Unenlightened…

Since the Enlightenment Edinburgh has been one of Europe’s great cultural capitals, but today’s Establishment obviously favours a different development model. Anti-culturalism is now our new civic leitmotif.

Following the year in which there were more books sold in Britain than ever, our lord provost announces that since they are “downloadable” the proposal to extend the city’s Carnegie Library to make it fit for Edinburgh’s status as the world’s first Unesco City of Literature will be spiked, with common good land reserved for a “literary hub” being sold to accommodate a Virgin hotel. Presumably it’s only a matter of time before they consider selling off the library itself.

To compound this philistinism, the former Royal High School is being asset-stripped from the citizens and given “Inca terrace” extensions, creating yet more hotel bedrooms for “affluential explorers”. As your correspondent Phamie Gow has pointed out (Letters, 4 October) this will scupper fully funded proposals to return it to an educational use as St Mary’s Music School.

The latest attack on artistic creativity, as you report (“Scottish film studio bid thrown into turmoil after farmer wins legal case”, 3 October), will sacrifice 1,600 high-quality jobs in the abysmally serviced Scottish film industry to accommodate a single tenant farmer.

Perhaps the newly anti-cultural Scottish capital should adopt another civic motto. How about Goethe’s dictum “There is nothing more terrible to behold than ignorance in action”?

DAVID J BLACK Glanville Place, Edinburgh