The Scotsman

This week Los Angeles is celebrating the new building it hopes and expects to become one of the great architectural sights of the world. The Disney Hall, built by Frank Gehry who designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, opened with typical Hollywood razzmatazz - a concert, followed by a candlelit gala dinner at $25,000 a ticket, attended by stars, celebrities and politicians.

Why was everyone so excited? Partly because the building itself is extraordinary. It is a flamboyant exercise in sculpted steel, with curved towers billowing out over the streets "like a silver galleon under sail", as one writer described it. But partly, too, because Los Angeles believes it will stand as an expression of the city's character, to become, in a place which is for the most part a sprawl of anonymous suburbs, as famous an icon as the Sydney Opera House or the Eiffel Tower.

We should remember the story of the Disney Hall as we enter the dour process that lies ahead of us in Scotland - weeks of recrimination, excuses, blame-shifting and name-calling, otherwise known as the Fraser Inquiry, which opens on Tuesday in Edinburgh.