`Rome fell, Venice fell, Hindhead's time shall come.' Bernard Shaw's forecast in Heartbreak House (1919) casts back to John Ruskin's `less-pitied destruction' of the Empire and to Kipling's`Recessional'. They imagined not just the decline, but the partition of Britain, going the way of Venice the Serene, or the empires of Sweden and Lithuania. Was 2008-9 not, objectively, both inevitable and a relief? Like that moment in the life of the very old where the brave attempt at coping, `understanding the world', ends, and the care home doors fold behind?

The latest news on the Caltongate scheme throws up some serious questions for the future of the council owned East Market Street and the huge gap site in the Canongate in todays Scotsman.
SOOT have been questioning the council on the return of publicly owned buildings since Mountgrange went into adminnistration  in 2009 and calling for the return to use of Canongate Venture (which had provided much needed affordable workshop space until the deal was struck to sell it to Mountgrange for demolition in 2005) and the council flats on the Canongate.
Perhaps now the Council will finally consider returning the common good land and other publicly owned  buildings to productive use for the benefit of the community and look at opportunities for a more sustainable and responsive regeneration of this important area in the World Heritage Site?