Cameron Rose, Councillor for Southside/Newington, Edinburgh - Conservative
I just spoke to the three photographers who are staking out the Edinburgh home of Sir Fred Goodwin. Sir Fred, who has been paid too much for failing to deliver the goods, is now being used as a distraction technique by the government and Gordon Brown.
Here is the obituary of Ronald Mackenzie of the Grange who died earlier this month.
On Monday 2nd March, genocide survivor Nicholas Hitimana will be present at a private showing of the new film Rwanda: Hope Rises, in the City Chambers in the Royal Mile.
Nicholas and his wife Elsie escaped dramatically from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide and made their way to Edinburgh. From 1995 to 2001 the family lived in Rankin Drive whilst Nicholas obtained a Masters and then a PhD in agriculture at Edinburgh University. Then they returned to Rwanda where they run a number of remarkable projects including Ikirezi which now employs around 800 widows, orphans and small farmers. Nicholas is currently in Edinburgh in conjunction with the Together Partnership, an Edinburgh based charity which partners Scottish businesses and individuals with Rwandan businesses and enterprises in the ongoing challenge of rebuilding Rwanda. The Charles Bilinda Memorial Trust is another local charity which has over the years since the genocide supported the Hitimanas and training and education in Rwanda. You can find here and here the books of Lesley Bilinda, who stayed in Edinburgh after the genocide and who was instrumental in bringing the Hitimanas to Edinburgh
You can find national coverage of the ongoing spat over Sir Fred Goodwin's pension in many sources. Here's the latest Sky News report. Sir Fred is a resident of Southside & Newington.
Janet de Vigne, the Edinburgh actress who plays the German tourist taken for a ride by Slumdog Millionaire's streetwise orphans, threw a party on Oscar night in the Grange. Details here.
A number of fires have been maliciously set in the area in the last four to six weeks in the Newington, Southside and Meadows areas. Here are more details.
The European HQ of MercyCorps, the disaster relief charity has recently moved to 40 Sciennes. If you are looking for a local (but international) charity for which you can raise funds, this could be for you.
Part of Marchhall Road is scheduled for a four day closure from Monday 23rd February.
Julian Bukits has just published a biography of Southside pioneer photographer James G Tunny (1820-1887). It can be purchased here for only £7.00. Julian is part of the Southside community.
Two of the City Car Club spaces on the north side of Sciennes Road (at the entrance to Sienna Gardens) are proposed for conversion usable parking spaces. The proposal is currently out for consultation. Comments should be sent to the Director of City Development, 4 East Market St, Edinburgh EH8 8BG by March 17th.
John Mould of Blackford Hill Grove is one of three motorists who are being sued by a driving examiner from Mid Calder for injuries he claims to have received in three collisions. Mr Mould commented: "Mr Carmichael seems to have been very unlucky. Three injury claims in a year and a half is a lot." More here.
The Braidwood Centre, run by a local management committee, is a very central location on the edge of Holyrood Park, which is available for very reasonable rates for functions and conferences. It is a council facility intended Dumbiedykes residents and the wider community.
There have been reports of the drains in the Priestfield Road area being unable to cope with heavy rain and even reports of sewage coming from some on recent occasions.
Scottish Water has agreed to put down an CCTV camera into the drains to undertake some checks. This is currently scheduled for Sunday 1st March. Scottish Water are responsible for the sewage systems and the Council are responsible for keeping the gullies and sivers cleaned.
Sales of the Big Issue in Scotland have fallen 30% to just over 22,000 in the last year according to this article.
The disruption by a few students of the use of the George Square Lecture Theatre has ended. Here is the University statement and here are the views of one student.
Local resident Sir Fred Goodwin takes a bit more flak here, this time on his security arrangements.
Here is George Pitcher's view of the Southside where he lives. George is former Chair of the Southside Association and local activist. I am told before that he was a councillor in Tyneside.
The Pelican crossing outside the Deaconess and Kirk o Field Church in the Pleasance is due to be changed into a Puffin crossing. The Puffin doesn't have the flashing amber lights and is designed to give pedestrians more time to cross. As well as giving more time for pedestrians it will slow down traffic - putting more exhaust fumes into the atmosphere. The work should take place over the next five weeks.
The Sick Kids is moving from its Sciennes home. And a campaign is planned to raise money to kit it out. A high-profile patron is also to be announced to front the campaign, with the aim of raising £15 million, which will be over and above the £50m of Scottish Government money set aside to build the new hospital at Little France. More details here.
Next week's meeting of the Grange and Prestonfield Community Council will include a discussion on the South Suburban Railway. The meeting is in the new Cameron House Community Centre in Prestonfield Avenue at 7pm on Wednesday 18th February.
Here is an interview with the new rector of Edinburgh University, Iain MacWhirter.
The administration has put £1.3m more into measures to be used to respond to the economic downturn. But again, there is a need to think out of the box. Take, for example, the planning system. The Planning Act 2006, much of which comes into force this year, does little to break the logjam and address the inefficiencies of the planning system. It was a missed opportunity - but there are things the Council can do.
Conservatives propose abolishing the requirement on developers to provide 25% of homes they build as 'affordable housing'. This operates as a 25% tax on housebuilding in developments of over 11 homes. We need affordable homes - but the bigger issue is that Edinburgh is short of homes altogether. And the building industry is almost at a standstill. This measure is needed to help kickstart the economy.
There is another reason why Edinburgh Council should abolish the 25% affordable housing requirement on builders. It has been a spectacular failure. Between 2001 and 2007 it produced only 296 homes. In addition, it had been expected to depress land prices. The evidence is that it pushed them up.
New thinking is needed in this area as well..
Edinburgh Council has a problem with its estate. By that we mean the buildings. We have some new schools and new council buildings. Let us take schools. Five Wave 3 schools have been identified in need of immediate replacement. Funds have been found to get the replacement of one (Portobello High) under way. But Edinburgh Council has just no cash to do anything other than basic maintenance of the other four in the foreseeable future. These include James Gillespies High School, Boroughmuir and St Crispins School (in Watertoun Road).
Budget post 4 gave some ways of getting new money into schools. These need to be explored - and there is a need to look at models other than the traditional 7 years groupings in primary and 6 years in secondary. There is an opportunity to provide more flexible education with a greater degree of choice which leads to a flexible use of buildings to help the accommodation crisis.
The administration have been at pains to point out their spending on education. But there is a problem here. We are operating an educational model that is hugely inefficient. For example, we have around 34,000 places in primary schools and only 25,000 pupils. That is an astonishing inefficiency costing us dear in overheads. Worse, the administration are planning to bring in a school rationalisation programme which will reduce over provision of places. But this will be time consuming, very costly and locally unpopular. It will take considerable political courage.
So what is the Conservative answer?
The administration have called this a radical budget. Alas, it is certainly not that. New thinking is needed here to safeguard the education of our children. More of the same is not an option in the very difficult situation the administration finds itself in.
This subject gave us the biggest load of contacts this budget. In the event, the administration did not accept the proposed 2% 'efficiency saving' on devolved school management (DSM). Indeed, last year's decision to reduce DSM budgetsby 1.5% was not wholly continued into this year with a token additional amount devoted to DSM.
Both Labour and Conservatives on the council proposed not to continue the 1.5% reduction imposed last year. Unlike Labour our restoration was because we believe in devolving responsibility (and accountability) and we believe head teachers can take on more responsibility in the education of our children. But we want the increased responsibility of head teachers to be matched a reduction in central control and oversight. A key problem in education in Scotland is that it is over managed and over inspected.
(There is a real question about the efficiency of public administration. The Scottish Government assumes Councils will make 2% efficiency savings - but 'allows them to retain the savings'. With rather breathtaking inefficiency this 'efficiency saving' is applied effectively across the board - with the assumption that all areas are equally inefficient when, of course, they are not. All the angst within parent councils and school managements could have been avoided if the decision not to accept the 2% 'efficiency saving' had been made earlier.
Yesterday was budget day for Edinburgh Council. This newsblog normally focuses on news events specific to Southside and Newington, occasionally straying beyond the geographical boundaries either for reasons of importance or for some political comment. Whilst the Council budget may be important, it is barely newsworthy for most - but for the record this is an occasion for political comment. So here are a few posts about the budget. First, here are a few facts and figures (along with a some political spin) from the administration.
Students and staff at Edinburgh University have elected Iain MacWhirter, journalist with the Herald as rector. He won 69% of the vote, defeating Lord George Foulkes. Here is the University press release.
This housebreaking took place apparently in the early hours of Saturday 7th Feb when £600 worth of stock and a donations box were stolen. It was at the premises of Cancer Research UK.
The Cameron House Community Centre at 34 Prestonfield Ave is to be officially opened on Monday 23rd February at 10:30am. Actually it is already open and up and running.
1. Southside Community Centre at 6:00pm
2. Cameron House Community Centre now at 34 Prestonfield Avenue at 6:45pm
3. Sciennes Primary School at 7:15pm
These take place on the second Wednesday of each month. Contact is welcome at other times.
The Council are holding a parking drop-in surgery this evening in Prestonfield Primary School.
Council transport officials are looking into whether a controlled parking zone is needed in Prestonfield (or part of Prestonfield), and this is part of the consultation process which is designed to shape any proposals which come forward. The process is lengthy, so, if proposals do come forward the implementation period is unlikely to be less that 2 years.
The time of the consultation in Prestonfield School tonight is 6:30 to 8:30pm
The February meetings of two local Community Councils are tomorrow:
This article tells of the work of Brigadier Andrew Mackay's tour of duty in Afghanistan. As you will see he resides locally.
The election of a new rector begins in earnest tomorrow with the hustings event at 8:30pm in the Teviot Debating Hall. On Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th the voting takes place. You can see the details of how to vote here. You can find more details about Iain Macwhirter here and Lord George Foulkes here.
John Gibson, columnist in the local paper, tells us of his invitation to the Mowat family's unveiling of a portrait of Alison. She and her husband Alastair have been married no less than 48 years. Congratulations.
The Cameron House Community Centre in Prestonfield Avenue is now open - as this article reports - but we still do not have a date for the official opening.
George Galloway has withdrawn from Edinburgh University's rectorial election leaving two candidates. The hustings are next Tuesday (10th Feb) in the Terviot Debating Hall on the eve of the election.
On 22nd May 1859, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh. A number of events are being held to celibrate this 150th anniversary and the Edinburgh City of Literature project is focusing on the widespread distribution of his book The Lost World, a Professor Challenger story bringing together dinosaurs and people in and adventure story. Here are several events in the ward area to recognise the anniversary along with a list of links with the area.
More details frm the One Book - One Edinburgh website.
At the planning committee last week the nursery at 89 Priestfield Road had temporary permission to operate made permanent and the total number of children they are permitted to accommodate was increased from 23 to 27. A condition remains capping the number of children in the garden at any one time. The application details can be found here.
This is the 1000th post on the Southside & Newington Newsblog.
Begun on 5th February, 2007 as a record of news items (and, occasionally opinion) I was never sure how long it would last. But now, after two years, it is 1000 not out. There is a steady stream of local traffic to the blog and, from time to time the print media pick up the news I have reported here. Of course, many of the posts refer to information from the print media - for which I am grateful. The defining characteristic for an entry here is that it should directly relate to the Southside & Newington ward.
Negotiations have confirmed that the Meadows Marathon on 15th March is definitely going ahead. This article gives some recent details and we reported earlier here and here the difficulties being faced by the organisers.
Plans to extend at the rear of the Festival Theatre to build new rehearsal facilities are curreently under way. The plan is to fund the development with the two parcels of land at either side of the rear of the theatre. That may lead to a few more student flats in the area. There is some way to go, though, in sealing the deal and getting planning permission. The full report, which was approved today can be found as Supplementary Agenda 1 at today's Culture and Leisure committee meeting which can be accessed here. More details can also be found here.
20/20 Productions based in the Pleasance are doing very well, thank you, as this article highlights. They have been nominated for the Communication in Business Scotland Awards.
The Empire Palace Theatre of Varieties in Nicolson Street went on fire in May 1911 when the illusionist The Great Lafayette was on stage. It is an extraordinary story (more fascinating detail here) and includes one of the most remarkable funerals Edinburgh has seen (we have referred here to another). This and other dramatic events in the history of Edinburgh are recalled in this article.
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