken to quite a lot of people who live in Leith and they’ve said that it’s very different to what it used to be, even like five years ago,” says one. “I think it started with the Michelin stars on the Shore, and then the trams, and AirBnBs,” adds the other.

Almost everyone we speak to agrees, Leith is undergoing a process of gentrification. But what does that mean? Does the data back it up? And how is life changing for residents and businesses? These questions are the makings of a PhD thesis, not an article. But we will do our best.

Over two long reads, we hope to unearth the reality of gentrification beneath these soundbytes – first for Leith residents, and then for business owners.

What actually is gentrification?

“One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes – upper and lower. Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.”

This was the first recorded use of the word ‘gentrification’. It reads like it was written in 2026, but it actually comes from a 1964 book London: Aspects of Change by sociologist Ruth Glass. Glass used the term to describe the trend of middle class couples moving into then working class Notting Hill and Islington. Their financial ability to renovate properties led to poorer families being priced out of the area.

More than fifty years later, gentrification has become a common talking point in cities around the UK; from Hackney in London and Glasgow’s West End to Salford in Greater Manchester and, of course, Leith.

The port town, absorbed into the City of Edinburgh just over a century ago, has gone from the grizzly setting of Trainspotting to the Sunday Times’ top neighbourhood in Scotland in 2020.

Both of those characterisations of the area are to some extent generalisations, though. Just as the term “gentrification” is a generalisation, which can’t fully describe the undeniably rapid change the neighbourhood has undergone.

What do Leithers think?

Lisa Clark was born in Leith in the 1960s, to working class parents, and has lived in Leith almost all of her life. In fact, the furthest she ever ventured away was to the top of the Mound while studying Divinity at university – even though her mother said she’d much rather Lisa became the manager of Woolworths at the foot of Leith Walk.

The Leith of Lisa’s childhood still very much felt like a working port. It was not as cosmopolitan as it is now, she says, but certainly more diverse than the rest of Edinburgh.

Lisa remembers car ownership was very low, but home ownership was high.

“My father didn’t ever earn much money and my mum was disabled so she couldn’t work, but they still could afford a two bedroom flat in Dalmeny street, and that wasn’t considered exceptional,” Lisa says. Among her schoolmates at Lorne Primary and Leith Academy, the vast majority, she says, lived in houses their parents owned.

Back then, Leith Walk was a more traditional high street where you could buy everything you needed, she recalls. This was when the remains of Leith train station - now occupied by the large Tesco - was still a brownfield site and a scary place to walk through alone as a teenage girl going to school.

The changes began in the 1990s, Lisa reckons, when the butchers, bakers and grocers gave way to supermarket chains. In their place, Leith Walk has been gradually populated by cafes, restaurants and artisan bakeries, although some of the older businesses stand strong. Storries Home Bakery, the Vacuum repairs shop, and a couple of laundrettes have been in operation for around half a century now.

Many of these changes echo what has happened across the UK over the same period.

“A lot of this is much broader cultural stuff,” says Lisa. “Even when I was at university, you didn’t really get coffee shops… it was just an entirely different world.”

Housing is key

One way that Leith has changed particularly stands out for Lisa. “Housing is the key pivot here that maybe shifts us up a couple of demographics,” she says.

Her observation echoes a conclusion of Ruth Glass’s research back in 1964 – that a key marker of gentrification is increasing housing costs.

The theory is that, to wealthy households, the neighbourhood is both cheap and vibrant, and therefore attractive. To those already living there it is not cheap; it’s affordable. But prices rise as the market adjusts to greater demand from buyers or renters willing to pay more than their predecessors. Rents and house prices in the area go from cheap to middling for the wealthy, and from affordable to unaffordable for those on low incomes.

This chimes with the experience of Lisa, who currently rents a two bedroom flat. Despite having grown up in a house her working class parents owned, gone to university, and earned more than her parents did, she cannot afford to buy a flat in Leith.

“There are houses on my stair that are on sale at the moment… costing three hundred thousand. That just wouldn’t have cost that [much], which is why people like my parents were able to buy that,” she says.

Leith-raised musician Bee Asha told us a similar story. Asha – who this month launched What a Beautiful Place to Fall Over, a music, documentary, art and event project exploring the impact of gentrification in Leith – was lucky enough to be able to buy in her home neighbourhood, but only after 14 months of bidding on homes and thanks to the generosity of the seller.

Asha was outbid by more than £40,000 for the Leith flat she now lives in, but her offer was accepted after she wrote a letter to the seller explaining her connection to Leith and her struggles to find an affordable home. The seller passed away shortly after the sale. “I think because he… didn’t need the extra money and he thought, ‘I may as well give back to my community,’” she says.

Demand for all kinds of housing in Leith has increased, says Susan Rae, a Scottish Greens councillor for Leith Walk ward and social housing tenant.“This is the most requested area for social housing, everyone wants to be here,” she says.

Councillor Rae adds that her son, now trying to buy a home in Edinburgh, won’t look anywhere but Leith because of the abundance of shops, cafes, restaurants and bars. That demand is undoubtedly going to drive up prices in the private sector.

What does the data tell us?

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Voters head to the polls in two city council by-elections on Thursday in what is almost certainly the last test of its political parties ahead of May’s local elections.

The SNP are looking to defend two seats - in Southside/Newington and Portobello/Craigmillar - after senior councillors Simita Kumar and Kate Campbell stepped down following their election to the Scottish Parliament.

Independent modelling by PollCheck suggests the Greens may be favourites to follow their dramatic win in Edinburgh Central at this year’s Scottish elections by taking the vacant seat in Southside/Newington. It also suggests the party - whose leader in England and Wales Zack Polanski has visited to rally local party activists - may be the main challenger in Portobello/Craigmillar. The modelling is based on local voting patterns in recent elections rather than live polling of current opinion.

Labour and the Lib Dems also have their ambitions, with all four parties hoping to establish some momentum ahead of what promises to be a knife-edge local election in May.

State of the parties: The outcome of the by-elections is highly unlikely to change the current leadership of the council. The SNP are the biggest party on the local authority (with 15 seats going into the by-elections), but are kept out of power by a minority Labour administration (11 seats) propped up by the Lib Dems (14) and Conservatives (10). However, wins this week will give the winning parties stronger local stories to tell heading into May’s elections. Technically, the Lib Dems could overtake the SNP as the biggest party on the council, although the double victor that would take is seen as highly unlikely.

Southside/Newington contenders: The main contenders are seen as Labour activist Ruth Elliott who has campaigned against Purpose Built Student Accommodation developmemt; cycling campaigner and University of Edinburgh AI researcher Artie Khovanov of the Lib Dem’s; and the Greens’ Isabella Gastel Alejandre, who helps run community projects including a permaculture garden and clothes-repair workshops.

Porty/Craigmillar contenders: SNP activist Silas McGilvray appears to face the most competition from Labour’s Jim Wyke, who works in marine environmental protection, and housing co-operative worker Lorenzo Martinico of the Greens.

Watch out for: The winning party or parties insisting they are best placed to win in the area at next May’s elections.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

DOO-ING GOOD: The Newhailes estate in Musselburgh has received a flood of hand-knitted pigeons from well-wishers (pictured above) after knitted doos were stolen from a display in the doocot at the National Trust property.

BATTERY STORAGE PLAN: Developers seeking to locate a Battery Energy Storage System described as Kaimes Renewal Energy Park within the Green Belt at Burdiehouse Square are bringing forward a renewed application. An earlier application was refused by the city council because of its Green Belt location and proximity to a Special Landscape Area and a Conservation Area, and was also refused on Appeal. Councillors at a meeting of the development management sub-committee on Wednesday will be told no detail about the new application has yet been submitted, and will be asked to consider the issues.

HEALTH BOARDS MERGER? The Scottish Government is considering merging Scotland’s 14 regional health boards, including NHS Lothian, to create as few as three super-boards, according to Daily Record political editor Paul Hutcheon. The move would be a cost-saving exercise, cutting the number of chief executives and other senior executives. A review might be announced as soon as tomorrow when First Minister John Swinney lays out his Programme for Government.

FIRE SITE STARTER: The city council has agreed to explore the possibility of a compulsory purchase order of the fire-hit former Debenhams site on Princes Street. The move comes amid concerns developer Criterion Capital may drop its plans for a Zedwell Hotel and its joint-ownership of the site with French firm Osmo Energie may prolong attempts to bring the site back into use.

FESTIVALS FUNDING BOOST: The Festivals and the city’s other major cultural organisations, including theatres, museums and community arts centres, are in line for a 25% increase in their funding from the city council. Their total council funding will go up to £13.75m after the SNP and Lib Dems forced the city’s Labour administration to use Visitor Levy proceeds to fund a £2.75m increase.

Festivals v city council continued: The war of words between the council’s Labour leadership and the Festivals continued during the fractious meeting at which the increase was agreed on Friday. Tony Lankester, chief executive of the Fringe, accused the council of a lack of strategic thought in its approach to Festivals funding. Margaret Graham, the council’s culture convener, effectively told him ‘you aren’t the only show in town’, insisting the benefits of the Levy had to spread around the city.

No innovation: The blanket 25% funding increase spelled the end of a proposed £1.4m innovation fund, which would have opened funding opportunities to new arts organisations, for next year.

FUNNY THING HAPPENED… The prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Awards winners have been announced – with an Englishman, an Irish woman, but no Scotsman amongst the gongs. Chris Cantrill won the overall top gong, the Edinburgh Comedy Award for his show Rewilding, at Monkey Barrel, which was presented by previous winner Richard Gadd at a ceremony at Ghillie Dhu at the weekend. Marty Gleeson picked up best newcomer for her show Dog Ear, and the Panel Prize went to One Joke, by Liebenspiel, a show in which multiple comedians tell a single joke to raise money for charity.

A FLAT NO: Plans to convert the former Royal London head offices in Henderson Row into 63 flats have ben rejected by the city council for a second time. The revised proposals removed all parking spaces and cut the number of flats by two to makes some of them bigger, but were still rejected.

PORTY SEWAGE: SEPA are warning against swimming or paddling in the sea at Portobello. A water quality warning issued last Thursday remains in place after testing at the west end of the beach, near the Figgate Burn, which carries sewage overflow from the city to the sea, raised concerns.

HEAD TURNING: Edinburgh’s renowned independent school for girls, St George’s, has appointed a new Head – and it looks something of a coup. Niamh Green currently leads the prestigious girls’ boarding school Roedean in the south of England and brings two decades of experience in girls’ day and boarding educations. She takes up her new position in Scotland’s capital next year, when she will succeed Carol Chandler-Thompson.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Popular East Lothian attraction closes doors

A much-loved local business has closed its doors for the final time. East Links Family Park at Dunbar had its final day of operation yesterday after 25 years at the site and hundreds of thousands of family visits.

The lease on the current site has run out, and efforts by the business to relocate to a nearby site were refused planning permission by East Lothian Council amid concerns about the impact that 100,000 visitors a year would have, prompting hundreds of objections. An appeal was also rejected.

Yesterday, on social media, the business thanked customers and staff and said: “For a quarter of a century, East Links Family Park has been a very special part of family life in East Lothian and beyond. We have had the privilege of welcoming generations of families through our gates, watching children grow up, return with their own children, and create countless happy memories along the way.”

START-UP SUCCESS: Scotland has outstripped the wider UK in business start-ups in the first half of the year, according to the NatWest/Royal Bank of Scotland and Beauhurst’s New Startup Index. The number of business incorporations rose 3.73% compared with the first half of last year, to 20,900.

NEW ESCAPE: A new escape room experience has been launched in Edinburgh by local businessman Chris Wood. His Team Machine maintain the new facility is the largest of its kind in the UK and is the first in the capital to offer a tailored experience for children as well as large groups. The venue uses immersive technology and is located at Nicolson Square.

CONFERENCE FUTURE: Norton Park - Edinburgh’s main third sector hub - is inviting community organisations, charities, social enterprises and local people to help shape the future of its Conference Centre, and has commissioned a comprehensive look at options for new and enhanced uses for the facility, with the ambition of creating greater social impact and stronger community benefit for the building in the Easter Road area.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

ART WALK WEEKENDS: Enjoy the seaside and explore the work of 70 artists in their homes, studios and pop-up exhibitions. Art Walk Weekends turn Portobello into one huge art gallery. This weekend and next, at 10am-6pm.

FULL HOUSE: House music legend Armand Van Helden brings his tunes to the Corn Exchange. Catch the You Don’t Know Me and Barbara Streisand star on Saturday night.

HOP INTO THE GARDEN: Live music and street food pop-ups return to Archerfield Walled Garden in East Lothian for the 7th annual Hops in the Garden festival on Saturday. All proceeds go to Leuchie House, which offers 24-hour respite care for people with neurological conditions and their families, near North Berwick.

TOP TABLE: Love board games, card games and roleplaying games? Tabletop Scotland brings more than 130 exhibitors demonstrating and selling games to the Royal Highland Centre for Scotland’s biggest convention of its kind, on Friday to Sunday.

QUICK BITES

FULLY-BAKED PLAN: Plans have been lodged that, if approved, would see the former bingo hall at 50 Nicolson Street in the Southside transformed into a bakery and café. Independent operator PUBLIC wants to transform the venue, which has also been a theatre and the La Scala cinema, into a three-floor venue with seating for more than 100 customers.

COCKTAIL STORY: A new cocktail bar – Understory – is to open in the West End on 15 September. Located within vaults beneath the streets within the Rutland Hotel building it is led by Sam Baxendale, former manager of the multi-award winning Bramble and Rutland Hotel head of bars James Grant.

SOBER THOUGHT: A new café with a “sober bar” list of non-alcoholic drinks is set to open in the West End. Work is underway getting Brioche ready for opening – at a date due to be confirmed soon – and to be run by the team behind popular Bruntsfield coffee shop Matcha Sando.

Another Edinburgh Festival Fringe shortlist arrives, and another wave of consternation predictably follows. Why? Because no Scottish comedians feature on the main Edinburgh Comedy Awards (ECA) nomination lists this August. Established in 1981 as the Perrier Comedy Awards, the accolade traded headline sponsors across four decades - including Intelligent Finance, Foster’s, lastminute.com, and Dave - before adopting its current independent title.

Comedian Mark Nelson captured the online mood, when he declared “the bias is just ridiculous”. He pointed to The Stand’s newly created McTavish Award: an honour restricted to Scottish or Scottish-based acts, as a vital corrective to an insular industry bubble.

Outrage is easy and even understandable. Judging is, by its very nature, strongly subjective. Of course, I cannot categorically rule out such bias altogether. However, I believe that close inspection of the mechanics of the competition reveals clear, objective reasons why local talent may appear to be missing out.

Fighting the odds

The ECA explicitly targets ‘up-and-coming’ acts. Nominees cannot have starred in major television comedy programmes or regularly filled 500-plus seat venues under their own name. If you want a spot on the newcomers’ list, your Fringe show must be your debut.

In a festival packed with many hundreds of contenders, judges working under immense time pressure must whittle lists down rapidly. Panellists watching up to six shows a day almost certainly rule out acts hovering in administrative grey areas to narrow a sprawling field. I would!

The McTavish Award celebrates one of the city’s best-loved comedians and offers a great new showcase for our home-grown talent.

Examine the eight featured, and superbly talented, acts on the inaugural longlist. Four present headaches for ECA judges weighing up strict eligibility. Amy Matthews fronted an ITVX solo stand-up special. Chris Forbes has co-headlined Glasgow’s 1,785-seat King’s Theatre and spent years on BBC’s Scot Squad. Gareth Waugh supports arena-level global tours for Katherine Ryan and Daniel Sloss. Kim Blythe’s viral online footprint is driving her to bigger and bigger venues in the coming year.

Panellists looking for clean eligibility lines will naturally hesitate over such edge cases. That leaves only four McTavish contenders - Amanda Dwyer, Gareth Mutch, Paul McDaniel, and Robin Grainger - sitting comfortably within traditional venue and media thresholds without grey-area complications. Only three of these are Scottish. That’s three gifted, homegrown comedians versus a small army of the best in the world currently playing venues around the city. These are not great odds.

You’d be forgiven for believing there must be many more eligible performers, but you might be surprised by the raw numbers. Former ECA panel chair Stephen Armstrong, who we will hear more of below, notes that despite the geographic advantage of lower accommodation costs, surprisingly few Scottish comedians actually stage full, eligible 50-minute runs out of the 700-plus comedy entries listed each August.

ECA Criteria at a Glance

• Three Categories: Best Comedy Show (£10,000), Best Newcomer (£5,000), and a discretionary Panel Prize (£5,000).

• Eligibility: Original stand-up, sketch, or character comedy running 50 minutes or more. The awards exclude plays and cover acts.

• Performance Window: Acts must run at least eight shows between 20–28 August (or five if opened earlier).

• The Star Rule: The panel disqualifies acts starring in major TV/streaming specials or filling 500-plus seat venues under their own name.

• Judging Panel: Ten judges (seven industry professionals, three public members) inspect every eligible comedy show.

Inside the Judging Room

To understand how these decisions happen, let’s look at the judging process itself. Arts critic Stephen Armstrong was kind enough to speak with me at short notice to explain the inner workings. A veteran journalist for The Sunday Times, author, and Orwell Foundation trustee, Armstrong sat on the main ECA judging panel across multiple festival seasons dating back to 2010, chaired the panel in 2018 when Rose Matafeo claimed Best Comedy Show, and served on the panel as recently as 2023.

Armstrong describes a relentless, highly structured operation. First, local spotters filter out raw or unprepared acts (there are legions of these, believe me. That’s part of what the Fringe is for!). Then a ten-person panel takes over.

No show enters longlist consideration unless at least two panellists attend and give the nod. By the final Sunday, the panel debates every remaining contender for hours to build a longlist of roughly 15 acts. Panellists spend the next 72 hours filling gaps in their viewing schedules, ensuring every judge sees every shortlisted act before a secret ballot on Saturday morning.

Armstrong highlights a consistent demographic sweet spot in these debates. Shortlisted comedians almost always average between 30 and 35 years old. Ageism, I hear you cry? But think again. It takes time to master any craft; why should comedy be the exception?

“They’ve been working for a certain amount of time, so they’re able to create a show of a certain ambition and scale,” says Armstrong. “But they haven’t really got jaded yet, and they haven’t moved on. So that’s the sweet spot.”

Just gags doesn’t cut it

Armstrong’s insider vantage point reveals that stylistic preferences may also dictate shortlists far more than geography.

“What probably leans towards comedians who have something about their show that isn’t just basically club comic gags,” says Armstrong. “The one thing that really doesn’t... very, very rarely works... is to say, “Oh, this is f***ing funny.” It has to be something about that you can get your teeth into. So this is about this, or this matters for this reason.”

Armstrong notes that an audience typically sustains focus on pure jokes for roughly twenty minutes. Expanding a set to a full Fringe hour requires a stronger structural spine or personal narrative.

When I pointed to the absence of the dearly missed Janey Godley from prior nomination lists, Armstrong was quick to praise her wit and charisma. However, he isn’t wrong to say her pre-national-treasure-status Fringe sets were audience-responsive, sharply observed, punchline-rich shows.

What of now international star Daniel Sloss? “Daniel Sloss is the kind of comic who would have been shortlisted if he wasn’t so successful so quickly,” says Armstrong, noting Sloss bypassed award eligibility by leaping straight to massive rooms. “He basically now travels the world doing Fringe shows, but for a vast audience.”

Scottish comedians who do secure ECA nominations have done so by subverting traditional club formats. Armstrong cited Glasgow comic Larry Dean, a three-time ECA nominee across the Best Newcomer and Best Comedy Show categories. Dean opened one nominated hour-long show with stripped-down gags reminiscent of a wide-boy before revealing a nuanced story about his sexuality.

Similarly, Fife-born Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, of Baby Reindeer fame, claimed the main prize by dismantling the comedy form entirely.

“Richard Gadd, he takes the form of the comedy art form, and he sort of throws it around and moves it into different spaces,” says Armstrong.

“The problem with judging any comedy,” he adds, “is that I could tell you the show I think was the funniest ever, and you would think it was rubbish. If you don’t have a show that’s got a story or that’s got something to it, you’re running the risk of other judges just going, “This is rubbish”.”

Armstrong also has the idea that streaming platforms may be pushing this ‘story’ trend harder still. “The Netflix special has taken on the format of the Comedy Award Fringe show,” he says, pointing to the prevalence of story-based stand-up specials available on demand.

Shifting Stakes and the Tokenism Trap

As our chat proceeded, I found myself strongly agreeing with Stephen’s observation that critics of the shortlists often mistake the festival’s fundamental identity. Perhaps they could have been retitled a little more clearly, but the Edinburgh Comedy Awards are an international affair, not a regional showcase: a huge part of the awards’ cachet stems from its global stature.

“The lists are probably... designed to represent an international festival. Not a Scottish festival,” says Armstrong. “What I think is amazing about Edinburgh, both the International Festival and the Fringe, is that they were born out of the idea that the world would show the world’s art to each other... there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world where so many people show up and perform.”

This global influx inevitably creates formidable competition. Performers from every English-speaking country arrive in Edinburgh to test their work against the world’s best; Armstrong praises the host city’s willingness to stage this international battle.

“The beauty of Scotland and Edinburgh, I think, is the generosity with which they host that. It’s such a generous act on behalf of the city.”

The problem perhaps is any proposals to ring-fence nominations for local acts miss the mark. The ECA’s leadership (director Nica Burns and executive director Emma Brünjes), he tells me, have regularly surveyed Scottish comedians about creating a dedicated local talent award, but performers rejected the concept.

“What you find is that they don’t [want it],” says Armstrong. “Because what they want to do is they want to be shortlisted and considered alongside everybody else. They don’t want to because they feel like a local talent award would be like a second best.”

It’s not hard to see that engineered quotas on the main list would insult performers rather than celebrate them.

“If the panel every year had to put one Scottish comedian on the list, then that Scottish comedian every year would hate the fact that they were on the list. If they didn’t win, they would just see that they were token representation on that shortlist.”

Plus, winning the comedy awards might once have guaranteed you at least a shot at TV glory; that’s simply no longer the case. Armstrong points to Dominic Holland, winner of the 1993 Perrier Best Newcomer Award, who was last seen on the Free Fringe back in 2017 with a show about being eclipsed by his super famous son.

Curiously, missing the shortlist might even yield its own dividend. Armstrong - tongue somewhat in cheek - argues that sustained public debate over a snub could build a comedian’s profile more effectively than a nomination slot that ends without a trophy.

“If your favourite comedian isn’t shortlisted and they are good, and you’re prepared to keep that argument going, then maybe their actually not appearing on the shortlist will do them a career favour anyway.” Most would, obviously, prefer to win, but anything is preferable to a pity prize.

Let me lay my own cards on the table: The Fringe succeeds precisely because Edinburgh welcomes in the world’s best. Local frustrations are understandable, but attributing nomination shortfalls to prejudice ignores reality. It’s impossible to prove a negative, but there’s just no need to invoke anti-Scottish bias to account for the situation.

I might think brilliant young Scottish comedian Ayo Adenekan deserves a nod, but Scottish performers face an elite global field, strict eligibility criteria, and a panel that leans towards matured, thematic heft. The McTavish Award offers a welcome celebration of domestic talent (no Ayo again, though!), but to me, the main ECA shortlist simply reflects a ruthless, international arena. It’s worth winning precisely because it’s very, very hard to do so.

We’ve got two types of drama for you today - artistic and political. Both, in fact, combine in our report on the latest developments at the City Chambers.

More on that and Will Quinn’s final pick of the best the Fringe has to offer below, after your regular midweek roundup.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

HUGH’S THAT? Hollywood star Hugh Grant was spotted enjoying a visit to North Berwick yesterday leaving locals wondering if he was doing anything more than indulging his love of a round of golf. The 65-year-old actor and his wife Swedish TV producer Anna Elisabet Eberstein were spotted getting into a Ferrari on Forth Street.

PARKING PAUSE: Hugh will have had to pay North Berwick’s controversial new parking charges despite a partial victory for campaigners fighting against them. East Lothian Council has agreed to put the roll-out of the on-street charges across four other towns on hold until it carries out a reviews of their impact on local businesses on North Berwick.

UNI STRIKES: Students face fresh disruption at Edinburgh University after staff announced further industrial action in their ongoing protest over job cuts. The University and College Union says its members boycott of teaching and other duties for weeks starting next month will make some course untenable.

HOUSING PROGRESS: The city council has ended its freeze on allocating council houses, put in place to prioritise people facing homelessness, following progress in tackling the city’s housing crisis. Some 1473 affordable homes have been completed by the local authority and partners, 1144 sites have been started and 866 additional suitable temporary accommodation properties purchased. A new grant scheme is being introduced offering eligible owners of empty homes up to £20,000 to bring properties up to a lettable standards, in return for letting the property for at least three years.

TRAMS BY JOVI: An “intensive” tram service is to be run by Edinburgh trams to serve the sell-out crowd makings it way to and from the Bon Jovi concert at Murrayfield Stadium tomorrow night. Edinburgh Trams confirmed they will run additional services, although with the Princes Street hotel fire aftermath still closing the route at the West End, services will obviously be restricted to running between there and the Airport.

The city council versus the Festivals

If you thought the Festival Fireworks had been cancelled, then think again.

This year the annual display has been replaced by an incendiary dispute between Fringe chief executive Tony Lankester and the leader of the city council Jane Meagher.

That culminated in Lankester accusing the council of putting the future of the Festivals in “jeopardy” and not being “serious about being a cultural capital”.

In response, Meagher effectively told him and other unhappy Festival chief executives to grow up. (“Please don't just use the media to fight battles. Let's be a bit more mature about it. Let's talk.”)

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be when the council agreed to introduce the UK’s first compulsory, city-wide Visitor Levy.

We were told the so-called “tourist tax” would boost the city’s arts and heritage by ensuring visitors made a contribution towards Edinburgh’s under-pressure infrastructure and public services.

Tomorrow, councillors will be asked to decide on a second attempt to allocate the share of the proceeds of the new tax - which has £5 million in its first month alone - allocated to the arts.

The ‘big winner’ looks set to be the major refurbishment King’s Theatre which is set to receive nearly £10 million in Visitor Levy funding over the next 30 years. The new tax has come to the rescue of a project which like many major construction schemes has seen its costs spiral over the last few years in this case from £20 million in 2018 to £41 million today.

There has been some controversy over the full transparency of the decision-making process, but it is exactly the kind of work which the Levy was designed to support. This is a significant investment in a cultural venue used substantially by visitors but also enjoyed and treasured by city residents. The allocation of Levy funds will ensure the cost of securing its long-term future doesn’t either cripple the venue or drain general council funds.

That is perhaps the one relatively straightforward bit.

Other all-year-round arts enterprises, such as the Royal Lyceum, Whale Arts agency in Wester Hailes and North Edinburgh Arts centre in Muirhouse, are in line for an 11.5% increase in their council funding under a blanket approach to all 28 of the cultural organisations it funds. That includes relatively smaller festivals such as the Science Festival and Imaginate children’s Festival.

Councillors seem determined to spread the cash widely around the city and its arts organisations despite a warning from council officials that it appears to be breaking the rules under which the tax was set up in doing so.

In their report to councillors, city officials feel obliged to warn that “the majority of actions funded… are specifically targeted at local community engagement and support, activities not supported by the aims and objectives of the Visitor Levy”.

The legislation under which the Levy was introduced stipulates that the money it raises must be used to “sustain, support or develop facilities or services which are substantially for visitors”.

The big bone of contention of course is the level of funding directed to the major Festivals.

The council seems unable to decide whether it accepts that the major Festivals are an essential part of the city’s economic infrastructure - and therefore worth sustained investment from the local authority - or sees them as a cash cow from which it can extract funds to invest elsewhere in the city.

Meagher says she is keen to find a plan that “works for” the Festivals yet has now brought forward two plans which - even after her Labour administration was bounced into offering a better deal by the opposition SNP and Lib Dems - would leave them worse off under the Visitor Levy.

The Book Festival offers the starkest example. Shorn of commercial sponsorship revenue and facing soaring costs due to rocketing accommodation costs, the Visitor Levy is making its life even harder.

The new tax has added £10,000 to the cost of accommodation for visiting authors and the like, yet in return it is being offered just £2,300 from Levy funds after the council rethought its initial plans. It is possible councillors will ramp that up even further by councillors tomorrow, but any feasible increase will still leave the Book Festival out of pocket.

The Fringe will receive just £8,625 from Levy funds under the more generous plan being presented to councillors tomorrow. The International Festival is slightly better off, with £221,500 heading its way under the revised plan, offsetting a £50,000 increase in its accommodation bill. It too though is frustrated at the level of funding on offer and has joined the Fringe and Book Festival in calling for a fundamental rethink.

The main choice facing councillors tomorrow is likely to be agreeing the 11.5% increase or more than doubling that to a 25% rise in their council funding, a plan being pushed by opposition SNP councillors.

That would placate the major festivals, at least for now, but would require the scrapping of a £1 million innovation fund for next year which is intended to be open to currently unfunded arts organisations. That, officials warn, could leave the council open to legal action from organisations who are frozen out.

And this is just round one, the first year of distributing funds from the Visitor Levy. Whatever is decided today, a new three-year plan for the city’s investment in the arts has to be agreed before the next tranche of funding is allocated. That is where the real winners and losers will be decided - and the politically-riven council may have arrived at a clearer idea of its priorities. By then, however, it will be a different council, because there is the small matter of council elections next May.

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The best of what’s left of the Fringe

Will Quinn on the late discoveries, hidden gems and final-week triumphs to close out your August

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

Ok folks, many of the shows I’ve recommended over the past few weeks are still available if your finger finds those ticket links quickly enough. But as we stagger towards the finish line of this glorious, exhausting marathon, I’m here to suggest a few more that might have flown completely under your radar until now.

If you’re hunting for a final slice of Fringe magic before the “Sold Out” boards go up for good, here is your definitive guide to the best of what’s left. Inquirer readers, get your highlighters ready! Alright? Let’s get it on...

Comedy & Stand-Up

When it comes to sophisticated stand-up, Chris Grace: 88% (Assembly George Square Studios) is a great choice. As I noted in my review, it’s “an artful blend of acting skill and left-field opinions which prompts thought as well as laughter”. Grace sets out to prove that you can be quite mad at someone—say, 12%—and remain friends. Dropping deft context-bombs on tricky topics like AI and age-gap relationships, he delivers “a rare, if cheeky, attempt to inject some nuance into a Fringe stand-up scene which can tend to the all-or-nothing; and it works a treat”.

Read more

This is not a love letter to the bike. And it is not a declaration of War on Cars. The car has already won.

Workers need their vans. Rural communities often have no alternative. Carers and people with mobility issues should arguably find driving easier than they do. And some people simply love it.

But be honest. How truly joyous was your driving experience in the past year?

It’s usually the school run, the supermarket dredge, the parking prowl, the pothole slalom, the soul-sucking slog at Sheriffhall, the cost of living crisis at the pump, and the daily bout of road rage.

It is not just you suffering. The ONS has measured it: people who drive to work are less happy and more anxious than people who get there any other way.

This piece is for drivers, my own hypocritical self included: for people who “hate cyclists”, worry about parking, complain about potholes, and feel the squeeze, which is just about all of us. Cars have their place. But in a city like Edinburgh, using them for the short trips is more expensive and more damaging than we like to admit. Seven in ten journeys in Britain are under five miles. Six in ten are made by car.

“Car brain” - our excuse

The car was sold to us as freedom. For most of us, it has become the opposite, without us even realising.

There is a name for that. Psychologists call it motonormativity, or “car brain”: the unconscious habit of excusing from driving the harm we would never accept from anything else. Once you see it, you see it everywhere.

Dr Patrick Miner at the University of Edinburgh has helped calculate the human cost. The result? The car has killed somewhere between 60 and 80 million people, around the same as both world wars combined, and it injures roughly 102 million more every year.

Over three parts, I want to take apart the car-centric society we accept as normal, confront Edinburgh’s disgrace, its poverty, and show that a cycling city, where the bike is how most people make most journeys, is the healthier, fairer alternative.

But this starts with children.

The Child Murderer

In the autumn of 1971, a six-year-old girl called Simone Langenhoff was cycling to school in the Netherlands when a speeding driver killed her. She was one of around 450 children to die on Dutch roads that year, in a country where traffic was injuring 25 children a day.

Her father, Vic Langenhoff, was a journalist. In his grief, he wrote a front-page headline that would help change a nation.

“Stop de Kindermoord.” Stop the Child Murder.

Parents campaigned under the headline’s name. And here is the part we forget, or never knew. They won, and the Netherlands became the cycling nation of the world. In the early 1970s it was exactly where we were: choking on traffic, ripping up old towns and cities for the car.

Tale of two cities

The difference is what each country did next. While Dutch parents took back their streets, Edinburgh had a few years earlier approved a six-lane ring road that would have split the Old Town in two, tunnelled under Calton Hill and divided the Meadows. The oft-maligned Cockburn Association is one reason it was never built to carve through what is now a World Heritage Site.

The Dutch chose their children. We chose the car.

Road traffic is the single biggest killer of 5 to 29 year olds on earth, and kills around 500 children every day. In 2024, 161 people, three of them children, died on Scotland’s roads, up 13% in a year. Twelve were in Edinburgh and the Lothians.

These are preventable deaths. Zero should be the goal.

The not so silent killer

Here the honest version of this argument gives the car its due. Drink-driving crackdowns and speed cameras meant fewer crashes; seatbelts, airbags and crumple zones meant more people walked away from the rest. Road deaths in Britain have fallen about 75% since 1970, to 1,602 last year.

That looks like a triumph. But look a little closer.

Over those same decades we did not make the roads safe for children. We took the children off the roads. In 1971, 80% of seven and eight year olds got to school on their own. By 1990 it was 9%, and the fall has not stopped: more children are driven than ever, and cycling to school still barely registers. We did not defeat the danger. We surrendered to it.

The car got safer for the person inside it, not those outside. The airbag protects the driver. It does nothing for the baby in a pram at exhaust-pipe height, where University of Surrey researchers found an infant takes in up to 60% more fine particle pollution than the adult pushing it. And that pollution is not a footnote in child health. Research in Bradford put up to 38% of childhood asthma cases down to air pollution, and 24% to traffic fumes alone.

Going electric is not the answer

And going electric solves the exhaust and little else. Car tyres are now the largest source of microplastics in our towns and cities, and the heavier the vehicle, the more they shed, making a heavy electric car the worst offender yet. Those particles turn up in blood, in placentas, in the first stool a newborn passes. The science is still young. But none of it is reassuring.

That same weight does two more things. It kills, and it breaks the road.

Read more

Police are investigating a far-right demonstration where neo-Nazi, ‘white nationalist’ and banned terrorist group flags were flown on Princes Street.

Banners of the neo-Nazi Combat 18, the racist and antisemitic Patriotic Alternative and anti-Islamic Scottish Defence League were displayed at the demonstration at the east end of Princes Street on Saturday, 15 August. Another carried the name of the proscribed terrorist organisation the Ulster Defence Association.

The demonstration, attended by extremists from the north-west of England, comes amid growing concern about far-right activists trying to exploit racial tensions in the capital.

Displaying the logo or flag of proscribed terrorist organisations is a criminal offence which can result in a jail sentence of up to six months.

Police Scotland said it was aware of photographs and videos of the demonstration circulating on social media and inquiries were on-going.

Banned terror group: The UDA claimed responsibility for hundreds of killings during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The loyalist paramilitary group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK Government in 1992, meaning it is a criminal offence to display logos on clothes or banners which suggest support of the group.

Racist and antisemitic: A Home Office report described Patriotic Alternative as “a racist and antisemitic Far Right group founded in 2019 by former BNP youth leader Mark Collett”. It goes on to say their members promote the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that “white indigenous European populations are being replaced by non-European immigrants”.

Call for action: Anti-racism groups such as Stand up to Racism Scotland are calling for the police to take action over the demonstration which they say was witnessed by police officers.

Anti-terror arrests: The force have previously used anti-terror laws to arrest left-wing activists supporting Palestine Action. Award-winning film scriptwriter Paul Laverty was among three people arrested in Edinburgh last August for wearing t-shirts with the Palestine Action name after the group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

Fuelling social tensions: The demonstration only attracted a few dozen people at most, but it comes amid concerns far-right groups are trying to fuel social tensions in the capital following two separate stabbing incidents. In March, Elon Musk and others spread misinformation about two stabbings in the Calders area which led to concerns of heightened racial tensions. In June, five people were stabbed in a series of attacks on Muslims across the city, including men leaving prayers at their mosque.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

TRAM PLAN: Proposals to build the proposed North-South, tram line from Granton to Little France via the city centre, in phases are expected to be discussed by the city council next month. The Edinburgh Evening News reports a lack of political agreement over the Roseburn Path route and technical concerns about the Orchard Brae alternative are likely to see the northern part of the £2-2.9bn line “shelved”. The Inquirer understands this is likely to see to proposals to approach the extension in phases with the southern section built first and decisions on the northern part delayed until further down the line being presented to councillors next month.

MORE BY THE SHORE: Some of the £5m Princes Street fire recovery fund could be used to fund discounted meals for city residents at venues on The Shore which have seen their takings nosedive while tram services have been disrupted. The city’s marketing service Forever Edinburgh is developing a More by the Shore campaign for the city council to promote Leith. The “Residents Rewards” discount vouchers is one idea being considered as well as a festive voucher scheme.

STICKER CHARGE: A 30-year-old woman has been charged with “culpable and reckless conduct” after two council street cleaning workers fell ill while removing stickers from a lamppost on Morningside Road. The workers were taken to hospital as a precaution on Thursday amid concerns they may have come into contact with a noxious substance. After tests, the substance found with blue and pink tape stuck to the lamppost was said to “pose no further threat to the public”.

D-DAY FOR FESTIVAL FUNDING: The issue of funding of the Festivals from Edinburgh’s Visitor Levy will return to the fore this week, with new proposals due to come before the council’s culture and communities committee on Friday. It follows an outcry over proposals which would have seen the Festivals lose money as a result of the new tax. The Festivals, venues and artists expect to pay around £1.1 million a year in Visitor Levy charges, with abandoned council plans proposing sharing an extra £550,000 between the Festivals and other cultural organisations.

TOURISM WORKERS: Theatre, gift shop and sports venue staff will be among those eligible to apply for the 111 flats being built for tourism industry workers using Visitor Levy funds. The flats will be available for mid-market rent, making them more affordable than private rentals. The city council has drawn up a definition of a tourist industry worker as part of its plans.

MORE FIREWORKS CONTROLS: New firework control zones will be established in Lochend; Liberton; Stenhouse/Gaskell; Wester Hailes and West Pilton under plans expected to be approved by councillors a meeting of the city’s culture and communities committee on Friday. That would give the police extra powers, such as dispersing groups of people, around Bonfire Night in 14 areas of the city, with control zones already in place in Balerno; Calton Hill; Corstorphine; Longstone; Moredun; Niddrie; Seafield; Sighthill/Broomhouse (Sighthill); and The Murrays (formerly Gracemount).

‘MR CORSTORPHINE’ TRIBUTES: Former city councillor Phil Wheeler has been remembered as “a wonderfully kind, thoughtful, and generous man” following his death at the age of 83. The Lib Dem who served as the city’s finance convener was described as “Mr Corstorphine”, an area where he lived for 50 years and was heavily involved with the local church.

‘DANGEROUS’ STREETS: The Living Streets Edinburgh charity has called for better management and enforcement of the capital’s “Summertime Streets” road closures and other measures to make the city safer for pedestrians at the busiest times of year. The charity shared footage of private hire cars driving unchallenged past barriers into the Cowgate when it was supposed to be closed to traffic. It also highlighted a lack of pedestrian space, “cluttered pavements and not enough time to cross the road”, saying the measures in place were “inadequate and…in places dangerous”.

JUST DELICIOUS: It’s all a question of good taste. Edinburgh has been named the best foodie destination in the UK by customers of the holiday accommodation firm Sykes Holiday Cottages, beating Padstow in Cornwall into second place.

AWAY DAYS: Edinburgh Rugby has partnered with Grassmarket sports bar The Black Bull as the official away hub for supporters when the team hits the road this season. Players and guest appearances are promised at the Signature hospitality group venue which will screen every Edinburgh fixture for the coming season.

HOSPITAL LEAK: Two heart treatment units have been temporarily closed as a result of a water leak at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. The move comes amid concerns that tens of millions of pounds are needed to bring the hospital building up to scratch as it near the end of its Private Finance Initiative contract.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Topping times at The Caley

A major milestone has been reached in the creation of a nine-floor extension to Edinburgh’s Caledonian Hotel with the topping out of the structure’s steel frame.

The extension is a major part of a £35 million transformation of the storied hotel was first covered by the Inquirer in a popular story in March 2024, when it was announced by owners and property fund managers Henderson Park along with Klarent Hospitality. The hotel operates as part of Hilton’s exclusive Curio Collection.

The work is expected to add more than 90 bedrooms, taking the total to more than 300, as well as upgraded servicing and back-of-house infrastructure. Some other bedrooms are being renovated, and public areas restored.

PARKING FURORE: North Berwick Community Council is asking East Lothian Council to pause a controversial new town centre parking scheme amid claims some local businesses are losing between 20% and 60% of their revenues. The scheme was introduced despite heavy opposition, and more than half of the £111,000 it generated in its first two months of operation had to be spent repairing vandalised parking meters. The community council wants to see the scheme paused while a full review takes place.

FLOUR POWER: Edinburgh-founded bakery Company Bakery, which supplies some of the Capital’s most prestigious restaurants and hotels, is developing a new flour mill capable of processing 500 tonnes of wheat a year in East Lothian. Tantallon Mill, near North Berwick, will create four new full-time jobs as well as supporting local farmers and independent bakers.

HIGH DISTRESS: A report by insolvency specialists BTG Consulting has shown the number of Scottish companies in “critical financial distress” has risen by more than 20% in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period last year. The report says that is more than twice the 9% increase experienced across the UK and identifies the increased levels as coming amid global economic uncertainty, and increased costs.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

BUSKING IT: The brilliant Big Beach Busk returns to Porty Prom from midday until 6pm on Saturday. Never been? Get a feel for what to expect from Sarah McArthur’s long read Rules? There are no rules. Just turn up and play.

THE LEGACY MUSEUM: Founded by US civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, is recognised as one of the country’s most powerful recorders of the history of trans-Atlantic slavery and its legacy. You can catch its first international exhibition at the Playfair Library until Sunday as part of the International Festival. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance.

PALM HOUSES REOPENING: You can now book tickets to visit the newly-restored Palm Houses from October. Tickets cost from £4.95 for adults, with children free.

QUICK BITES

BARGE BAR AHOY: A new floating restaurant and bar is set to berth at Leith. A planning application has been lodged to transform the two-deck barge 1502 which is moored on The Shore at the end of Tower Street. The application has been lodged by Water of Leith 2000 Ltd.

IT’S ROASTING: A new café has opened in Bruntsfield. Cairngorm Coffee Roasters has opened the corner unit at 49 Barclay Place – the group’s second venue in the city with one already at Melville Street.

It’s a question that might be posed by anxious owners of Scotland’s third most popular pet when their floppy-eared, bob-tailed companions are poorly – “Eh - What’s up, doc?”

The immortal words first uttered by the world’s most famous cartoon rabbit, Bugs Bunny, whose catchphrase became known around the world as he outwitted hunters, and other assorted villains.

But the question could just as easily be asked by the legion of rabbit owners in Scotland when their charges - one of Scotland’s most popular pets - are under the weather. The reality is that even for highly-trained local vets, the answer is not always easy to come up with.

Rabbits, you see, are far from straightforward despite being our most popular house-animals behind dogs and cats. However a prize awarded each year to fourth year students at one of Edinburgh’s truly world-class institutions – the Royal Dick Veterinary School at the University of Edinburgh – is doing its bit to change that. Thanks to an award set up in memory of Hector Paterson.

Hector was a much-loved rabbit, owned by Edinburgh woman Lindsay Paterson who had encountered the need to improve focus on rabbit medicine first-hand. When Hector was unwell, her own vet referred him to the Dick Vet, which has one of the best small animal hospitals on earth at its Midlothian campus, with a department specialising in “exotics” – which includes the rabbit.

Lindsay appreciates the value of good medicine, and the levels of training behind it. She’s the Global Director of Engagement at the Royal College of Physicians, a Governor at Fettes College and sits on the board of more than one charity. She is also a former city councillor.

Raising awareness

Tens of thousands of Scots – more than 30,000 - share their homes with a rabbit, or rabbits, but the reality is that keeping a bunny safe and healthy is often more complex than caring for the far more popular cat or dog, and conversely because dogs and cats are so pre-eminent in small animal practice veterinary expertise and experience is less widespread.

Lindsay told us: “Hector was a lovely companion, but he was never really as well as I would have liked. My own vet referred us to the Royal Dick Vet, where he did receive wonderful care and attention, but that level of expertise was really not that widely available.

“Rabbits, as I discovered, are prone to all kinds of things, not least linked to their diet, and I really felt that if more vets had a bit more knowledge and interest in them then perhaps it would be a good thing.”

So she established the Hector Paterson Prize. It’s something that is appreciated at the Dick Vet, regularly high in the lists of the best handful of Vet schools on the planet.

Creating “Rabbit Savvy” vets

Dr Jenna Richardson, Head of Service of the Dick Vet Rabbit and Exotic Animal Practice, said: “We feel a huge responsibility to teach our veterinary students about the nuances of this species, so that they can go on to be the ‘Rabbit Savvy’ vets of the future. We are very grateful of Lindsay’s support and, in memory of the lovely Hector, the Hector Paterson Prize provides additional encouragement for our students to develop and grow their interest in rabbit medicine. Every year, we are inspired by the passion and commitment of our student winner, and this year is no exception with Kai Yin a worthy winner.”

Special attention is needed, she said, because “pet rabbits are wonderful, but also complex animals. Just like their wild counterparts, pet rabbits need: a high fibre diet (grass/hay/forage) and should spend over eight hours a day eating hay to keep their constantly growing teeth healthy; lots of space to run, jump and dig; rabbit company so they don’t get lonely; and safe places to hide and rest. Their remaining natural instincts also mean that, as prey animals, they often try to hide signs of illness.”

Unlike their famous cartoon brother, they don’t spend all day munching on carrots.

Dr Kai Yin Tang is this year’s recipient of the Hector Paterson Prize, and said: “I am deeply humbled and honoured to win the Hector Paterson Award this year, and it has been a great encouragement to me. Given my interests in exotic animals, the award not only served as a recognition to my hard work and passion in the field of rabbit medicine and surgery, but also as a reminder to what truly matters to me as a vet – the animals, big and small, and the people who love them. Most of all, I believe this award has brought attention to the importance of rabbit medicine and surgery amongst people – both within the veterinary field and in the public sphere – which we have Hector and Lindsay to thank for!”

“I would like to thank Lindsay and Hector for the award and for all the good work that they have done in spreading awareness and encouraging the next generation of students in rabbit medicine and surgery.”

For her part, professed animal-lover Lindsay is happy that she, and Hector, continue to help spread the word. “We’ve been doing it for a few years now, and we’re happy to continue. For many tens of thousands of Scots, their pet rabbit is a cherished companion, but caring for them can be something that is misunderstood, and vets tend to be less experienced when problems are at all unusual.

“If the prize can help improve that in some small way, then that is marvellous.” And on that note, as Bugs may have said, That’s All Folks…

The heaven’s may have opened, doing its best to dampen our enthusiasm for hitting the streets to discover the best of the Festival - but we are unperturbed.

You’ll find Will Quinn’s guide to the surprise hits of the past week below, after your usual news and catch-up on what’s being happening in and around the capital.

You might have seen the outcry in recent days, with protests from MPs Christine Jardine and Chris Murray among others, about the £250,000 in bonuses awarded to Scottish Water executives despite concerns about the impact of sewage dumping in our waterways.

It strikes us that Jolene Campbell’s investigation last year The dirty truth about E coli in the bathing waters at Portobello is as relevant as ever.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

SUNKEN TREASURE: After a 30-year search, a team of volunteer divers believe they have found a treasure trove reportedly worth “hundreds of millions of pounds” in the Firth of Forth. The Royal ship the Blessing of Burntisland sank along with Charles I’s crown jewels in 1633. Now Ian Archibald and his team at Burntisland Heritage believe they have found its location, just a mile from Burntisland. The UK Government‘s Receiver of Wreck team is investigate their official report of the find, alongside its potential ownership. There are hopes it may eventually be housed in a museum in the town.

FLASH FLOODS: The torrential downpours caused flash floods, including a stream cascading down the Victoria Street steps yesterday, which was captured in this spectacular video shared by Keep Edinburgh Thriving.

TOWERING HOTEL: An eight-storey office block opposite Ocean Terminal in Leith is to be converted into a 146-room hotel with a rooftop restaurant. Developer OCPT Propco has been granted planning permission to repurpose the currently empty offices on Ocean Drive.

OPEN HOUSING: The city’s freeze on new applications for council housing looks set to be lifted. Councillors are being asked to agree the move from October, after city officials advised efforts to reduce a reliance on “unsuitable” temporary accommodation had progressed to a point where the freeze is no longer needed.

GET IN LANE: So-called 7-7-7 bus lane times are to be trialled in the capital ahead of their potential roll-out more widely across the city. The bus lanes will be in force from 7am to 7pm seven days a week on the 44 bus route between the city centre along London Road to Duddingston. An 18-month trial will begin in October.

SOUTH SUB JOY: Tram Trains for Edinburgh, the group which has led the campaign to run tram trains on the Edinburgh South Suburban railway, has welcomed Transport Scotland’s announcement that they will work with Network Rail to provide a high-level technical feasibility study. Group chair Rob Falcon described it as “great news” and expressed confidence there were no insurmountable technical issues.

KNIFE ANGEL: The giant touring Knife Angel is set to visit the foot of Leith Walk near the sight of a fatal stabbing of 22-year-old John McNab last year. The 27ft-tall sculpture, constructed from 100,000 seized blades, is touring Britain to promote an knife crime message. Plans for it to be temporarily sited at the Foot of the Walk are being considered by city planners.

KINGS OF THE CASTLE: It’s going to be spectacular! The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has been appointed to deliver the opening moment of the `114^th Tour de France – the Grand Départ which takes place in Edinburgh next year. The event on 30 June will be held with the stunning background of Edinburgh Castle Esplanade and will feature the official Presentation of Riders ceremony. Jason Barrett, chief executive of the Tattoo, said: “By partnering with the Tour de France, two globally recognised national brands on a world stage, we are creating an experience that will resonate far beyond Edinburgh, leaving a legacy for audiences both at home and abroad.”

GYM WIN: The opening of the new high school at Liberton has brought a major bonus with the opening of a state of the art gym. Edinburgh Leisure has announced the fully equipped gym and fitness studio will be run on a pay-as-you-go basis during evenings and weekends, with no membership requirement.

Sean Connery memorial first to face Princes Street Gardens moratorium

Princes Street Gardens is packed with statues and memorials.

There are 21 in all, with two more on the way, and now city councillors believe the time may have come to shut the gate on any more. Amid concerns about the Gardens risk becoming over-crowded, city councillors have agreed a moratorium on approving any new memorials.

The Muriel Spark memorial will go ahead as planned, as will a sculpture to commemorate those impacted by the Infected Blood Scandal, and then no more - at least temporarily - while a plan is drawn up for spreading new memorials more widely around the city.

A statue or memorial to Sir Sean Connery is expected to be among the first proposals to be discussed by the council’s public arts panel following the introduction of the moratorium. The Fountainbridge area, where he was born and grew up, would perhaps be a better location anyway.

Councillor Margaret Graham, convener of the council’s culture and communities committee, backed the moratorium: “to see how much space there is left and how practical it is to continue to put statues just in Princes Street Gardens when we are trying to develop town centres in Edinburgh, and there are other wonderful parks, like Inverleith, where there is enormous footfall and which would be ideal locations.”

The statues of Princes Street Gardens offer an intriguing insight into the heroes and priorities of Edinburgh past.

There is the statue of Sir James Young Simpson, who famously pioneered the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic by experimenting on himself and his friends in the dining room of his home in nearby Queen Street. It less well-known that he was an obstetrician, an early advocate of the use of midwives and one of the founders of gynaecology. Few would argue with his place of honour.

An abstract memorial to Dame Muriel Spark will soon join those to those other Edinburgh literary luminaries Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The explorer and missionary David Livingstone rubs shoulders with Wojtek the Soldier Bear, whose ambling statue celebrates the cities enduring links with Poland, and a sculpted rock marking our ties with Norway.

There are war memorials - to Royal Regiment of Scotland, the Royal Scots Greys, the volunteers from Fife and the Lothians who died in the Spanish Civil War and the Scottish-American soldiers who were killed in the First World War.

There are also statues of figures who have, to a greater or lesser extent, largely fallen out of the popular public conscience - publisher and Lord Provost Adam Black, essayist John Wilson (“Christopher North”), poet Allan Ramsay and “ragged schools” founder Thomas Guthrie.

Among the public art projects being developed in the city are a prominent memorial in the Old Town to recognise Edinburgh’s historic links to trans-Atlantic slavery. This was one of the recommendations of the independent Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group, led by the late Sir Geoff Palmer, which examined this troubling part of the city’s history and ways to address it.

A memorial to Saroj Lal, the city’s first ethnic minority primary teacher and a pioneering racial equality campaigner, is also planned, for St Patrick’s Square, in the Southside.

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The hidden gems, masterclasses and surprising hits of the Fringe

Will Quinn’s guide to what to keep your eyes on in week two

Greetings, Pop Pickers!

The initial adrenaline of the Fringe’s opening days has faded, and we are into the marathon stretch! The flyers on the Royal Mile have been transformed into papier-mâché, the late-night voices are growing hoarse, and PR buzz has entirely given way to the most valuable currency that actually matters in August: genuine word of mouth. Yes, indeed!

I’ve spent the past week, along with the team at The Quinntessential Review, diving deep into damp basements, scaling treacherous attic stairs, and chasing down shows when we hear whispers of hidden greatness. Some are soaring, big-budget spectacles; others are intimate, lo-fi marvels. Never let it be said we don’t put ourselves on the line to bring you the best tips!

So for those of you building an itinerary for the second half of the festival, here are the latest unmissable triumphs you need to book before the “Sold Out” boards go up. Inquirer readers, get your highlighters ready! Alright? Let’s get it on...

Theatre & New Writing

The theatrical landscape this year is proving rich with complex character studies and daring new writing, anchored by sensational performances.

Over at Summerhall’s Old Lab, Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson have swapped their sketch comedy roots for full-length theatre with Jitters, and the result is magnificent! Set in a church vestry on the morning of a wedding, a heteronormative bride-to-be squares off against her queer-presenting, Oxbridge-educated step-kid in a battle over class privilege and progressive hypocrisy. It is brave, hilarious, and brilliantly crafted. There’s more than a little of Dawn French to Clive’s superlatively charming delivery, gently lethal timing, and knack for the hilarious look.

Another standout at Summerhall is You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next), a brilliantly honest look at the friction inherent in paid personal care. Co-written by and starring Keron Day, who lives with cerebral palsy, the play tracks his relationship with a new live-in assistant. Refusing to sanitise or romanticise the dynamic, it lands with razor-sharp observational detail. The rose-tinted glasses are definitely cast aside, whether for Dani, for his own flawed choices, or even for friends who mean well, but fail to appreciate the practicalities of his life. Powerful stuff!

If it’s historical gravitas you’re after, Michael Punter’s Pilate: The Lost Gospel at Pleasance Above offers a gripping solo turn from Maxwell Caulfield. Playing the infamous Roman governor recalled to answer for his conduct, Caulfield gives a bravura turn, laced with gravitas, and touched by weary humour. It’s a beautifully staged slice of factional history that treats Pilate not as a biblical villain, but as a complex, haunted military administrator.

Read more

In Copenhagen, work continues apace to bring back to life the historic Borsen stock market building after it was ravaged by fire in 2024.

“We believe we’ve managed to strike a balance between form and function,” Brian Mikkelsen, boss of the building’s owner the Danish Chamber of Commerce, has previously said of the refurbishment plans, which are expected to complete in 2029. It includes restoring the copper roof using historic techniques, writes Emma Newlands.

Moving from Scandinavia’s capital to Scotland’s, the embers have only relatively recently cooled on the site of July’s fire on Princes Street.

But what will be the next incarnation of a building that has its own key role to play in its home city’s past, present, and future? Can it strike an artful balance between heritage and function that keeps up with the evolving nature of high streets? Or will it remain a derelict eyesore that blights rather than brightens for years to come?

There are obviously more practical pressing priorities to contend with in the short term. Edinburgh City Council Leader Jane Meagher told The Edinburgh Inquirer that it is “still too early to go into more detail, and particularly to speculate about what will happen in years to come… our priority now is making the site safe, and reopening Princes Street as soon as we can”.

But in terms of what examples can be followed in the long term, Danish building is cited by Professor Soledad Garcia Ferrari of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture as a city dealing with heritage in innovative ways. The Scandinavian city is transforming the building “into a public cultural centre,” she said.

Turning to Auld Reekie, the professor suggested that as well as any new incarnation potentially incorporating historic parts of the Princes Street building, it could “reflect over a future that enhances the ‘city of the festivals’, the ‘international city’, the ‘sustainable and just city’”.

However, the specialist in urban development and regeneration also expressed concern that plans for the site “might respond to objectives that are external to the city, to economic interests that reflect external market needs”. The city’s peak August Festivals season, currently in inescapably full flow, is worth an estimated £850 million to the Scottish economy per year, while debate rages around the new tourist tax that just come into force.

But the academic added: “I would expect that [a potential] development could benefit from an innovative partnership which could establish a co-design programme with local groups and organisations, particularly those that are capable of shaping a thriving future for Edinburgh.”

“There are a few examples where the private sector invests in developments that have a cultural purpose. Princes Street would benefit from a regeneration approach that is rooted in the city’s core values, heritage, history, art, performance, etc, and this building may be a starting point.

“The planning system in the UK is not a prescriptive one that determines exact functions of a building, but at the same time it is a system that may enable debate and negotiation.”

The city could organise an ideas competition for the site, she suggests, raising the international profile of the site and encouraging private investment in creative soultions.

She points to Coal Drops Yard beside King’s Cross Station in London as one example of a private development which created an accessible public space and cultural venue in space which might have been purely commercial. Hull’s Fruitmarket Gallery, a public-private partnership waterfront regeneration, is another project she feels could provide inspiration for Edinburgh.

The next chapter

The fire is the latest dramatic chapter in the history of a building that started life more than a century ago as three-story tenements, later housing the Palace Hotel as Princes Street became more commercialised following the opening of Waverley Station. The site was then converted for use by the Scottish Liberal Club, while the Scottish Conservative Club constructed a building nearby, with both then forming part of a new Debenhams department store.

Fast-forward to today, and it is currently owned by Criterion Capital, the investment vehicle of property magnate Asif Aziz, which planned to house Scotland’s first Zedwell hotel on the premises. This, however, hadn’t materialised before the fire struck and its appetite for the scale of changes it may have to make to its proposals following the fire is unclear.

The plans of previous owner Legal & General also failed to see the light of day. The financial giant in 2020 outlined plans to invest more than £50m in a new hotel and city centre “hub,” including shopping, dining, hospitality, leisure and event space, topped and tailed by a Sky Bar and Basement Spa.

Read more

The City Chambers seems to be trying to rival the Fringe for drama after the council pulled plans at the last-minute to increase its Festivals funding for the first time in a decade.

The introduction of the city’s Visitor Levy this summer - expected to raise up to £50 million a year - was supposed to be good news for the Festivals, delivering extra funding for arts and culture in the capital.

Instead, the Festivals are warning of looming cuts to their programmes as they approach their 80th anniversary next year, in the face of extra annual costs from the Visitor Levy estimated at more than £1.1m.

Fringe Society chief executive Tony Lankester, Book Festival director Jenny Niven and Lori Anderson, director of Festivals Edinburgh, the umbrella group representing all the city’s festivals, were all due to make direct pleas for more funding to the council’s culture and communities committee.

That showdown was avoided when committee convener, Labour councillor Margaret Graham, faced the embarrassment of pulling the plug on the proposed 5% funding increase at the start of Thursday morning’s meeting.

How did we get here? The dropping of the 5% plan - which also included a £1.5m innovation fund - has been reported to be a result of bureaucratic delay, with council officials submitting their committee report “a few minutes” late. While that’s technically true, make no mistake, this was a political decision. The council’s minority Labour administration faced being unable to get its plans through when the SNP and Lib Dems (the two largest parties on the local authority) backed alternative proposals to quadruple the funding increase.

Festivals facing net loss: A fundamental problem is that the Visitor Levy appears to be making the Festivals worse off rather than helping tackle their growing cost pressures. That might be the law of unintended consequences, but it was hardly unforeseen given the Festivals warned of the issue before the Levy was introduced and asked for an exemption for industry workers.

Giving with one hand: The council had proposed ringfencing £550,000 from Visitor Levy to fund the 5% uplift in support for the Festivals and other cultural organisations the local authority regularly supports. Around £140,000 of that would have gone directly to the city’s six major festivals, with the rest going to theatres, arts groups and other cultural organisations.

Taking with the other: However, in their collective submission to the council, the city’s major Festivals said the Visitor Levy is adding around £150,000 a year to their direct costs. (Soaring accommodation costs have seen the bill for putting up visiting authors, musicians, and so on, rise to around £3m a year.) When you add in the cost to Fringe promoters, venues and independent artists, the Festivals estimate their total Visitor Levy bill will be more than £1.1m a year.

‘Economic investment’: The Festivals are urging the council to view their financial support as an investment in the city’s key economic infrastructure, pointing to a recent report they commissioned estimating the economic value of the Festivals to Scotland at £852m a year.

The £1.5m question: The latest row comes down to the allocation of £1.5m - less than 0.1% of the council’s £1.6bn budget - which had been earmarked for the cultural “innovation” fund. Under the SNP and Lib Dems plans, it would be handed directly to the Festivals and other regularly-funded cultural institutions, giving them a £2m increase in core funding.

So, just give them the full £2m and everything’s ok? The Festivals, who say the 5% rise is “not enough to sustain, let alone develop, such unique civic assets”, would be far happier. But the council would have to abandon plans to tie most of the increased funding to “innovation”, such as special initiatives to open the Festivals to new audiences.

No ‘additionality’: That will leave the council open to accusations it has broken its promise to ensure Visitor Levy funding provides new facilities and services rather than simply replacing existing funding streams.

‘Closed shop’: The other downside is that arts groups who don’t already receive regular funding would lose the chance to bid for a share of the £1.5m fund.

What happens next? The city council’s political powerbrokers will sit down to thrash out a deal in the modern equivalent of smoky backrooms ahead of a special meeting of the culture and communities committee on 28 August. Any proposal will need to secure the support of at least three parties to be able to pass through the council.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

THE ORIGINAL HARRY: Stand aside Harry Styles, make way for Sir Harry Lauder… The Portobello-born miner turned music hall star has been described as the world’s first pop star. Now a petition has been launched by US-based musician Carl Paterson to have 4 August declared Sir Harry Lauder Day to celebrate his legacy. It has so far attracted more than 6,000 signatures.

PRINCES ST DELAY: The reopening of Princes Street appears to be slipping back to the end of the month despite council leader Jane Meagher’s initial hopes that it may be possible by the middle of this week. Several of tonnes of rubble have been removed from the site but significant work is still ongoing.

BIGGER FINES: The city council has renewed its call to the Scottish Government to increase penalties for unlicensed short-term let operators. It wants maximum fines to be increased from £2,500 to £50,000 to put penalties in line with those for the unlicensed operation of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).

PASSIVHAUS SCHOOL: The 1,200-space Liberton High School has reopened as one of the first in Scotland to be built to Passivhaus standards. Currie High was the country’s first to meet the international standards for minimising energy consumption and reducing the reliance on active heating or cooling systems.

STAYING IN THE DARK: Network Rail says it has no plans to improve the night-time lighting of the Forth Bridge until 2030, despite only one in 20 of the lights currently working. The bridge is a Unesco World Heritage Site and the issue of the lighting has been raised by councillors in Fife.

KIDNAPPING ARRESTS: Five men and a woman have been arrested by armed police in Longniddry, East Lothian, over the alleged kidnapping of a 22-year-old man from the Canonmills area of the city. Police say the incident was “targeted” and there is no wider threat to the public. The alleged victim was taken to hospital as a precaution.

‘TOMBSTONING’ WARNING: The RNLI are warning about the dangers of ‘tombstoning’ after a 14-year-old boy injured his leg jumping into Dunbar Harbour. Tombstoning involves jumping into open water from a large height.

LAVENDER MENACE: The immediate future of the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive, at Edinburgh Palette, Meadowbank, has been secured thanks to a £119,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The funding will improve access to the archive which has grown out of Scotland’s first LGBTQ+ bookshops, Lavender Menace and West & Wilde, in Edinburgh.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Capital finance chief warns against bank profit levy

Edinburgh’s hugely important financial services sector can deliver “even more well-paid, high quality jobs” – provided the Scottish and UK Governments work together and avoid damaging tax and regulatory policies.

Sandy Begbie, chief executive of leading trade body Scottish Financial Enterprise, has particularly warned the UK Government against a mooted multi-billion pound raid on bank profits.

He was reacting to the latest Edinburgh by Numbers figures posted by financial journalist Mark McSherry on social media, which show the sector provides more economic impact than the Capital’s next three largest sectors combined (property, health & social care and education) at almost £9 billion, supporting one in ten of the city’s jobs.

Begbie said: “Great figures for our sector but not a surprise for us. Our sector in Edinburgh and across Scotland has been growing year on year to a point where it is now contributing £17.7 billion to the Scottish economy. But we can go further and deliver even more well-paid, high-quality jobs however we require both UK and Scottish Governments to work together and also not introduce damaging tax or policy changes, for example the rumoured bank profit levy”

This refers to suggestions from some, including the TUC, that the UK Government should increase the tax it takes through levying bank profits on top of normal corporation tax by billions, depending on the level imposed.

He added: “Banks in the UK are already the highest taxed in Europe and we operate in a globally competitive market and such a levy would be detrimental to growth.

“Only by having policies focused on growth and a competitive tax regime can we fund our public services.”

NEW CHAIR: Edinburgh University spin-out company BIOCAPTIVA, which develops advanced cancer diagnostic technologies, has appointed Stephan Argivier as Chair to steer plans for international growth. The new Chair has 30 years of industry experience in life sciences, much of it leading private, venture-backed firms.

BANK SUCCESS: The Edinburgh-based independent private bank Hampden Bank has reported pre-tax profits for the six months to June 30 of £4.7 million, up 91% on the same period last year, with growth in deposits, lending and profitability.

FOUR STORES: Four new retailers have taken space at the Gyle Shopping Centre, including Danish décor and homeware store Søstrene Grene. The others are Black Sheep Coffee, home and cosmetics chain Rituals, and jewellery brand Nomination, according to property consultancy Savills.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

STRIKE UP THE BANDS: The Cure have sold out at the Summer Sessions at the Royal Highland Centre on Sunday. You can still grab tickets for Biffy Clyro on Friday; the Heather on the Hill Festival on Saturday; and Florence and the Machine (supported by Self Esteem and Jacob Alon), Lorde, Deftones and the Prodigy next week. Tickets are also still on sale for Bon Jovi at Murrayfield on 28 August.

GET FESTIVE: With the Book Festival now underway, the Festival season is now officially in full flow. If you’re wondering where to start then we recommend Will Quinn’s Essential early picks of the Fringe and the Sandra George exhibition at the City Arts Centre Celebrating Edinburgh’s great, unheralded street photographer.

QUICK BITES

STAR GUEST: Edinburgh restaurant Solti, which specializes in Nepalese cuisine, welcomed Hollywood A-lister Florence Pugh to their Drummond Street premises in the heart of the Old Town. The Marvel star, no doubt enjoying the Festival, was pictured with restaurant staff on the restaurant’s Instagram page.

GARDEN WINS: Two local pubs have been named amongst the UK’s best for their beer gardens. Whisky cask supplier and bottler Spiritfilled analysed TripAdvisor reviews for hundreds of outlets, checking for five star reviews that mentioned “garden,” and The Balerno Inn (at number 24) and Beehive Inn (47) were the highest ranking north of the border.

First it was the smash-hit Netflix series Adolescence, then Louis Theroux’s Manosphere documentary - our screens are full of exposés of a trend towards an increasingly extreme and damaging view of masculinity.

It’s sobering stuff to say the least. Yet across the Fringe this summer there are heaps upon heaps of shows which talk about the manosphere and toxic masculinity. It’s no surprise to see a host of Fringe shows making dark comedy out of serious subjects - but is that all that’s going on here? Or is there something bigger at work?

The “manosphere” as defined by UN Women, the United Nations organisation delivering programmes that uphold women’s human rights, is “an umbrella term for online communities that have increasingly promoted narrow and aggressive definitions of what it means to be a man – and the false narrative that feminism and gender equality have come at the cost of men’s rights. These communities promote the idea that emotional control, material wealth, physical appearance and dominance, especially over women, are markers of male worth.”

These traditionalist ideas of what masculinity is appear to be spreading, too: according to the Movember foundation, two thirds of young men regularly interact with masculinity influencers online. A recent worldwide Ipsos poll revealed that 31% of men in their teens and twenties believed “a wife should always obey her husband”, while 13% of older men aged 60 and over agreed with the same statement. A 2024 poll found that in the UK, 25% of males aged 16-29 believed it is harder to be a man than a woman, and 16% of males aged 16-29 believed feminism has done more harm than good, compared to 13% of over 60s. In Scotland, a Barnardos poll of 13 to 20 year olds in the UK found that 72% of boys said they believed they were expected to “act tough and not show emotion.”

These opinions don’t just become unsavoury comments that we overhear on the bus - they are damaging to men and women. Zero Tolerance is a leading Scottish charity aiming to end men’s violence against women and girls- according to co-director Rachel Adamson, “boys’ attitudes are becoming more misogynistic as they’re targeted by manosphere content online. This content harms young men’s relationships and mental health, as well as encouraging them to engage in violence against women and girls.”

I spoke with four comedians about their motivations for doing shows about masculinity, and discussed what power comedy might have to change the way we think about the world. It seems callous, almost disrespectful to make a joke out of rising misogyny - but the responses and perspectives of these four comedians show they are anything but callous.

Lil Wenker (her real name, believe it or not) performs a clown show called BOYKING, about a young prince who must at all costs become king, even if it involves killing his family. Rob Preston’s show Amazing Global Solutions presents a set of male caricatures obsessed with returning to the ancient laws of nature, lads holidays to Ibiza or their own brand-new clothing brand.

Alice Fraser and Jake Baker’s stand-up shows riff off the frustration of actually quite liking men despite their faults, and the benefits of a gentler form of masculinity for men (such as a sit-down wee).

It seems callous, almost disrespectful to make a joke out of rising misogyny - but the four comedians I spoke with were all doing far more than making a cheap joke out of shocking content.

Why write a show about something like the manosphere?

These four comedians have a variety of reasons for writing their shows - and all of them emphasise that first and foremost, they want to create something entertaining and make an audience laugh. Many of Preston’s caricatures are based on his observations of the world, often conversations he overhears on the Tube or men he sees on social media. Wenker’s idea spilled out of a random note she found in an old journal that said “BOYKING”.

But for Wenker, the show has also become something of an outlet for her own worries: “It became a really nice vehicle for me to get out my feelings about the world [and] this kind of insatiable power grab that everyone is having and how much it feels like we can’t necessarily trust where the power is actually going,” she says.

Baker has explicitly political motivations for writing his show: “There is a sort of troubling rise of a kind of right-wing politics that is based on a sort of misogyny that feels like backsliding, and [my show is] a reaction to that, and why feminism is good for men,” says Baker. He tells me about his concerns for the world his nephews are growing up in, and his awareness that many men he knows don’t want to engage in feminism because they don’t believe it can benefit them.

Fraser enjoys making shows which are “in between deep philosophy and dick jokes,” and had become interested in conceptions of masculinity after writing a show about romance fiction and thinking about why many men won’t read them because they are “for women.”

On top of these ponderings, a terrifying near miss got Fraser thinking about the impact of opinions about what boys should be like. Fraser was on her way to the beach in Australia with her three-year-old daughter, her teething toddler son and a friend. Despite her friend suggesting the wee boy should learn to toughen up and they should go to the beach despite his yelling, Fraser decided she didn’t need her boy to be tough at the age of one-and-a-half, put her foot down and insisted the group go home. Thanks to that decision, Fraser and her family unwittingly avoided walking into the Bondi Beach massacre.

“My head would spin for months after that… what women are meant to do and what men are meant to do, all of that sort of fed into this kind of swirling world,” says Fraser.

What do comedians want to say about dangerous masculinity ideals?

Political comedy has a lot of power over people’s opinions - just think of the impact of Count Binface or that bacon roll photo on Ed Milliband’s hopes of being Prime Minister. And let’s be honest, men making tutorials about how to sit, dress, stand or even open a water bottle “like an alpha male” are quite easy to mock. But the comedians I spoke with aren’t content to just make fun of the manosphere.

Wenker, who is hesitant to prescribe any particular lessons in her shows, does think her show goes a way to demonstrating the absurdity and childishness of glorifying power, “by laughing and really taking things to the extreme and very absurd, we can… look at our world in a more playful and a little bit clearer way,” she says.

Baker and Preston both include a fair chunk of mockery in their shows, but that’s mixed with some compassion too. “I have at least attempted for the end of the show to have some compassion and try to understand the appeal of the manosphere stuff, in an attempt to sort of be able to coax them out of it and offer a different perspective,” says Baker.

“Everyone has got someone in their family who’s maybe a bit misinformed about things... I think if [the audience] can come away and be like, what they’re looking for is sort of a community, companionship, and they’ve found that in the wrong place, then that’s great,” says Preston.

Fraser goes a step further and wants her audience to leave with a hopeful outlook. “The last thing I want is for my show to be a lecture, or an exercise in hand-wringing or despair. I don’t want to be the show where you’re like pointing at these cartoonish figures of the manosphere… we all agree that they’re dumb,” says Fraser.

“I want men in the audience to go away feeling positive and hopeful about masculinity. I want people of other genders in the audience to go away feeling hopeful and positive about masculinity,” she adds.

“I think there’s a lot of what is being called heteropessimism, this kind of despair about men as sort of being fated to be awful in some way... [classing] the entirety of the group as oppressors or as inherently predatory or dangerous or scary, because the stakes of a bad man are so high. And I think it's blinded us to some degree to how good men are, or as I say in the show, how good men are."

Fraser often asks audience members in her show to describe good men in their lives - and the examples abound of men who consistently do unglamourous, thoughtful, loving things for people in their lives. For Fraser, the beauty of “masculinity” is that it’s not some essential trait - it’s learned. So we get to decide what masculinity is - if we refuse to consider masculinity at all then we don’t provide an alternative to the aggressive, power-hungry and downright dangerous definitions of masculinity promoted by a small few.

This approach echoes that found to be effective by Zero Tolerance during a research project assessing the impact of online misogynist content on young Scottish men and women. “We may feel a desire to directly contradict and criticise this misogynistic content, but the project found this to be ineffective. Instead, the solution lies in creating a non-judgemental environment for young men to discuss and reflect on masculinity, relationships, and sex,” says the report summary.

Can comedy really make a difference?

Here are four comedians who would like for their shows to demonstrate the absurdity of manosphere masculinity, engender some compassion for men who have become manosphere sympathisers, and present a positive alternative vision of masculinity. But can some silliness and jokes really change our societal norms? And aren’t these comedians just preaching to the choir anyway?

In some ways, yes - in fact comedy is often funny because as Fraser puts it, “the comedian says what we’re all thinking”. And these comedians are also aware that their audiences are unlikely to cross over with the audience of manosphere influencers very much, if at all. But they are all pretty sure that their audiences know people who are influenced by the manosphere (let’s not forget, over two thirds of young men are at least interacting with it).

Baker hopes that as a performer he might be able to crystallize what his audience instinctively feels - that the manosphere stuff seems a bit ridiculous and that feminism can be good for men, too - but isn’t quite able to explain in detail. Wenker reckons that although her audience probably shares her general dread at the thought of the rise of online misogyny and toxic masculinity, comedy is a more accessible way of thinking about the problem than news reports or serious debate which over time we may tend to avoid.

For Fraser, comedy might not be at the forefront of shaping our understanding of the world, but it has a very interesting role in policing how we are in the world: “this is one of the ways that masculinity gets policed is men making fun of each other… it’s very funny, and that’s why it’s powerful. So comedy is a very good way to show you where the lines are and and either push at those lines slightly, question them slightly, undermine them slightly, expand them slightly, or just patrol the borders,” she says.

None of these four performers are pretending to be the solution to the effects of the manosphere. That can be found in the great work of organisations like Zero Tolerance Scotland and the Movember Foundation. But perhaps jokes, which open up difficult conversations more easily, and which help form our sub-conscious understanding of what’s socially acceptable and what’s not, will play a part in creating a society where we all think of the manosphere’s definition of manhood as not only deplorable, but just silly.

Did you see it? Maybe as a vague outline at the bottom of your corn flakes box pinhole camera? Or a glimpse through your specially-acquired eclipse glasses? No, just clouds? Same here.

Which Fringe shows are as hot as a fire-eater’s mouth? Which should you body-swerve faster than an over-eager flyer team on the Royal Mile? (Sorry, flyer folk, we know you’re only doing your job!)

Today is the day that all you bewildered Festival-goers have been waiting for, it’s Will Quinn’s guide to the early hits of the Fringe. That’s all to come later, after your usual updates.

There’s been a lot of praise for Sarah’s McArthur’s members-only long read from yesterday: 250 years of the most influential book to come out of Edinburgh

“It’s a superbly written piece about one of the most important figures in world history,” said Donald.

Join us and take a fresh look at one of the great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith, and how his thinking helped shape the modern world.

Your Edinburgh Briefing

HOW MUCH? The rising cost of food and drink on the Fringe is proving a hot topic. Common prices of £7 and £8 for a pint of lager and £10 to £12 for wraps in and around many Fringe venues have sparked much social media commentary and are highlighted in this report on the BBC.

HARVEY NICS RESCUE: It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but luxury department store chain Harvey Nichols has found itself on the verge of collapse. The latest victim of the demise of the traditional high street has been struggling for some time. However, the chain is set to be saved by retail billionaire Mike Ashley. Ashley’s Fraser Group, formerly First Direct, is expected to confirm the deal today, in a move that would secure the future of its Edinburgh store. The prospective deal has raised inevitable concerns of cost-cutting at the stores, which stock high-end brands such as Armani Beauty, Balmain, Cartier and Juicy Couture, with Ashley having offered assurances about honouring commitments to suppliers.

DARTS AND TV: One of Leith Walk’s longest-standing independent traders, the unique Borlands Darts and Television, is up off for sale. The shop is best-known for its unique combination of markets and has served generations of city darts fans. First opened in 1925, the selling agents Garden Stirling Burnet say the property “may offer potential for conversion to residential accommodation”.

HOTEL ON TRACK: A 10-storey hotel would replace a three-storey office block alongside the tram line beside Leith Docks. The proposals replace an earlier plan to build flats on the Rennie’s Isle site. FaulknerBrowns Architects have published details of the proposed 121-bedroom hotel, including a giant mural, ahead of submitting a planning application.

HOMELESS HOUSING: The Gorgie Social Club, on McLeod Street, will be demolished to make way for 97 studio apartments to provide temporary accommodation for homeless people. The proposals by Unum Partnership and FK100 include on-site care and management.

MSP’S APOLOGY: Q Manivannan, the new Edinburgh and Lothians East MSP, has apologised for any hurt caused by them talking of rape being “demonised” and “a spectrum of things”. The comments made in a podcast recorded before they were elected have been widely criticised for appearing to suggest some forms of rape are less serious than others. In the interview, the Green MSP, who says their comments have been taken out of context, told the interviewer: "It is a spectrum, none of which is any less or worse, but it is a spectrum of things that constitute one homogenised word 'rape'."

ROADS OPEN, ROADS SHUT: The recent good weather means the hope remains that Princes Street could be reopened within about a week. We hate to introduce any cloud to this bright horizon, but you should know Waterloo Place is set to be partially closed for three months for a £3m sewer upgrade. The closure will affect westbound traffic for 11 weeks from 7 September.

WATER VIEWS: Dr Scott Arthur, MP for Edinburgh South West, is seeking a meeting with Scottish Water to discuss sewage pollution being discharged into the Water of Leith via the Murrayburn. The MP ran a survey answered by more than 450 people about the river and its environs, which clearly demonstrated positive feelings towards the waterway, with main concerns being the sewage issue and conflicting interests of the various user groups, such as pedestrians, cyclists, dog walkers and horse riders. Improved signage is to be piloted to deal with this issue.

TWIN PEAK: Sciennes Primary School has welcomed the most twins to the new primary one intake of any city primary – with no less than three sets of double-trouble starting out today. They are amongst the 187 classes of primary ones starting out at school as the summer holidays end, at the capital’s 91 primary schools.

Community may bid to take on Georgian shipbuilder’s mansion

It has housed the uncle of a Prime Minister, a museum and a succession of parkies, but now Starbank House may be ready for a new role.

The mansion in Trinity was built in around 1815 for Granton shipbuilder Alexander Goalen, whose nephew William Gladstone would grow up to be the celebrated Victorian Prime Minister.

Now, the Friends of Starbank Park, who have maintained the beautiful park in the former grounds of the mansion since 2013, are considering plans to take on the house as a potential community space.

The building has an interesting local history. Leith Town Council bought Starbank House following the death of Goalen’s son, Walter, in 1889, and opened the grounds as Starbank Park two years later. The house became the home of the park keeper, while part of the building was used used a museum, between1920 to 1932. The collection displayed there was transferred to Huntly House Museum in Canongate following the demise of Leith Town Council.

The Friends of Starbank Park have set up a Steering Group to consider how the building could be used and what activities would be most valuable for the local community. They have set up a survey to gather ideas and are inviting input from residents, park users, and anyone with suggestions for making the most of the potential community space.

It takes about two minutes to complete the anonymous survey, before 5 September, which can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/Starbank-House-survey

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The essential early picks of the Fringe

by Will Quinn

We are officially in the thick of it. The Royal Mile is a wall-to-wall gauntlet of flyering, venue queues are winding round cobbled corners, and the smell of lukewarm draught beer and street food hangs heavy over George Square. By now, the opening-week hype has settled, and the real business of the Fringe is underway: separating the genuine theatrical triumphs from the over-promoted gambles.

Over at The Quinntessential Review, the team of critics has been pounding the pavements from Stockbridge to Cowgate, taking in everything from early-morning kids’ puppetry to late-night comedy trauma-dumps. We’ve reviewed a vast, impressive (if I do say so myself) crop of theatre, comedy, and dance already this August - and while they aren’t all five-star juggernauts, they represent a remarkably strong field. And, between you and me, the Fringe has always been full of 3 and 4 star shows I’d much rather see again, than their ‘perfect’ counterparts.

If you’re currently standing in a box office line wondering where to spend your ticket money, here are the shows I thought Inquirer readers needed to know about first - along with a crucial warning on those running on strictly limited schedules. Alright? Let’s get on…

Comedy & Clowning

We start with the heavyweights of the comedy circuit, where the line between stand-up, storytelling, and outright madness is always blurred in August.

Top of the pile is Elf Lyons, whose show The Woman on the Edge at Pleasance Courtyard proved that our pre-Fringe anticipation was totally justified. Channeling Hitchcock’s Vertigo, NASA space missions, and an operatic breakdown following a broken engagement, Lyons delivers what I declared “a masterclass in full-bodied, compassionate yet ruthless surrealist comedy”. Moving seamlessly from lip-sync and mime to a bouncy castle (why not?) and verbatim operatic rants about ex-partners’ excuses, it is an audacious hour from an artist at the zenith of her powers.

For pure, unadulterated Scottish stand-up royalty, Craig Hill’s You’re Not Even Safe Up the Back! at Just the Tonic at the Greyfriars Charteris Centre is an absolute riot. Marking his 27th year at the Fringe, the kilted whirlwind proves just why he’s considered a Scottish national comedy treasure. As QR reviewer Catherine Coutts noted, “The content is not just close to the bone – it drills through the bone and comes out the other side.” It’s smutty, affectionate, and relentlessly hilarious.

Over at Underbelly Bristo Square, Australian favourite Sammy J brings what is easily “one of the most polished, accomplished shows of this year’s Fringe” in Hero Complex. Unpacking a bizarre real-life mystery involving federal police, a teenage friendship with a school gardener, and a stash of The Phantom comics, Sammy J deploys decades of saved video diaries and witty ditties to construct a masterclass in narrative comedy. A word of warning, though: Sammy J is playing a limited engagement through Sunday 16 August, so do not linger - and whatever you do, don’t Google the backstory beforehand; just go and revel in a story where truth is far stranger than fiction.

Read more

These words might seem quite self-explanatory to us now, but 250 years ago they were revolutionary. These are part of one of the first works of economics - so foundational that its author did not live to hear the word “economics” come into common parlance. (Later in Adam Smith’s life it was called political economy, and after his death it was called economics.)

The impact of this single text is difficult to understate; offering one of the first systematic explanations of the transition from feudalism to free market capitalism, and arguing for the first time that a society’s wealth came from productivity rather than its gold reserves, and contributing to the wave of new ideas that flooded Scotland during the Enlightenment. Its author is immortalised in a towering statue by St Giles Cathedral, just metres from his friend and fellow enlightenment thinker, David Hume.

So who was the man who penned these ideas?

Well, as with so many of the great people memorialised in Edinburgh’s history, Adam Smith was born outside the city - in fact he only lived here full-time towards the end of his life. Born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Smith grew up in the second busiest port on the Forth at the time. His father had been a lawyer and customs comptroller, and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy local landowner. However after Smith’s father suddenly died before his birth, Smith was raised solely by his mother, who never remarried.

Read more

Edinburgh looks set to become the first place in Scotland to license buskers after a voluntary code of conduct failed to stem complaints about some performers.

Rules limiting the volume of amplified music and how long musicians can perform in one spot before moving on would be enforced by council officials.

There would be patrols at hotspot areas in the city centre and on Portobello Prom during the busy summer months.

The crackdown aims to tackle the cause of the most persistent complaints, which are amplified music being played too loud and the same tracks being played repetitively.

Councillors are being asked to approve the plans at a meeting of the local authority’s culture and communities committee on Thursday.

What’s the problem? Common gripes from residents and businesses include buskers playing the same tracks on repeat - “Wonderwall on loop” - and bagpipers trotting out the same traditional standards time and again. The main complaints come from a small number of hotspots: the Grassmarket; the Lawnmarket; the corner of the High Street at the top of Cockburn Street; and Portobello Prom.

Why don’t they just learn new tunes? Street musicians say their sometimes limited soundtrack isn’t down to a lack of talent, rather a need to play the familiar crowd-pleasers that their audiences want.

Patrols, eh? The report to councillors recommending actions says: “Councillors have also highlighted that the lack of a visible on-street presence can make it challenging for residents and businesses to raise issues directly with the council. Regular patrols will be undertaken of key locations over the busy summer period.”

Who’s paying for this? The council plans to hire Street Ambassadors, paid for with money raised through the Visitor Levy, who will be able to patrol hotspots and take enforcement action. They would be supported, if necessary, by the new City Centre Policing Unit, which is also being funded by the Visitor Levy.

What about the musicians? They would have to pay for a license, but the council has made clear it wants to ensure the cost is not prohibitive for musicians. Several local authorities run similar systems in English cities with the cost of licenses varying from £10 (for one month) in Westminster (with students at half-price) to £150 (for two years) in Camden.

When will it happen? Assuming the plans are approved on Thursday, the new system is likely to be up and running ahead of next year’s Festivals. So, buskers will be able to play on relatively freely this summer.

YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING

HOUSES THROUGH TIME: There’s a real treat for history lovers as best-selling historian (and The Traitors star) David Olusoga turns the spotlight on Edinburgh for his hit BBC show A House Through Time. The sixth series explores the capital, delving into the individual stories of four city homes over several generations. The first episode goes out on Thursday. You can also catch him at the Book Festival on 24 August.

MORE SHOW(S)TIME! After official launch events were almost rained off last week, the sun is set to come out for the first week of the Fringe. A late rush from artists since the official line-up was announced in June means this year’s festival is set to be the biggest ever in terms of number of performances (4,202 in total). Our last-minute check found hotel rooms available from £195 a night next weekend (a doubleroom in the budget Ibis in Corstorphine through booking.com).

MORE BUS PRIORITY MEASURES? Councillors are being urged to use some of the £5m Princes Street fire recovery fund to pay for temporary bus priority measures in congested areas and to install temporary bus stops on George Street. The plea comes from public transport pressure group, the Edinburgh Bus Users Group.

‘A LIST’ OFFSPRING: The daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes is appearing at the Fringe in Midsummer!, a queer reimagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Suri Noelle, 20, appears as Helena alongside fellow Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama at the temporary Assembly @ St Andrew Square. She’s getting rave reviews.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: The horrifying levels of violence against women and girls being reported to Police Scotland has been highlighted in the wake of the murder of Edinburgh woman Vikki Soloman. New Police Scotland statistics show 204 incidents being logged each day over the last year, an increase of 7.6%.

KILN, KIRK AND CUSTOM HOUSE: Leith’s Custom House is in line for £300,000 investment from the city’s new Visitor Levy to continue developing its plans for a £15m restoration. Funding for the restoration of the Tron Kirk and improvements to Hunter Square would be increased to £3.2m, and £724,000 set aside in 2028/29 to complete the restoration of Portobello’s historic seafront pottery kilns, under plans to be considered by councillors on the local authority’s culture and communities committee on Thursday.

GIRL’S DEATH: Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of an 11-year-old girl who died after being found in a woodland river near Gorebridge, Midlothian. The girl was found in the water near Shank Bridge, which carries the A7 over the Gore Water, on Thursday afternoon after concerns were raised for her wellbeing. Police say her death is being treated as “unexplained”.

WILD FIRE: The play park at the National Trust for Scotland’s Newhailes House in Musselburgh had to be evacuated after a wild fire broke out in a neighbouring field on Thursday. The fire was successfully extinguished without any damage to the historic property or its grounds.

ARROWS GROUNDED: The Red Arrows have cancelled a planned flypast at the Tattoo next Saturday after being grounded by bad weather in Canada. The return journey from North America requires several refuelling stops and poor forecasts mean the journey has been ruled too dangerous this week.

Pic of the week

THE BUSINESS

Chamber stars in UK awards

Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce will learn if it is to become the British Chambers of Commerce’s UK Chamber of the Year Award at a dinner in London later this year.

It is the only Scottish Chamber to be shortlisted in the national category. The award recognises outstanding projects from across the UK Chamber network that demonstrate innovation, collaboration and measurable impact for businesses, members and local communities.

The Chamber’s submission focused on its Rising Stars Professional Development Programme, a leadership initiative designed to support early and mid-career professionals and help employers develop the next generation of business leaders.

Working in partnership with The University of Edinburgh, the inaugural programme brought together participants from sectors including professional services, healthcare, retail, real estate and the third sector.

Liz McAreavey, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, paid tribute to the chamber team and said: “Rising Stars is a great example of what can be achieved when business and education come together with a shared ambition. Through our partnership with The University of Edinburgh, we’ve created a programme that is developing the next generation of leaders while strengthening the talent pipeline for organisations across Edinburgh and beyond.”

The Rising Stars programme will run again from January to April 2027 – to register your interest and be the first to receive further details, please follow this link.

TRIPLE CROWN: City-based accounting and financial services firm Accountability has achieved a trio of national accolades – being named amongst the Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2026, achieving B Corp certification, and becoming one of the first UK businesses accredited as a flexible workspace by Flexibility Works Scotland. The business was founded in 2012 by Rosie Berridge.

HOTEL GO-AHEAD: A new 256-bedroom hotel next to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre is to be operated by the Dalata Hotel Group under their Clayton Hotel brand. The hotel, at 60 Morrison Street, is being developed by MRP in the £95 million redevelopment and expansion of an office building, with development funding from AIB. Work is now underway.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

It won’t have escaped your attention that it is Festivals season again, but with the Fringe and International Festival underway we’re only just warming up. This week the Film Festival launches with the UK premiere of The Incomer on Thursday (with Domnhall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin and John Hannah in attendance), the Art Festival gets underway in earnest on Friday and the Book Festival starts on Saturday.

Don’t worry if you are struggling to keep up as Will Quinn will be bringing you regular despatches from the frontline.

WELCOME TO THE PIANODROME: We heartily recommend the free lunchtime recitals at the Pianodrome in Bruntsfield. (Like a huge walnut, mahogany, musical hug)

MURRAYFIELD MATCH: Expect to hear plenty of Geordie and Scouse accents on Wednesday night as Premier League giants Everton take on Newcastle in a pre-season friendly at Murrayfield Stadium.

QUICK BITES

ARRIVEDERCI: One of the city’s well-reviewed Italian restaurants is to close at the end of the month. Radicibus, on Deanhaugh Street in Stockbridge, has confirmed via social media that Saturday 29 August will be its final service after a decade in business.

FRESH BAKED: Renowned Fife family baker Fisher & Donaldson has opened its first outlet in East Lothian, joining the ranks of Scottish food businesses at the newly refurbished food market at Archerfield Walled Garden near Dirleton.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon at Dunbar’s Belhaven Beach, mind-boggling stone towers defy gravity, teetering on points in improbable formations. Suddenly, a countdown begins. “Three…two…one…time to stop collecting stones and build your arch!” This is the tenth anniversary edition of the European Stone Stacking Championships, where rock stars are competing for a place in the World Championships in Texas next year. But for both world-record-holders and first-timers, it’s about much more than playing with pebbles at the seaside, writes Natalie Berry.

Stone stacking is as simple as it sounds: balancing rocks using nothing more than the force of gravity. In practice, however, the art combines the meditative calm of sculpture with the suspense and occasional drama of a game of Jenga.

More than 30 people from 10 countries are competing here in Dunbar on 19 June, but hundreds of passersby and holidaymakers of all ages have come to marvel at the artworks - while many are giving stone stacking and balancing a go for the first time.

Stacking stones to build a community

The event was founded in 2016 by local artist James Craig Page as the John Muir Stone Stacking Challenge to commemorate the centenary of the U.S. National Park Service and honour the legacy of the Dunbar-born conservationist. It has since evolved into the European Championships and just one element of the six-day European Land Art Festivals (ELAF), attracting artists from around the world who create temporary designs on landscapes with natural materials.

“It’s about encouraging people’s creativity and building a community, and in a world of trauma and war, people going down the beach on a Sunday and stacking stones - what more wholesome event could there possibly be?” he says. Earlier, a family from Belgium even recreated their hometown on the beach using sand and rocks. This year’s event is the biggest and best yet, he believes.

When asked about the appeal of stone stacking, he responds simply: “The magic of it.”

Local Hailey McCausland is volunteering for the second year. “It brings Dunbar together, everybody just being able to relate over art, whether you’re a passerby who likes the art, or a competitor seeing other people’s ideas,” she says.

While visiting family in Dunbar, first-timers Pam and Chris Robinson from Kent are dabbling for fun, inspired by the experts. “We decided to have a little play and now we’ve got completely addicted and can’t stop doing it!” Pam says. “You don’t need any skill or training - we just ‘rocked up!’”

“Some glue would be nice!” a young girl in their party chips in.

But stackers must rely on physics and friction alone. Competitors are showcasing their skills across four categories: quantity and timed balance - which took place the previous day - plus arch-building and an artistic challenge. The quantity event involves stacking as many stones as high as possible. In the two-minute timed balance challenge, competitors create a stack of seven preselected rocks and hope it outlasts their competitors’ efforts.

Arch-building is arguably the most difficult discipline, Page explains. “You’re either good at them, or it takes a long time to get good at them,” he says. The artistic category combines these skills to create a large-scale sculpture. Scores are kept secret until the very end.

Dunbar’s father-and-son team, Chris Green and 14-year-old Kyle, are building an arch for the first time. The trick is to find large rocks to form the foundation and add height, while keeping pressure constant. “It’s go big or go home!” says Kyle, who came third in the children’s competition.

Closer to the shore, a man with long hair, beard braids and face tattoos has completed a stable arch - demonstrating height and span in around 20 rocks. He poses underneath it for photos, the North Sea framed behind him. Travis Williams is from Texas and won gold in the World Championships last year - setting a world record for stack height of 108 inches/9 ft in the process, made possible by building a stone “stepladder” next to it. After the competition, Williams will be taking his skills from the beach to the streets at the Edinburgh Fringe.

“I like the whimsy it carries,” he says. “Somebody sees the stacks, they don’t know if it’s real, they don’t know how it’s done, and I don’t think there’s enough of that in the world.”

Nature’s healing gifts

After two hours of intense focus spent finding the perfect balance point connecting three or four large stones, Michael Grab’s effort is reduced to rubble. Grab is a Canadian based in Colorado, USA and he’s something of a legend of the art, with almost 100,000 Instagram followers as Gravity Glue. Today, he’s creating but not competing.

In fact, the event wouldn’t exist without him: its founder, Page, was so “dumbfounded” by Grab’s work that he became inspired to take up the art in 2015. Grab “just became obsessed” with stacking over 20 years ago, and describes it as a form of therapy. “You need patience, and it teaches patience,” he says.

In the afternoon, the three-hour artistic event sees participants collecting stones, sea glass, washed-up seaweed and shells to adorn their designs. Giovanni Quatela from Italy, who found healing in stone stacking six years ago while suffering from illness, finishes early. He’s created a veritable house of cards with multiple precarious branches. Third time lucky, he hopes: “It collapsed…twice!”, he says. The judges rush to take a photo, should gravity - or a clumsy passerby - strike again.

Nearby, Nepalese competitor Sagar Adhikari is completing an aesthetic display of multiple arches. He started stacking during the COVID-19 lockdowns while meditating by a river. “It keeps you in the present moment,” he says. “It felt like I was achieving something, and nature was giving me prizes in return.” This is his first competition - a far cry from his usual solo escapism - but he’s enjoying the atmosphere. “The sea and the place and the people are all synchronising together,” he says.

“Impossible is not to try”

The Dunbar festival’s success has spawned events abroad. Marco Avenante is the founder of ILAF, the Italian “little cousin” of ELAF. Earlier, he created one of the most striking pieces of the competition: a stack relying on improbable counterbalances and minimal surface contact on precarious points.

“I enjoy the peacefulness and the interaction with the environment and nature,” he says. “The stones teach us how to live, because when we create this structure with an ephemeral life, we represent our own lives.”

Beyond the physical act of balancing the stones, the art also teaches emotional regulation, Avenante says. “When a structure falls down, you can repeat or leave,” he explains. But as a friend once told him: “Impossible is not to try!”

Over three hours, the beach gradually becomes a canvas for an octopus, a giant pair of feet, a family of ducks, a Danish flag and a portrait of John Muir, among myriad other designs. Ireland-based featured artist Mayumi Nakabayashi gets a helping hand with her intricate mandala design from a young girl, who feels inspired to create her own art. She proudly shows her new mentor her design once finished.

This contagious creativity is something that Patty St Louis, an artist from Connecticut, USA, takes seriously. “If you can inspire somebody to take two rocks and put them on top of one another, then you’ve created a creative person,” she says. “And when you identify as creative, you don’t sit back and let the world happen to you - you feel like you have agency over it.”

Every so often, collective gasps of despair signal a tumbled tower and a competitor stuck between a rock and a hard place. By the late afternoon, simply walking along the beach puts one at risk of destroying a hard-earned creation with one clumsy step. A zooming dog knocks over a stone arch - much to the embarrassment of its owner.

As the clock runs down, the judges do the rounds, discussing the artistic merit of each piece. “That one just zings to me,” I overhear.

A life-affirming experience

After the conflabs, Page praises the talent on show in a prizegiving speech. “People have come today and not only done land art for the first time, but also wowed the judges and made our creative hearts sing,” he says.

In the best newcomer category, Adhikari from Nepal places second. He vows to return next year, since Edinburgh and the Lothian coast have become his “favourite holiday destination,” thanks to the “friendly, lovely people”.

The newly-crowned champion is Clitheroe-based architect Neil Andrews, who finally takes the win after almost a decade of competing here and punches his ticket to the World Championships, in Llano, Texas next March.

Andrews wins the quantity event with 41 stones, places second in the artistic and third in the arch-building events to take the overall title.

“It’s a life-affirming, wonderful experience,” he says. “I’m delighted to win but I’m not bothered that I’ve won - it’s wonderful being here with everyone, they’re so supportive. I always go home with a smile on my face.”

His stone stacking obsession began in childhood and later became competitive: “My wife found an article in a newspaper and said, ‘Look, there are other people like you who play with stones on the beach!’”

Andrews’ artistic piece is a tribute to his mother, who died recently. A series of concentric stone circles in the sand surround a container of his mother’s ashes, representing her children, grandchildren and future generations. “It’s about death and renewal, and she would love the fact that she is here and part of this,” he says.

The Picts used to believe that stones carry memories, Andrews explains. He feels that when you connect with a stone, you connect with both the history and the place. Evidently, it’s also a means to connect with people and form a cross-border community.

In his final address, Page urges attendees to pass on the “beautiful ripples of kindness” generated at the event.

As people depart, the tide rises and washes over the beach, resetting the canvas. The artworks disappear, but the memories and friendships formed live on.