Masters of twaddle and waffle - John McLellan

City of Edinburgh Council has turned twaddle and waffle into an artform, with the standard for meaningless guff set by the 2050 City Vision and echoed in the Cityplan 2030.

Residents can share their views about the council’s draft Climate Ready Edinburgh Plan via online consultation until April 7

The 2021 economy strategy was described by an economist friend of mine as a wish list of dreams, not a strategy; stronger, greener, fairer, whatever…

Joining the archive of eyewash is the Climate Ready Edinburgh Plan which has just gone out to public consultation. Like the economy strategy which isn’t a strategy, it isn’t a plan at all, but a collection of pre-existing initiatives wrapped in cosy, unfalsifiable buzz-phrases, without much by way of real actions.

“Edinburgh will be a thriving, fair, resilient city and region where people, communities and nature flourish in a changing climate,” it says, and who’s against that?

“Ensuring we embed climate adaptation across our work, organisations and communities will be key to ensuring action and delivery of climate adaptation measures.” I’m sorry, say that again?

“We need citizens to join us on our mission to be a climate adapted and nature positive city.” Sure, boss.

What follows is essentially a shopping list of more plans, enough commissions to keep expensive consultants busy for a decade. All 77 pages of it.

The consultation is meant to gauge public opinion about the strategy, but only the committed will read all that, so instead it will just be the views of vested interests.

And it avoids one question … what difference will Edinburgh’s plan make to global warming? But perhaps they already know.