Under normal circumstances, the tourist tax would be dominating the thoughts of City of Edinburgh councillors after approving the UK’s first such city scheme last week.

Indeed, next Thursday’s meeting does have a motion from SNP leader Simita Kumar calling for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to pay the council around £10 million in extra VAT the “visitor levy” could theoretically raise, a stunt which ignores the political and accounting complexities of the VAT regime.

From last week’s transport committee, there is the determination to bash on with building a tram line from Granton on the Forth shore through the Old Town to the Royal Infirmary in the south and beyond, from which there is unlikely to be much change from £3 billion, and despite the council not having the eye-popping £44 million apparently needed for pre-construction work, like building a business case. Lovely jubbly if you’re a consultant transport engineer.

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And there are more contracts in the offing for road designers, with the potential for a permanent kilometre-long cycleway along Queen Street at a cost of £6 million. Who would have thought Edinburgh Council has a £30 million budget shortfall?

But, no, talk in the City Chambers corridors is dominated by the unfolding psychodrama surrounding former council leader Cammy Day. The allegations have been well documented, not least in this column last week, but it’s only with this week’s publication of........

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