You don’t even need a ticket for this comedy award frontrunner - John McLellan

Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com 
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Visit Shots! now
We all know it’s festival time and there’s a wannabe stand-up on every corner, but an early frontrunner for this year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award doesn’t even have a proper show.

Nor is this nominee putting himself in the shop window for the agents and talent scouts on the lookout for the next big thing to follow in the footsteps of past winners like Frank Skinner, Steve Coogan and Lee Evans.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But the good news is that you don’t even need to buy a ticket for his production because the joke is everywhere to be seen. Yes folks, for the long-running performance of “Edinburgh City Council Listens”, the pace has been set by none other than our new council chief executive Paul Lawrence.

I’m sure the delivery will have been as deadpan as Jack Dee when, in an interview with the Local Democracy Reporter service this week, Mr Lawrence insisted that, “I think the council listens, the council responds where it can”.

Comedian Jason ByrneComedian Jason Byrne
Comedian Jason Byrne

What a belter. It had me rolling around like one of Jason Byrne’s audience participants. Edinburgh City Council listens? To whom? Vested interests and minorities, and those who tell it what it wants to hear?

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It certainly doesn’t listen to the residents of Corstorphine who remain firmly opposed to imposition of the Low Traffic Neighbourhood. It didn’t listen to West Craigs residents who had the same problem and could produce better solutions which could actually have helped the council achieve its aims.

It didn’t listen to the people in Comiston and Braids who pointed out how much pollution and congestion the maze of roadblocks was causing. And you can measure how much the council listened to Lanark Road residents by counting the bollards.

Did it listen to people who had new communal bin hubs dumped outside their front windows? Or to Willowbrae residents who will have their parking halved when new restrictions are enforced? Computer said no.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Did it listen to planning experts who pointed out that the new planning blueprint threatened to displace 3600 jobs at a potential cost of £2.6 billion over next 10 years? Not a bit of it.

It certainly didn’t listen to the overwhelming majority who said spending millions more on trams was a waste of money. It still isn’t listening as it plots even more grandiose and unaffordable schemes to replace award-winning bus services, despite a £100 million budget black hole.

“Does it respond quickly enough?” Lawrence was asked but was honest enough to admit: “Probably not at times.” However he failed to add that it’s only when people protest in number that decisions are reviewed, like the threat to Currie High, but only rarely is the response what the majority seek.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

And I’ve lost count of the number of times compromises have been reached only after costly legal action, like the aggressive short-term lets policy.

“I do think we hear what people say and where we can we really try to respond,” he said, with the accent on “where we can” which, as most people who have had anything to do with the authority know, is not very often.

I’m sure this isn’t an award to which Mr Lawrence aspires, but at least he can claim this nomination as a genuine first, because his predecessor Andrew Kerr could never be considered for the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. He was beyond a joke.