The patient is in critical condition but Edinburgh Council is calling in a butcher, not a surgeon

I kid you not, City of Edinburgh Council is actively seeking to end the Self-Catering sector and pass it wrapped up in a bow to corporate investors & hotel groups developing monolithic 'serviced apartment' blocks in former retail centres now lying dormant.

Self-catering, such as it is in this much-altered future, will become another feature of the hotel offering whilst wiping out homegrown operators and seeing the flight of any profits to disinterested shareholders in far-off lands. The worst part is, this is being done, apparently for the best of intentions, but tragically with the worst possible of outcomes.

They, our city's councillors, truly have no idea whatsoever of the need, yet are already actively shutting down S/C operators that have been trading since before the legislation came into force. Everything that the politicians say they are seeking to achieve (affordable housing, reduced pressure on rents - basically all the ills of society for which we are apparently the source) will be the polar opposite and when it finally dawns on them that they are causing chaos with Scotland's tourist sector and begin, as they surely will, to reverse the mistakes they're making, it could be that the course corrections will be too little, way too late.

I've seen this too many times before. Politicians come and go with ill-informed, often well-intentioned actions, yet leave having made the situation so much worse than when they started. A doctor would never perform surgery until they knew the dangers of their actions. City of Edinburgh Council is performing open heart surgery on this country's Tourism economy with no clue about the patient. It's more slaughterhouse than critical care and the blood's already flowing.