No, the cinema isn’t the faintly scuzzy fleapit of old. Gone are the seminal double-bills on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. Since it has been owned by City Screen however it has lost its special role in the education of Scotland’s young cinema-goers. However while City Screen can be chastised for adopting a safer screening policy which doesn’t differentiate it from the multiplexes greatly, to say that they are going to destroy the cinema somehow is frankly ridiculous.

It is to be regretted that the architects of the refurbishment, Kerr Blyth Associates, and their client, City Screen were not more forceful in presenting their case, because their plans are fair. Kerr Blyth has pointed out that the current arrangement in the cinema, which is not the original, cuts across the orginal cornicing and fails to present the buildings beautiful interiors successfully. If there is one criticism to be made of City Screen is that they have not taken their plans to the community and shown them around. If they had, they would not be facing such an ill-founded campaign now.

Save The Cameo’s response has been shrill and high-profile about a development that the cinema’s owners deem neccesary. The managing director of City Screen, feels she is unable to put her case fairly in the face of such a vociferous and ill-founded campaign. She has wisely retreated and is looking again at her options. She has suggested she may sell the cinema, which is hopefully a threat. If she did however, it could go to a furniture shop owner or a supermarket chain or even a pub operator who could do whatever they wanted with it. Then the south Edinburgh busy bodies would have to watch DVDs like the rest of us.

PS What the hell is Sarah Boyack MSP doing involved in this? Instead of busying herself with the interior arrangements of a small cinema perhaps she could concentrate on something important such as the Rural Economy, given that she is Convenor of that committee at Holyrood.

I’ll just hear about another tourist-trap super-pub rather than anything of value. I guess it’ll be a change of pace from always hearing, “We went to some bar called…something sisters, brothers? I can’t remember.”

Frankensteins?? where?

Er, the Googlebot will see this - by definition on the record!