Meadowbank Stadium - 'Once a jewel, it has become an eyesore'

once one of Edinburgh's crown jewels, Meadowbank Stadium has become arguably the city's biggest embarrassment - a crumbling eyesore and white elephant.

For years politicians have talked about restoring the place where great Scottish sporting heroes from Allan Wells to Sir Chris Hoy trained and competed.

But the talking went on for too long and the grand schemes came to nothing. In today's downturn, even the option of selling the land for housing and building a new stadium elsewhere is gone.

Does it matter? Many who never used the sports centre and would never dream of doing so might rather see it fall derelict than have their council taxes used to renovate or replace it. And, as we all know, public money is tighter than ever.

However, we should remember what has happened to Meadowbank next time we complain about childhood obesity or the trouble caused by young people with too little to do.

For sport can be a golden bullet for many of society's ills - we need only look to Australia to see how a nation can prosper if it embraces physical activities, as it did around the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

The irony is that this should have happened in Edinburgh after Meadowbank opened for the 1970 Commonwealth Games. But instead of building on that legacy, our biggest arena not designed just for football or rugby has been allowed to decline.

This is particularly sad just three years before the same Games will be held in a Glasgow which is building an infrastructure for the occasion that will provide a much-needed sporting legacy for the city.

With a modern stadium and perhaps a replacement cycling velodrome, Edinburgh might have benefited from the proximity of those games - as Strathclyde Park did when they were held here in 1986.

Most importantly, Edinburgh's citizens, and particularly its young people, would have gained, not just from using the facilities but by being inspired watching another generation of sporting heroes do their stuff.

Pound wise

anyone who has tried to use a Scottish bank note in a pub in Essex might be sceptical about the plan to give Edinburgh its very own currency.

But the scheme isn't as daft as it sounds - indeed towns in England as well as Hawick have used it to try to boost local trade.

It has never been attempted on a scale as big as would be required in the Capital, but that shouldn't put us off at least looking at it more closely.

After all, in for a penny, in for an Edinburgh pound!