The observers who warned Edinburgh's net zero policy was unachievable can now say: told you so, says John McLellan

If the past, according to author LP Hartley, is a foreign country where they do things differently, then the world before the pandemic often seems like a different planet.

Looking back at events towards the end of 2019 exposes a time in which optimism was often runaway - think Boris and boosterism - and in Edinburgh the council could afford to pull the plug on its marketing agency in the belief that the tourists would continue to flock in ever-growing numbers.

But the warning signs were often clear before a mysterious leak from a Chinese laboratory, or war in Europe on a scale not seen since 1945. And like the attitude towards tourism, in 2019 Edinburgh, the council’s official view was anything could be achieved if the Nicola Sturgeon wannabes running the administration just stamped their feet hard enough, like the declaration that 20,000 new affordable homes would be built by 2027, when it was obvious from the start, even to those needing their toes to count above ten, it was just a dream.

Then there was the drive to net zero carbon emissions, a game of political one-upmanship when practical barriers were as viewable from space as the Great Wall of China. The UK Government set a target of 2050, which was nowhere near good enough for Edinburgh’s SNP-Labour administration which boasted it would be reached 20 years earlier because they were so........

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