CONSERVATIVE councillors in Edinburgh weren't happy after a word-cloud generated from people's hopes for the future of the city revealed that many want to see the capital "Tory free".
The 2050 Edinburgh City Vision campaign asked city-dwellers to share what they hoped to see in the city's future, generating a real-time word-cloud under the phrase "My Edinburgh will be...".
Phrases that were popular enough to make it onto the board included "innovative", "affordable for all" and "inclusive" alongside the phrase "Tory free".
However the Conservative group on the council did not see the funny side of the offending wish, and wrote to the Lord Provost Frank Ross to say that it was "unacceptable".
Ross then spoke with Marketing Edinburgh, who oversee the campaign, and it was added to a list of banned words and phrases.
Tory group chairman Jason Rust told the Scotsman: “As a group we found it completely and utterly unacceptable. This campaign is meant to be about a positive future message and to a lot of people it would be invidious for any group to be barred from Edinburgh.
“They are talking about barring the group which currently has the largest number of seats on the council and had the largest number of first preference votes at last year’s elections. If that’s what their vision is about it seems very negative.”
However Leith Labour councillor Gordon Munro was not in favour of the ban.
He said: “If that has been part of the public response it should be in the word cloud. I thought 1984 was last century. “You have got to admire these citizens and their vision for the future. “And given Leith and Leith Walk wards are Tory-free, it’s a legitimate future scenario.”
A series of words and phrases were added to the banned list prior to the campaign starting. It was agreed that entries relating to specific parties should also now be on the list.
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