Five things you need to know today

We love this sign above Old Fishmarket Close off the High Street and snapped it on one of our photography walks in the city centre. Do you have any photos that you would like to share with us? Do send them to us and we will use them in our Five things feature. Or you can send them to our Flickr photostream. The details are below in the right hand margin.

One of our festivals appears to be dying, according to The Herald , which leads with its claim that the EIFF has descended into farce, with the post of artistic director being advertised and no figures on ticket sales being available for the 2011 event.

Hearts FC have finally sacked Craig Thomson who was placed on the Sex Offenders Register earlier this year following his conviction on several charges involving the grooming of young girls using Facebook. The Daily Express has the story about the way that public pressure finally forced the football club to dismiss the player. There were also press reports last month about several sponsors who withdrew their support from the club.

Amid the news of the demise of The News of The World, and Thursday’s London premiere of the latest Harry Potter film, in a sort of bizarre twist The Telegraph has the full transcript of tapes of conversations between Charles Begley, a NOTW journalist in 2002, and senior executives at the paper. The gist of it is that the journalist claims he was asked by Rebekah Wade to parade through the office in his Harry Potter outfit, a mere three hours after 9/11. It is incredible reading, but apparently not fictitious.

Congratulations to George Thomson, an Edinburgh-based journalist who has written his first blog post for The Huffington Post UK edition on the subject of the SNP possibly wiping out the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He mentions the leaked memo from First Minister Alex Salmond on trying to persuade LibDem councillors to move across to the SNP. Now if the LibDem councillors in Edinburgh all defected where would that leave the tram project which the SNP have always claimed to be a bad idea?