I should have gone with my original instinct - this flew threw the committee. They have played the game well and won. No doubt corks will have been popped today.

It is, however, a decision comparable to the decision to build a multi-storey carpark next to Scotland St School.It almost feels like a decision from the 1960's or 70's when the city was eating itself and the authorities just couldn't see over the horizon and the damage it was doing to itself. In other words, the putative city of Design and Architecture is really nothing but the Emperor's New Clothes. It is dead. I don't often agree with Alan Dunlop - but he is right in this instance.

To have refused an earlier, smaller design on the basis that it was mis-scaled and to then consent a larger, bulkier scheme is confusing only to those that don't understand the shambolic way that planning committees operate. Some of the smallest and most insignificant schemes are refused on the basis of the height of a window here or, metal windows there. A door panel not-in-keeping or the wrong kind of roof material. Here we have, the most important built artefact in the city - arguably Scotland- with very serious and well-demonstrated concerns and there is a clamour to consent. The mind boggles.

It will certainly be interesting to see if Scottish Ministers are brave enough to call this in given the national and international issues at play and so this might not be the end of the story.

I should also have said that to not have had a hearing on such an important decision is astonishing. You should see the kind of things in the past that have had hearings and they are nothing in comparison to the weight and importance of this.

So no representations from HES (though they are not compelled to appear) or indeed the Art School. Some councillors were clear that they did not have enough information to make a decision and others thought there was plenty. This seems like a shaky foundation upon which to make a decision, but that folks is local democracy in action. This is how it is done.

If anything positive comes from this debacle, it is the focus, the drawing back of the curtain of the planning system and planning committee system that we have and the often inexplicable decisions that are made on our behalf.