Christmas cheer? - your views online

Edinburgh’s Christmas festivities are under way, including the traditional markets, the big wheel and a new ice rink in George Street.
How cheerful are you feeling about the prospect of Christmas?How cheerful are you feeling about the prospect of Christmas?
How cheerful are you feeling about the prospect of Christmas?

However, new research has revealed that the capital is the UK city feeling the glummest about the festive season.

Daniel Gonzalez Lobato: Uncertainty about what is to come in the months ahead is what makes people anxious and worried about the future of this country and themselves. There isn’t room for Christmas when people are worried about important matters in their lives.

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Robert Ayr: It’s hardly going to be a merry Christmas for about 80 per cent of the country. At this rate we will be back to an apple and an orange in a sock.

Jackie Wright: We are all too worried about our heating and food bills to pay extortionate prices at a Christmas market which thinks it is OK to pay £10 for going round a stupid wheel. Oh my goodness, I am sounding like Scrooge!

Margaret Heinsar: There are moaners at every successful festival in Edinburgh.

Stuart Bisset: £15 for fish and chips and £10 for half a burger on a roll makes even the expensive traditional chippy seem reasonable.

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Peter Baird: It’s has been set up and priced to rip off the tourists. People from Edinburgh were never considered

Kate Marshall: As an “American tourist” I hear you and feel your pain. Growing up in a beach tourist town, it was overwhelmed with people at certain times of the year. And frankly, when I come to visit Scotland, I always come out of season because I want to visit the people and what makes Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland, what it is … not “attractions”. I know there’s a lot of economics involved, but I hope you get your city back to yourselves soon.

Karl Olifant: Shall we go back to when there was nothing and the city’s back to its Trainspotting days where nobody has a job?

Jonathon Alexander Dodds: We’re a festival city, which relies on tourism to thrive. Sadly some people don’t understand this. I work for a visitor attraction, and have worked in attractions for years, and can say that, largely, tourists do treat the city with complete respect. You’ll find that those who don’t like things such as the markets dislike them because of the small amount of inconvenience it causes them, rather than the people it brings.

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Dave Snr: To take a family of four and to do all that there is to do along with food and drink you will need to remortgage your house.

Michely Louise Allan: It's overpriced tat. Save your money.

Anne Cormack: Personally I will be trying my best to enjoy some festive cheer anywhere I can get it – even the Christmas market. A couple of gluhweins and everything seems better.

New homes

Up to 260 new homes are set to be built on a “heavily contaminated” former coal mine on the edge of Edinburgh. Proposals for the new residential development at Newcraighall have passed the first stage of the planning process.

Dale Cameron: Excellent news. From an environmental standpoint the decontamination of legacy industrial areas and prioritisation of brownfield sites for rerevelopment should always be considered before the development of virgin greenfield sites. I would prefer that the proposal contained greater provision for affordable or social housing, but underand that developers need to maintain their margins if they are to take on tricky post-industrial sites.

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Alan Burnett: Build on that land and houses will start sinking in about ten to 15 years’ time.

Paul Gillie: Have the council not learned from other housing built on contaminated land elsewhere, when fumes seeped into newly built homes? It would be better for the environment to plant trees on this land.

Gavin Jarvie: Building on contaminated sites is just wrong. At some point the plumbing will spring a leak and then the drinking water becomes contaminated too… And what if some unsuspecting person grows vegetables or fruit in their garden?

Paul Main: Will they think about the road network? Fort Kinnaird is at saturation.

Richard Cameron: Where will kids play on dirt bikes now?

Tim Shields: Why not build a complete campus for students – then they can annoy each other.

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