Cameron Rose, Councillor for Southside/Newington, Edinburgh - Conservative
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| Minto Street - Photo G Laird |
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| Serial killer Peter Tobin |
William Preston, owner of the Ceilidh-Donia guest house in Marchhall Crescent was found not guilty of the serious assault charge libelled by a jury at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday. He was, however, convicted of a breach of the peace and threatening to kill police and medical staff on 24th August last year in the Royal Infirmary in the aftermath of the incident at the bed and breakfast. Reports of the trial over three days can be found here and here and here. Sentence has been deferred for background reports.
Here is the report from the second day of the trial of William Preston following an incident in which a US tourist received serious injury in a Marchhall B & B. The trial continues. Yesterday's report is here.
Waverley Park: The lengthy planning meeting this morning agreed that the Waverley Feuars, who own the park just off Queen's Crescent, can install play equipment. The report can be found here and background papers can be accessed from this page using the application number 10/10555/FUL.
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| Artist impression of Alfred Place scheme previously consented - but not built |
Bed and Breakfast owner William (Max) Preston is on trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court accused of smashing a glass over the head of a young US tourist. The alleged incident took place on 24th August last year in the Ceilidh-Donia B & B in Marchhall Crescent, just off Dalkeith Road. The release of al-Megrahi was the topic of conversation. More detail of ongoing the trial here.
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| Areas marked yellow are authorised poster sites |
For occasional visitors here is a selection of posts in the last 10 days.
On Thursday evening (22nd) the gate at the west (St Leonard's) end of the Innocent Railway Tunnel had its padlock forced allowing access past the barrier for motor vehicles.
Two weeks prior, this route was used by two thieves seen making off through the tunnel in full daylight with a stolen motorbike.
Using the Innocent in this way may be a becoming a repeat modus operandi for escaping thieves. Information or eye witness evidence will be welcomed either as a comment below or diect to the police - 0131 311 3131.
David Li Ferguson met Open winner Louis Oosthuizen last week at the St Andrews event. This week he has been headhunted to Loretto school's golf academy. More details in this short follow up article.
Roadworks for gas main replacements are due to begin in the Marchhall area on 9th August for a period of up to 8 weeks. The order gives the detail of where parking will be restricted:
"Marchhall Road, from a point outside No 10 Marchhall Road to a point outside No 14 Marchhall Road, Marchhall Crescent, from a point outside No 6 Marchhall Crescent to its junction with Priestfield Road, Priestfield Road, outside Nos 10 and 12 Priestfield Road and Kilmaurs Road, from its junction with Priestfield Road southwards for a distance of 30m or thereby."
David Li Ferguson (5) who stays with his parents near Cameron Toll, just happened to be around when Louis Oosthuizen, South African winner of the Open, was celebrating. David's father, who was covering the St Andrews Open for Chinese television, came across the winning celebration and Louis was only too pleased to spend time with young David and have their picture taken. More here.
On Friday Colin Gillies, a member of Braid Hills Golf Club won the Prestonfield Golf Club pro-am tournament.
Scottish boys champion at Dunbar in 1983, Gillies has now won twice this month. On July 3 he tied for victory at the Hayston pro-am with Jason McCreadie, so this was Colin’s first outright pro-am win of the year.
Yesterday Frances Hawarden was presented with NASA's 2010 Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal on behalf of her husband Tim Hawarden, a local scientist. He had been informed last autumn that he was to receive the award but, sadly, did not live long enough to receive it in person. The award was made at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory (UK ATC) on Blackford Hill.
The Commie Pool is to be used by the British Olympic team in their final preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The pool is currently being refurbished.
More details of the Olympic arrangements here.
An 86 year old man was conned out of thousands of pounds a week ago today when bogus callers persuaded him to buy almost worthless rugs. They even took him in a car to the bank.
Anyone who saw anything suspicious around 9:45am on Thursday 8th July should contact police. More details here.
A clutch of prominent and controversial climate scientists have alighted on Southside and Newington ward this week.
Local councillors in Southside and Newington hold surgeries on a rota basis - mainly at differing locations on Wednesdays. This does not generally apply in July - the recess month for the council. However we can still be contacted by telephone or by email.
Although I normally maintain a surgery in July I am unable to attend the one at Southside this evening. You can still contact me by telephone or by email.
Drunkenness and anti social behavior in and around Nicolson Square has reduced dramatically this summer. Two things are behind this improvement.
The first is the regular and frequent deployment of police officers and joint patrols (environmental wardens) in the area. Police are to be warmly congratulated on taking action which has been relatively effective. The current relative calm contrasts with the disturbances and the behaviour of a number of addicts and habitual drunks last summer. A detailed account can be found here.
Secondly an extraordinarily simple and practical measure has contributed to the success. Two of the three benches have been removed. Yes it is as simple as that. The garden in Nicolson Square is now less attractive for the troublemakers because there are no seats.
Of course the seats are no longer available for rather better behaved users but, for the moment, that is less important than ridding us of conduct which saps the morale of the community. Toleration of the drunken and foulmouthed behaviour is a threat to other users.
So hearty congratulations and thanks to both police, park and community safety staff.
Welcome though it is, the improvement comes at a cost. Patrols of police and other staff are resource intensive and there is a fear that the troublemakers will drift back in significant numbers if allowed. That is why it is now necessary to pursue a ban on the consumption of alcohol in public in this Square and other well defined problem location as has been done in Hunter Square nearby.
For occasional visitors here are ten posts this month.
Emma Morrison from Edinburgh's Craigmillar Park Golf Club won the overall net prize in the East of Scotland girls' summer meeting at Haddington Golf Club at the week-end. Details here.
Today police have been handing out leaflets in the Nicolson Street area in an appeal for more information about missing woman Elizabeth Brown. She is believed to have last been seen on a number 3 bus when she alighted near to Nicolson Square on Friday 28th May. About 11:55am she is believed to have crossed the street and used the Cashline machine opposite Nicolson Square. The latest in a series of police press releases is here and a report in the Evening News can be found here. Previous posts and another picture can be found here.
There have been 5 reviews or enquiries which have reported so far concerning the conduct of the Climatic Research Unit and sparked off by the release of 'Climategate' emails. Here is the roll call.
Mercy Corps which has its European HQ in Sciennes, is the subject of this report on how funds raised in Edinburgh following the Haiti earthquake have been spent.
The attempt to control the world temperature is an extraordinary mission. There is a battle being fought out between those who believe that it is imperative that we do so immediately, and those who see the IPCC's call to arms as a dodgy dossier. Since the arguments of the IPCC rest to a significant extent on the outputs of the CRU and their allies, the quality and veracity of those outputs matter.
Why does this matter to us in Edinburgh?
First, the Holyrood version of the Climate Change Act goes further than anywhere else in the world in setting targets of reduced emissions.
At this moment Edinburgh Council is piloting an emissions trading scheme required by the Act which will shortly require the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency to mandate organisations with an energy expenditure of in excess of £0.5m to enter a scheme to buy and sell carbon credits per tonne of estimated emissions. This will be bureaucratic, costly, and is in addition to an extensive range of other measures already being undertaken. Already parking controls, planning laws, building standards and a host of other areas of public policy are predicated on an assumption of catastrophic temperature change which has become the orthodoxy of public policy. There are, of course, often other good reasons for reducing emissions.
But is the science settled? Is there a consensus amongst scientists? Accusations of gate keeping, manipulating the evidence and misrepresenting the uncertainties in climate science are at the heart of the answers to these two questions.
Around 5:30pm last night a man was arrested in Drummond Street in connection with a murder in Blackburn in Lancashire on 22nd June. Here is the BBC report of the arrest and here is an earlier report from BBC Lancashire indicating the suspect had strong Edinburgh connections.
The picture is of the victim Saheel Ahmed
I'm going to devote several more posts to matters associated with the Russell review. This is because several of the key players are locally based and the review has been enabled by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In addition, the review is a milestone event in the climate change issue which has very considerable implications for public policy and affects every one of us - whether at the level of personal fears and behaviour - or issues such as parking, planning regulations, fuel supply and costs and taxes. If the issue does not interest you, fear not. This local newsblog will return to normal soon.
The report certainly does not give the Climatic Research Unit a free ride. There are criticisms. But there is also broad exoneration on the most of the featured allegations.
Close examination will come as the detail of the report is tested. But already significant weaknesses in the report are apparent. The clear tendency is to give CRU the benefit of the doubt. Indeed in many cases the report authors seem anxious to bend over backwards to do so. Perhaps this is not surprising as they interviewed CRU staff personally but relied only on written submissions from those who have made the charges.
But first, an example of where the report has cleared the air. Keith Briffa one of the CRU scientists, emailed this to a reviewer of a paper submitted for publication:
"Confidentially, I now need a hard and if required an extensive case for rejecting. . . "
The Review has now provided a detailed email trail which indicates that this was an innocent rather than ominous communication in a complicated trail of events. The email had led to all sorts of speculation on manipulation of the peer review system.
The email trail, not in the November release of emails, was produced to exonerate Briffa. Yet there seems to be an inability to produce emails in other cases of disputed indications of malpractice and the enquiry seems anxious to exonerate with alacrity. In some cases the Review appears to have made howling mistakes.
There is the notorious ‘delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4’ of 29th May 2008. AR4 is the 2007 IPCC report and the request relates to correspondence apparently below the radar of the IPCCprocess. The Russell review notes they ‘have seen no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made’. Yet the email is dated immediately after the submission of a Freedom of Information request for such correspondence.
It is also noteworthy that Phil Jones and his colleagues were never asked whether they actually deleted emails - despite him stating as much in an email. We only get a rather lame statement in paragraph 4.3.9:
"Emails are rarely definitive evidence of what actually occurred."
All in all my fears about the independence of the enquiry are still justified. Whilst there is much more substance here than in the parallel and risible Oxburgh Science Assessment Report it does little to give confidence to those who want clarity of the scientific basis for wide swathes of public policy.
For those wishing to view further critiques of the report, here is a short list.
The report by Sir Muir Russell into the 'Climategate' release of emails last November from Britain's influential Climatic Research Unit, has fascinating local links and implications.
First, a number of prominent climate scientists who feature in the emails now work for Edinburgh University. (Details in earlier posts here and here.)
Second, a controversial member of the enquiry is local ward resident Professor Geoffrey Boulton. From the start his presence as an enquiry member has been challenged on the grounds that he is not independent - inter alia having worked at the University of East Anglia for 18 years and having expressed effusive confidence in the 'highest levels of professional integrity' of climate scientists including those he was investigating. Details here. Examples of the calls for him to resign from the enquiry can be found here (from me) and here.
Thirdly, Edinburgh University has supplied another member of the enquiry team - Professor Peter Clarke who is Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy.
The report stretches to 160 pages - which is a little more serious than the 5 page report of the parallel Oxburgh enquiry which investigated the science of the CRU. You can find it here.
This blog will follow reaction to the report in subsequent posts and, doubtless, offer my reactions as I leaf my way through it.
For newcomers, this is a niche newsblog which focuses almost entirely on events and news associated with the Southside & Newington ward of Edinburgh where the author is a local politician. The area includes a significant chunk of Edinburgh south of the city centre including Southside, Sciennes, Newington, Blackford and Prestonfield. The area is home to organisations such as Edinburgh University, Prestonfield House Hotel, Nairns oatcakes factory and The Bike Station. You can see the boundaries here.
The blog makes no claims to be comprehensive - but it is regular with close to 2,000 posts in just over 3 years. It is intended primarily as a service for local residents.
The focus is local news - though some of the matters are of national importance - and the author is not immune from adding his opinion where appropriate.
Enjoy.
Local resident and honorary Professor at Edinburgh University Sir Michael Atiyah has been awarded the Grande Medaille of the Institut de France Academie des Sciences. More details here on this octogenarian local resident.
Here is a link to a police appeal for information on missing person Elizabeth (Betty) Brown who was last seen on CCTV on a bus in Nicolson Street on 29th May. It is thought she alighted at Nicolson Street near to Nicolson Square. Betty is from the Gorgie area and was reported missing on 1st June. Previous posts can be found here and here.
The Bike Station in Causewayside is looking for media/film students to help make a video on cycling in Edinburgh. It could be a good way of contributing to a degree. Previous posts about the Bike Station can be found here and here.
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