A great day for Scotland's Capital City

The trams contract has final been signed. Brilliant! Well done to everyone who was involved. This is a great result for Edinburgh and eventually for Scotland.

Of course, those traders who are struggling right now because of the works may not feel so elated and I respect and am very sympathetic to their plight. The support for them needs to be robust and effective and not always just about straight cash, though that will help a great deal.

We led this process from the front when we were in power, taking the challenges on the chin. My concern is that now its TIE (our implementation company) that are being expected to lead, to face the traders, to front the process at its most difficult time whilst administration politicians have been conspicuous by their absence. The thing is, they don't like to tough part of leadership, only the nice, popular bits.

But a project as big as this needs political leadership though the tough times to the prize. We know we won't get that from the SNP, who intended to cancel trams to pay for the scrapped tolls on the Forth bridge, (where is the cash for that mistake coming from now?). Lets hope sometime soon we get some leadership from the other half our the administration.