Edinburgh is crying out for new housing developments - and new public transport to get to them, says Herald columnist John McLellan

Less than three months ago, First Minster John Swinney gave a speech on the need for national renewal, which after 18 years of SNP rule was a brave admission

And as a sign of for just how long he and his party have been struggling for progress, he cited an initiative he instigated as Finance Secretary 15 years ago, asking the late STUC General Secretary Campbell Christie to head the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services.

Although he was speaking to health professionals at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, his remarks were set in a broader context of the need for effective investment and better public services which, he said “requires, right now, a clear, collective commitment to the paradigm shift in public service delivery that we started with Christie in 2011.”

No shift, it appears, ever comes without a paradigm, and is more likely to be civil service shorthand for not much happening at all, and indeed in repeating the Christie principles, Mr Swinney inadvertently provided a reminder of how resistant public services are to meaningful change unless it involves more money. Principle two, he said, was that “public service providers must be required to work much more closely in partnership, to integrate service provision and thus improve the outcomes they achieve.”

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