scottishcapital

On the wrong track

2006-12-21T21:26:00.000Z

Forget the stairs. An escalator system would make our tenement block 'world class', and lots of my neighbours agree with me on this one.

It'll be installed over the next year or so. It's definitely going ahead; I've already spent a considerable amount from the communal stair fund employing - among others - an escalator company to conduct a feasibility study into the project.

I'm quite excited by it all, although it is a shame not everybody has my vision. Some people have pointed out that for the size of building we live in, the stair system we have is completely adequate.

They're thanking me for my efforts, but telling me the money could better be spent elsewhere, like improving the quality of the dwellings beyond the stairwell, for a start. I know some of them have started making mental plans to remove me as an signatory on the stair account come next stair meeting in May, but this doesn't matter see, I know I can still succeed:

I know by May most of them will have forgotten about my stairwell transportation plans, and won't turn up to the stair meeting at all. If I push on now and make it happen, they'll learn to live with my decisions regardless.

We'll soon be forking out an estimated £592 million for a tramline which will conflict with EARL, our planned Edinburgh Airport Rail Link, and I want to tell you this is going to be one of the most expensive lemon projects ever undertaken by this city.

I've seen many picture postcards illustrating trams running through city-centres, and they look pretty cool. In fact, I've travelled on a tram several times in my life, and have found them slightly larger and smoother than buses, if less frequent.

My most recent tram experience was in Amsterdam when it collided with a car and we all had to get off and wait while police and paramedics rushed to clear up the mess blocking the line.

Tram vendors tell our council - who tell us - one of their vehicles can carry up to eight times more people than a bus, thus reducing overcrowding.
Here's something: We generally don't have an overcrowded bus service in Edinburgh. There are a few peak minutes when you might have to stand on the lower deck, and - very rarely - when you can't board and have to wait for the next one. But these occasions are rare. On the main routes, we don't have to wait long to board a half empty bus, and that's a good thing.

Sending a near-empty bus around a route may be percieved as viable. But a tram - being eight times emptier - probably won't. So it is ironic we may end up standing around a little longer to wait for the tram than it took us to wait for a bus.

Don't think it means the rush-hour will be particularly more comfortable on a tram either. We're losing a top full of seats for every bus replaced. And that's a shame: the upper-deck of a bus is one of the best ways to view a city. Do you think a tram has a larger standing area than a bus? Of course it does. Trams were designed for making frequent stops in busy, population-dense cities. In my experience they tend to have limited seating facing inward along the perimeter of the carriage, instead of the forward-facing seat rows we're used to. The main floorspace is used for standing; so get used to standing we will.

I've yet to see any evidence trams are more energy efficient than buses. Tram advocates tell us they are, but I doubt many have put it to the test.
Transport campaigner Ray Perman, who sits on the board of Scottish Enterprise, is such an advocate,
writing in The Scotsman: "Edinburgh is increasingly having to compete with European cities which already have fast, energy-efficient tram systems. Now is the moment for the council to seize the opportunity that the Scottish Parliament has given them to help our city catch up.

If anyone other than me and a few of my mates were going to read this, I would ring up a professor and check if trams really are more energy efficient. And if they definately are, I would say so.
But at the moment, I haven't heard anyone say why they're more energy efficient, other than they run on electricity and are fixed to the road via a rail.
You can't plug a C02 measuring device into the exhaust, but the electricity to power trams has to come from somewhere. How often do the steel wheels have to be replaced? What's the environmental impact from electric cabling along the route? I haven't checked. And I assume Mr Perman hasn't checked either. Without being able to proof what they're saying, words are empty rhetoric.

And if you want more empty rhetoric how's this one: Trams will be good for business. How do we know this? Because other senior people from Scotland's business community tell us so.

"They include managers from Standard Life, Scottish Widows, Marks & Spencer and software giant Oracle", reports the same Scotsman article.

No. If the proposed tramline goes ahead, it means hardship or even death for many small, independent businesses who will be unable to schedule deliveries along the routes.
Shoppers and traders on Leith Walk are up in arms about the real logistical nightmares facing their local businesses, but so-far Transport Inititatives Edinburgh's response has been to grant one delivery set-down area: For Tesco, at the top of the Walk.
No, in their current form, trams don't make good business sense; Not for many business owners, and not for independent shoppers. Trams could ultimately means less variety and choice for us all.

Which, of course, is fine for the big boys like Marks and Spencer. If small retailers fail whilst consumers are whisked from one clone-store to another, all the better. They'll always schedule their deliveries round the back of our little toy-town city at night. Besides, the large retailers usually have outlets in out-of-town developments for those who simply can't do without the car. The small independents don't have this luxury. Besides, the senior financial managers who advocate the tram system will still be able to park their Range Rovers in Controlled Parking Zones.

Are Marks and Spencer happy to put money where their mouth is and invest in the network? Or Standard Life or Oracle? No. They've simply signed a letter saying trams are a good deal.
If it's all so viable why aren't these companies - and the rest of the private sector - queuing up in a bid to run it? Where are all the tender pitches? Why is the council the only people jumping through hoops? Why is TIE the only body really shouting the benefits of the venture?

And here's something. The proposed tram line makes a detour-stop at the new Royal Bank of Scotland Gogarburn Headquarters while on the way to the airport.
Some of us remember this area as once greenbelt land, defining and respecting the edge of the city. That was before Edinburgh's second-largest employer began the process of closing down parts of our city-centre and moving tens of thousands of central staff here. We've already got a seperate, high speed rail link to the airport, so it's not about coincidence. The truth seems to me, now we've allowed The Bank what they want, that we're now being asked to pay for private company policy, and I for one begrudge that.

Don't get me wrong: I like trams. I admit they're smoother than buses.
They also look good, there's something quaint about them, and they work well in places like Amsterdam, where the streets are broad and the population dense and the ground flat, and Gdansk, where I hear the people don't travel much and it's too cold to cycle.

But even on Edinburgh's widest streets, pedestrians, buses, taxis, delivery vehicles, and cyclists just won't have enough space if there's a tram line. So average journey times for people travelling anywhere in the city - other than along the one tram route - will increase significantly.

I believe edinburgh trams will be a lemon. All I'm asking is that people think clearly about if we really need them.

Do a PMI - Plus Minus Interesting - analysis; List the positive (Plus) benefits a tramline will bring (there will be some).
Think about how the system will benefit you if you live in Oxgangs or Niddry, or Morningside or Dalry or Portobello. Cough all.
Next, list the Minus, negative aspects, of having the system. Remember this is a huge, whopping great big expensive exercise for a relatively small city to undertake, and we're all going to have to pay for it.
Once you've done that, list anything interesting the tramline will bring to our beautiful city.
Then see if you still want it.

Edinburgh city centre is unique. We can squeeze more than one hundred thousand people in for a party in Princes Street Gardens, or march against war against a castle backdrop, and we simply divert the buses around Queen Street when we do.

But rigid tramlines are a threat to the flexible nature of our wonderful Capital City culture. With trams, when we next have a torchlit procession or a Fireworks concert or a Carnival or a Make Poverty History march, our major public transport system becomes disjointed. And we'll also be worrying about wheelchair users, small children and cyclists getting jammed in rails.

And I don't swallow the argument for a minute that people have more faith in the reliabilty of trams over buses. I lived in London for long enough to know staring at a metal rail is no indication a service will arrive.
But I know I trust these displays at bus stops that estimate the vehicle arrival times.

There are always people who claim they don't trust the bus service. Buses are too unreliable, too dirty, too noisy, and don't go where I want to go, they say. 'Maybe if we had a tramline I would be more inclined to use it'. Nonsense. Buses are generally clean, civil, and reliable. These people obviously haven't used the bus service in a very long time simply because they don't want to. Believe me, building a tram system won't get them out their cars, whatever they may tell you.

It is unlikely the future of transporting Edinburghers around our city lies with the private car - even although car-park flanked retail outlets, such as at Westfield, still provide the model for the largest 'exciting new retail developments', and more workers are moved out from the city centre to green belt locations.

Trendy as they may be, trams are a fad. Tram proponents - who think themselves progessionists - find it difficult to verbalise why we need a light rail system.
I hear from them the usual: they'll speed up traffic, they'll ease pollution, they're good for business, but I've yet to see the evidence to back their claims. And most of them seem reluctant to admit it's unlikely they'll ever actually use it.
Ultimately, they are unable to say the real reason they want trams: They think a city isn't sophisticated if you can't sell picture postcards without a picture of one on.

Here's the reality: Edinburgh is a world class city without trams. Sheffield, Croydon, and Manchester - to name a few - have trams, each of them doing exactly what a bus service does. All of these cities are great in their own way - with the exception of Croydon, maybe.
None of these places are truly world class, and Edinburgh is.

Five hundred and forty nine million quid for one line from Newhaven to the airport really is something a small city of less than five hundred thousand can ill afford, particularly as most of the population don't live along its route. It would take, well, five hundred and forty-nine million £1 journeys just to recoup the cost of building the venture. And let's not kid ourselves that the actual cost won't be much, much higher. We've already spent £60 million of real money before a single piece of track has been laid.
Like many of our most significant council initiatives, it's a great opportunity for consultants and PR professionals, and an expensive bill for us citizens.

Lothian Buses have built up a great service over the past decade, and we should continue to build on their success. A 2005 survey found the vast majority of us positive with the bus service, the only major criticism being the need for the correct change, uncertainty over when the buses run, and a feeling that buses don't run at convenient times. These can all be addressed without physically sticking the transportation to the road.

If we really want cost-effective improved public transport in Edinburgh service let's continue what we've been doing: building on the usability of the bus service, as well as continuing the policy of prioritising them over private vehicles.

Let's also open our eyes and ears, and explore the possibilities from proposals by a group Transport Initiatives Edinburgh don't want to believe exist:

The Edinburgh Rail Action Group - I read of in the Evening News letters - is one organisation who could provide direction to real, cost effective transport solutions:

Their solution to: open up the mothballed suburban rail network that criss-crosses the city. What an brilliant idea. The more you think about it, the more it makes sense - there is currently a network of mothballed and abandoned rail lines criss-crossing our city. The network is already half complete.
Once developed, an Edinburgh wide rail network would take pressure of our crowded roads and provide real interchange with the airport rail link, Scotland, and beyond.

Why the council don't want to consider this - or, at the very least, spend a fraction of what they have already spent on the tram consultation researching the possibility, is beyond me.
Even stranger when the council should set-up a very similar naming Capital Rail Action Group which - it may not surprise you - advocates the construction of the tram line.

Possibly, we're being pulled along the wrong track. I certainly think we are.

But what do I care. When a future city administration is wondering how to keep the system running, I'll be by the escalator at the top of the stairwell, sucking a lemon and saying 'I told you so'.

Press

2006-11-16T21:23:00.000Z

Winter is truly here. Twelve short months ago, stormy winds lifted slates from the roof and the wettest October on record plopped onto the wooden floors of our top-floor tenament dwelling via the roof, attic, and ceiling.

Finally repaired under insurance in March - our beautiful smooth re-plastered and re-painted ceilings are now brown-stained and cracked again in what's turning out to be, the second rainiest October on record.

Following the eight hours of persistant rain yesterday, I turned on Radio Forth's Boogie in the Morning Breakfast Show eagerly. I expecting live coverage on the plight of evacuees living in the Usher Hall. It never got mentioned. Normal service it was: music, fluffy banter and adverts. A broken slate can make a great deal of difference to one's perception of life.

The press never gave it a mention either. The 15p Edinburgh Edition Daily Record leads with a front-page splash - should I comment here? Better not - on Muirhouse Teen Gang Members posing on an Internet website with knives, axes, and a pistol.

Young neds who, probably up until this afternoon, didn't realise their full potential.

The 15p Edinburgh Daily Record is a new one.
Certainly, as far as I remember, it's the only other exclusive paper to Edinburgh aside from the Edinburgh Evening News. And the Herald and Post. I hear The Scotsman sells most of its copies in and around the city, likes, but that's an 'Edinburgh paper', and not a paper about Edinburgh, much

The 15p Record moving into the local patch is a bold move, but ultimately doomed to fail. Here's why I reckon why:
It's not a match for the Evening News, and nationally, without some form of brand extension, this exercise will undermine the title's position as Scotland's national morning paper.

Possibly in Edinburgh - if they can maintain enough sales once the pricing gets realistic - the move won't effect morning edition sales - The Record here is not the staple it is to the majority of Scotland.

But if they stick with it in the big western city, it could ultimately put Record sales into a steeper decline than they're in already.
It's creating a brand muddle, you see: and people won't be sure what they're buying: If it's a 'morning' (all day) paper, why would you want to buy something that will percieved as out-of-date by lunchtime? And if it's an Evening Paper - well, there's the Evening Times for that.
I've observed how people consumed the Record for years. In a Port Glasgow petrol station early one mid 90s morning, I queued behind a line of people asking for 'a paper'. The attendent picked up 'the paper' from a huge Record pile on the floor beside him - there were no other papers to mention.
I've always seen the Record being bought in the morning and noticed it consumed throughout the whole day, by which time its a crumpled wreck on the van dashboard or on the granny's coffee table. It's an all day product, and never just been an evening title. Here lies danger: If consumers can't identify what it is they're after, they tend to leave things alone.

Which is why brand extending - rebranding new products under the 'umbrella' of the original - is important.
The Daily Record remains the 'national all-day paper', and the Edinburgh Evening Record and Glasgow Evening Records become completely new products in their own rights. Kind-of like having the choice between the Kit Kat, and the Kit Kat Crunchy in the non-news FMCG market - each one positively identifiable as the brand, but it's up to you which one you choose to consume.
The title's not stretched too thinly; and if it all goes tits-up, the publishers walk away with the main paper untainted.

Not that thinking of newspapers as mere brands - like washing powder or tea-bags or spaghetti hoops - does them great justice.

Newspapers - in all their shapes and forms - colour our lives in the way other products don't.

As with many products or services, they frequently brand the urban landscape themselves, rooting us in a time and place with their current style; I delight in seeing the old bubbly Evening News mast on decrepid corner shops.

Even if we never read the papers, those who can read cannot fail to be kept up to date with a major headline via a billboard. It is easier to date an old urban photograph by scanning the picture for signs of newspapers. Newspapers timestamp our visits to the corner shop, even if all we're after is a pint of milk.

And although I believe the single most important thing a newspaper should do, is report as close to its beliefs as possible - this is by no means their sole purpose.

I have always thought it harsh of people who criticise tabloid newspapers for being tabloid. Tabloids do not promise to educate and enlighten us. We should not expect anything above what we are promised, and nobody on newspapers can truly promise anything more than what they have previously delivered. Reading the Metro is a pleasure, it does not demand a great deal of me.
And what a stroke of marketing genius to get the Engerlish population, on a midday in summer 2002, placing their hands on the front page and chanting, collectively trying to heal The Foot. Sometimes it's nice to forget we're bombing rubble villages without understanding those who hate us, and just have a laugh.

It is regrettable broadsheet newspaper sales (if not, with the likes of Metro available on buses and trains, general newspaper readership levels) are in terminal decline. Many people fear the worst for broadsheet papers, but I don't.

It is ironic, I believe, that not running to a 24-hour format will make newspapers survive the continuing information revolution.
Where other forms of journalism are on a continual cycle around us, newspapers, even Internet edition newspapers, with their closed distribution and print deadlines, are the only media that truly draw a line under one day and start each day afresh.

As the price of daily newspapers drop to compete with the freebies, sales will continue to fall and a few familiar titles may fall by the wayside. Title owners will ultimately have a choice: Become very cheap, very tight daily entertainment brands, or recognise their value as weeklies of insight and thought.

The mistake newspapers have been making thus far is trying to compete against shrinking news cycles. This isn't right. You can't compete against television and radio and the rest of the web. You can't expect people to pay for a story that's broken twelve hours ago. But you'll always have the enviable preperation time to step back and take another angle whilst the more immediate media mine the 'current' stories into the ground.

Newspapers in the future will become more analytical, more searching, more posthumous and more mature. They will be less bothered with the 'as it happened' and concern themselves with the commentary and the wider picture.

The greatest marketing triumph many papers will pull off will be to rebrand themselves as weeklies. I often find it ludicrous I often cannot get hold of a Sunday paper by four o'clock in the afternoon, even although most of the features and articles would last-out the entire week.

And ultimately, I hazard a guess, we'll see a return to the great days of newspaper exclusives.

As the titles change, so will the way in which we interact with them. I see this happening already - now there is a forum site where you can 'blog' on Sunday Herald articles.

And as the journalism contained in the papers will evolve, so will the advertising.
Earlier this year, The Scotsman ran an advertising promotion for GNER trains, where the reader collects a website password from three editions of the paper and inputs them into advertisers' website for a discounted rail fare. Here's just the start. If every paper can be printed unique in some way, and the Internet increasingly becomes part of the reader's experience with the title, we don't have to think of papers as solely above-the-line vehicles of page inches anymore.

Printing technology allows each paper to be uniquely coded which, with the reader's permission and input, could identify them to the very corner shop or supermarket they were purchased - as well as perform some direct response measurement exercise for the client advertiser.
What can tell us about the consumer who bought the paper. What's this information worth? This doesn't mean bombarding the consumer with direct mail, but it could open up exciting targeting opportunities through a product consumers buy on a regular basis.
I may not be part of it, but from what I can see, the future for papers is as exciting as its ever been.

I remember the first-time I visited the old Scotsman Publications headquarters at North Bridge.
Although the grand entrancehall - now a restaraunt/bar - was for the public: clients, advertisers, and little old ladies placing ads - the staff entered round the arse of the building, on Waverley Steps.

Inside, it was warm, noisy, and with the industrial smell of hot metal and drying ink gently pinching your nostrils, the building throbbed and hummed to the tune of the printing presses in its bowels. The smell of newsprint got in your clothes like the smell of fat from a chippy.

A few years later, I walked into the bowels of the building, and witnessed the vast emptiness left behind when these monolith machines were decomissioned and deconstructed in the 1990s - as print production moved to a new plant in Newhaven.

I imagined what it must have been like, amongst all the heat and noise, as enormous rolls of paper unravelled, flew above, below, and sideways, across the room pressed into the latest news, cut and folded into something that was here tomorrow, and gone the next day.

A fleet of Evening News Transit vans, as I recalled them, collected and distributed the news far and wide. I remember standing outside the back entrance to Waverley station on Edinburgh's Market Street, watching the news start its journey into people's homes, enticed by the rapid hubbub, noise, and smell of print and diesel as the vans roared off into the city.

But it was when I first saw the newsroom, that I was struck with awe. The banging of typewriters, and the ringing of phones; recievers pulled up and banged down, the frequent use of the 'f' word, the smoke and brimming ash-trays, messages circulating around the building in vacuum tubes. Even if it was never as romantic as I imagined it, I remember something awesome, intoxicating.

I can't think of any other industry where such diverse disciplines and trades converged to create one product. Knowledge, brawn, money-business, and heavy industry pulled together and produced the fastest moving consumer brands in the country.

As much as I'll moarn the loss of the old newsroom I idealised, I don't begrudge the present day set-ups I've seen, with their lonely coughs and whispered conversations and clickity-click of keypads.
If it comes to it, I'll be sad to see many of the brands I've grown up with dissapear from the shelves. But, in a twist of fate, it may be as inevitable and as a godsend as it was broadsheets shrinking size.
We might not lose as many as we think, and those that survive will do so for a very long time to come.

1st November. Winter is here.

2006-11-01T11:48:00.000Z

It's baltic. Absolutely baltic. Just a few weeks ago, I'm sure, it was possible to get a suntan and still keep warm. Not any more.

I came across a girl (well, thirty-something year old female) slumped in the grass in the little park along Calton Road this morning.

I approached her with caution, half expecting to find her asleep, half expecting to get a mouthfull of abuse for waking her, and a-quarter-of-one percent expecting something worse.
Her arm was exposed, pink, and goosebumpy, which I read as a good sign, and I touched her arm to see if she was dozing. On the first touch there was nothing, but on the second, slightly stronger grasp, her eyes flickered.

"Hello", I said, feeling awkward. "Are you all right?"
I felt a bit wrong saying this. I mean, it's pretty obvious either way: Either she's not alright because you generally don't lie around half exposed in parks on cold winter's mornings if you are alright, or, she could open her eyes, look at me, and say "Well, I was until you f&cking woke me up" and then I'd feel pretty stupid, because I know I don't enjoy being woken up when I'm having a snooze.

I did once have such a bizarre conversation in Exeter a couple of autumns ago. We were driving through the city whilst on a holiday in Devon. It was early evening, and I spotted a body on the road between parked cars. I pulled over, and walked over to this middle aged man, with his hands in his coat pockets, lying on the road fully conscious and staring up at the sky.
"Are you okay?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."
"Ah. ... You are aware you're lying on the road?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."
" ... Do you think you should move?"
"Yeah, yeah. Probably not a bad idea."

But on this occasion there was no answer. Just another flicker in response to my third poke on the arm.
A sweeping but, in all probability correct assesment would be her state was drug induced.

So I decided to call the people who deal with all this, only to discover my phone deid.

I walk down to the phonebox outside the bogs on London Road, and call for an ambulance.
At first I speak to a pleasant chap from Newport, although he is only there so I can say the words 'er, ambulance please', and he can connect me to the local ambulance people, tell them he's calling from Newport, and confirm the number of the phonebox I'm calling from.

Which reminded me of a time around eight years ago, when I rang an 0845 number to place an order with Pizza Hut, and got an amazingly enthusiastic guy in a call centre somewhere in Essex, who - after clarifying our selections on size, toppings, and stuffed-crustness - asked us which branch we reckoned was closest to where we lived, so he could ring them and place the order.
He ended the call "Is there anything else I can do for you?" and I wish I'd stopped to think for a bit before I put the phone down, because I've thought of a million and one things he could have done since then, like finding a late night offey, cleaning the fridge, and booking rail tickets over the internet.

After she's asked a few questions relating to the girls state of health, I tell the very efficient and pleasant lady on the other end of the phone where the ambulance crew will find her lying, providing she hasn't got up and walked off.
I say it's just past the bowling green on Regent Road, in the park with the wee stone circle representing all the different counties of Scotland. There's a Scotmid lorry parked on the road beside where she lies.

Presumably the guy in the lorry (there was someone in the lorry) is blind. Or perhaps he's used to seeing motionless bodies from his cab. Or perhaps he didn't notice. Or perhaps he dumped her there. Or perhaps he didn't give a chuff. Perhaps the couple of females I saw walking the dog about twelve seconds before I came across her lying there didn't care much either.

Or perhaps any one of them did notice and had already done something about it.

Anyway, an ambulance was dispatched to check on her condition. I heard it wail towards Calton Road, and I would imagine she was in good hands, if not for a little while.

Irvine Welsh and perceptions of a city

2006-10-31T17:09:00.000Z

Halloween. A bright, crisp day signals the beginning of Winter.

Leith is bustling and beaming. Strangers and familiar faces nod, beam, and smile.

Yesterday, gloomy, overcast, I near the bottom of the Walk, and catch the desperation in a stranger's eye. Knowing he's embarrassed for being exposed, I wait for the inevitable:
"What are you looking at?
"Don't you tell me to leave it, cunt!
"Eh?
"Hink you're hard eh?
"Well 'Moan Then!"

There is no complication to Leith. When she goes down, she pulls you down with her. But when she smiles, like today, she cradles you in her kind glory. Hackit and drunk or beautiful and wise, depending on the circumstances of the day, but unlike her cool, big bully sister, always straightforward and honest.
Even the New Leith makes no bones as to whether she likes you or not. You can come in, she says, if you can afford to.

My ever-changing perceptions of Leith reminded me of a thought which occured earlier in the year, and which I posted as a letter in the Edinburgh Evening News; the passionate replies the greatest illustration of the many perceptions of our wonderful Jeckyl-and-Hyde city of Edinburgh.

Welsh is not a good ambassador for city

IT will be interesting to see how the audience will perceive Edinburgh and Leith through the South Bank Show's documentary on Irvine Welsh (News, July 20).

The subject is indeed a fine writer, someone who has put both the city and our northern district on the contemporary literary map. He is also genuinely admired by many of the ordinary people of Edinburgh.

Through the pursuit of fiction, Welsh has spoken for many of our city's real people ignored by the mainstream - the socially excluded, drug-users, alcoholics, the disillusioned young, and long-term unemployed. We are right to applaud the author for identifying the darker side to our city and bringing it out in the open.

Yet compare side-by-side Welsh's portrayal of Leith, our city, and our people, and the reality. It is quite clear - at least to most of us - Welsh's work is ultimately fictional, a gross caricature of life largely drawn from misfit characters suffering the extremes of the human condition.

His books are like the out-of-scale Edinburgh paintings, the Castle towering high above disproportionately steep buildings cascading down the Royal Mile. They resemble Edinburgh, but are not correct.

There are even those who believe Welsh himself is a caricature.

Whilst I'm sure he is from where he says he is, I have read many who claim they never saw him run with the Hibs casuals, or even lift a drink as a local in the Leith Dockers Club before he became famous. The experiences of his characters, they say, are the product of a keen observer and brilliant imagination, but are not drawn firsthand.

As I have never met Irvine Welsh, ran with the Hibs casuals, or lifted a drink as a local inside the Leith Dockers club, I will reserve judgement on their gripes.

Yet it appears Welsh does indulge his public image - in the same way another contemporary Edinburgh author portrays the impoverished Marchmont teacher writing a masterpiece in a middle-class tea-room.

And while it is good to celebrate such a fine author, we must think about Welsh's contribution to how people perceive us, and if we do not like what he portrays, it is high time to start speaking out.

For those who feel an author cannot do any harm, consider what impact Welsh's books may have had on the perception of the written Edinburgh dialect. This is the tongue of all those who speak it, and not just of the often twisted characters or desperate situations he creates.

For many throughout the world, his works are their only experience of us; if anyone else were to write a novel in our Edinburgh tongue they would be, to many readers, "writing Welsh".

What are the odds of being attacked by a mad dog on Leith Links wounded by an air-gun? Of course it makes us laugh - the beauty of Welsh is he can make us laugh at such things.

But along with the image in our heads, we locals laugh at the absurdity of the event ever actually occurring, whilst the new international reader does not.

Irvine Welsh should be a literary hero, but not an unofficial ambassador or spokesperson for our city of Edinburgh or Leith.

The South Bank documentary crew ultimately have to decide what they perceive is genuinely a part of our glum past and present, and what is a myth.

It is 13 years since Trainspotting first hit the bookshelves with its gritty portrayal of run-down 80's Leith and the heroin capital of Europe. In every book since then, Welsh's portrayal of our city has followed a common theme.

Perhaps his new book, The Bedroom Secrets of Master Chefs will paint a different picture?

There are those people who wish to bask in the glory of past notoriety, and those who look to the future on a more positive note. Regardless, maybe it is time we started looking for some new literary heroes.

Tom Ellingham Rossie Place, Edinburgh

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1073182006

A bustling North Bridge, August.

Trainspotting image not the whole story

TOM ELLINGHAM (Letters, July 24) feels "many throughout the world" have only the Trainspotting image of our city, but this has certainly not been the case in my experience.

I lived for many years in both the north of Scotland and the south of England. The impression most people I met had of Edinburgh was that its people were all well off and posh.

I used to try in vain to explain what it was really like in the areas I myself had lived in, but was hardly ever believed.

Also, on a number of occasions I was told that I could not possibly be from Edinburgh with an accent like mine, as people from Edinburgh sound almost English. And Leith? Most had never even heard of it.

I often found trying to argue with these people to be futile, frustrating and extremely tiresome.

I, for one, am grateful to Irvine Welsh for the fact that my existence has finally been acknowledged. And I am not one of the "misfits" Tom Ellingham mentions either. I am just a normal person from a working-class background.

I still have contacts in various parts of the UK. Many of them now see Edinburgh as being wealthier than ever, with fewer pockets of poverty than most cities of a similar size.

In my experience, Irvine Welsh's books have not left a great dent in the city's image and I find it rather precocious of Tom Ellingham to try and suggest otherwise.

There are quite simply both good and bad parts of the city, and in this respect it is no different to anywhere else.

Lyndsey Greig Duke Street, Leith

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1091032006

A bright Leith day in June.

Welsh's Leith is the real dodgy deal

TOM ELLINGHAM (Letters, July 24) claims the characters in Irvine Welsh's books are "gross caricatures". He admits he does not know any Hibs casuals and says he has never ever been in the Leith Dockers Club - hardly a typical Leither then. What makes him think he can judge how real Welsh's characters are?

I have relatives who have been involved with drugs, alcohol abuse and violence. In pubs where I drink there are people who regularly come round selling stolen goods and a lot of them are drug addicts. I also take it Tom Ellingham has never used the shopping centre near me at Pennywell and had to dodge the congregated drug addicts who are deciding which people and shops to rob.

All of the people I have mentioned come very close to the characters Welsh writes about. And, just for the record, I did once see Welsh standing among the casuals at Easter Road.

I Kelly, Ferry Road, Edinburgh

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1097392006

Stormy Edinburgh, 2004

All letters are copyright 2006 The Scotsman Publications Ltd.

It was wonderful to get such a response.

Winter is just around the corner.

2006-10-30T17:29:00.000Z