This makes me chuckle.
Edinburgh has a hugely successful international festival but we can't find 5.2% or £1290 for our lowest paid.
That's the headline I read but it's not written. Those figures are what I read, but I haven't checked with Unite if they are correct.
The festival might be worth £1bn+ to the local economy and businesses. It might be worth £60m to Edinburgh university but it is not trickling down. We still have workers using foodbanks and on receipt of benefits because they don't earn enough. Most salaries are just short shift wages at minimum wage for seasonal workers in the gig economy.
The trickle is a drip. The drip/gig economy is not an economical model that builds anything. It's just a fast grab. It the worst of us trying to adopt an out dated model of working for nothing and just be glad you get to be inside the ropes. It's like the volunteers at tennis and golf events.
But back to the impending strike, or should I say the ACAS avoiding conflict.
Some business leaders have taken up the pen in their fight for resolution. Many businesses rely on these summer months for a large portion of their annual income, screams the letter according to the Scotsman.
I think it's almost a balanced report from David Bol the deputy political editor but what is missing is the wider politics of poverty. I remember like yesterday a similar report on the nurses and other workers travelling across town who can't get a bus to their work because the festival is on and buses are full of can't move.
How can we generate so much for businesses and yet we can't generate an extra 5 2% for the lowest paid or find a way to put extra free transport on for residents.
This is where I think the detailed analysis needs to go. The businesses are not always part of the circus that blazes for 4-6 weeks, they are part of the city, so they are here to both set up then tidy up and put up with what's required to rectify the damage after. Like the workers involved in erecting and then dismantling scaffolding cleaning our streets, restoring our parks, applying the grass seed after the circus goes.
I walk all over the place in Edinburgh, the Lothians and Fife when I'm not wandering the Camino in France and Spain. I see the joy of tourists walking and exploring the city with the same excitement as Pellegrinas and Pellegrinos on the Camino. I see first hand how many tourists are good and awful. It really is cultural who throws things away and who puts a cigarette butt in their pocket.
The Camino is like any circus rolling through town and so many "Camino" businesses in Spain have 7-9 month seasons with 4 fully sold out while others can be low or high occupancy. They have to respond to look after the locals in their village who will be there all year around and then the others who are itinerant.
Cardenuela Rio Pico, just outside of Burgos is a perfect example. I've stayed there about 15 times. I'm made to feel like a local by Myriam the owner, a long lost Scottish cousin. I first met the son when he was 7 and I think he's 21 now.
I love this place because the people and the food are superb. The bed and showers perfect and the size matches the setting. Everything is on a different planet from Burgos and I'm always writing and evolving my theory of small business when I'm there. It is the epitome of micro economics and the old fashioned trickle down working.
So then I ask why does trickle down work here. A business has been built to satisfy a growing demand for food and board on the Camino. The Camino is a festival like Edinburgh that has grown and grown. It now has growing pains too.
Often people argue the Camino has got too big, like Edinburgh, but it's not that it's too big, it's bulging in all the wrong places. Like the Scottish parliament building it can split the audience about where it's bulging.
I'm away out for a walk but will continue on my return.
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