IN the Gyle on Sunday my daughter and I were bathed in a warm, even slightly smug, glow as we waited for about 30 seconds at the check-out. We had put the handbags back, even though we really, really wanted them. But like everyone else we spoke to, we were saving something for a rainy day, and hoping that it didn't turn out to be a cloudburst.
Usually at the Gyle accents from all over Scotland and beyond are in evidence. On Sunday, stores were quieter than usual, and the accent was overwhelmingly east of Scotland. It also felt as though there were fewer people around. Whether or not they w
ere making sacrifices of the magnitude of those made by us, I don't know. But I did notice a distinct lack of trolleys loaded to the gunnels. That worried me. It suggested that families and singletons alike, earning good but not Goodwin-esque salaries, are feeling the pinch.
I didn't spare too much time lamenting the almost total collapse of the market in £1 million houses. Either the economy will bounce back in good enough time for these houses for very rich people to be bought by the next wave of the mega wealthy, or if the depression goes on much, much longer than Alastair Darling said it would, some will be adapted and used for hotels, flats and housing of different types.
But the lighter trolleys and the worries expressed by the people pushing them confirmed my view that Edinburgh needs more TLC than other areas of Scotland because of the city's unique role in our country. Also, a special case can be made because of the hit Edinburgh will take arising out of the collapse of the banking part of the financial services business that has come to dominate and define the Edinburgh economy.
I spoke to people who'd seen their shares in RBS fall to a value that wouldn't produce a dividend big enough to pay for a day trip to Glasgow let alone a fortnight in the sun. They were the people whose application and ambition lifted Edinburgh to the status of the UK's most desirable city in which to live, and who are now scared stiff that they won't have a place to call their own.
As yet, I can only speculate about how many people in the Edinburgh region are in danger of losing their homes because of the contraction of employment in the finance sector and the knock-on effect on the building trades and every sort of service you can name. But even before we have confirmation of the number of mortgage defaulters, and the consequent greater demand for homes that are affordable, 145 people on average bid for each housing association or council house that is offered for rent.
That alone should compel the Scottish Government to look again at the money brought forward for housing – both to put a roof over homeless families and kick-start employment – that has been allocated to councils across Scotland . . . except the city councils of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I know I've been pleading a special case for Edinburgh having the same housing debt write-off as the councils whose citizens voted for stock transfer. I freely admit to arguing that Edinburgh should be given special consideration in the provision of government funding for low-cost housing because of house prices in the area.
I'm not the only Lothians MSP to be convinced of the need for Edinburgh to be seen as a special case. Malcolm Chisholm for one has taken up the cudgels for the city.
But the divisive and resentful remarks of some MSPs from other cities, particularly Glasgow, suggest Holyrood's bigger parties are prepared to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Lothian MSPs like me think that the original £20 million earmarked to be shared between Edinburgh and Glasgow should be for the two cities, with a bit more going to the Capital because of its greater need.
John Swinney will get my support for his budget if he supports Edinburgh's special case.
Moving storyJulie Walters was magnificent in the TV dramatisation of the real-life experience of Dr Anne Turner, who developed a particularly aggressive degenerative illness.
Dr Turner watched her husband, also a doctor, live though a protracted end to his life, suffering from motor neurone disease, a similar but less severe condition than hers. She was determined not to become the shadow he became, unable to speak and 100 per cent dependent on his family, but with his eyes conveying only hopeless sadness.
She went to Zurich, to die in a Dignitas Clinic, accompanied by her three children, and died with their arms about her. She should have been able to die at home . . . not in Switzerland.
