From Edinburgh in Scotland. . .

Thank you to all of you who read this blog

Honours list 2012: Local recipients

Alan Bundy

• Professor Alan Bundy. Professor of Automated Reasoning, University of Edinburgh. For services to Computing Science.   Grange.
• Professor Niall Lothian. Adjunct Professor, INSEAD. For services to Corporate and Civic Governance in Scotland.    Newington.
• Professor Stuart Haszeldine, FRSE. Professor of Geology, University of Edinburgh. For services to Climate Change Technologies.

These are the ones I have identified thus far.  Feel free to let me know of other local people.

And another:

• Gordon Alexander MacKinlay, President of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons.  For services to Paediatric Surgery (Sick Kids in Sciennes). (From Balerno)

Local charities benefit from 91-year-old

Tom Gilzean is a 91-year-old military veteran who raises money for charity by shaking a collecting can in the Royal Mile.

This year he has given £4,000 to the Prestonfield Neighbourhood Centre and £25,000 to the Sick kids Friends Foundation.

More details here.

£3m funding bid to improve Southside

A suggestion for East Crosscauseway?

The St Patrick Square and West Crosscauseway areas are up for a bit of renovation if a Council bid for Lottery funding is successful.

More details here.

Dick Place: average price FALLS to £1.5m

The BBC, Evening News and many other news sources are reporting that Dick Place is the most expensive street in Scotland with an average house sale price of £1.5m.  Edinburgh has 13 of the top 20 most expensive streets in Scotland.  The information comes from a 4 year average of properties sold.

But wait a minute.  Did this blog not report similar figures already this year?  Indeed here is the post from March and it provides interesting comparisons.  The average sale price for then for Dick Place was £1,628,000.  Now, nine months later, it is quoted as £1,506,000.  That is a fall of the 4 year average (over 9 months) of 6.27%.

Yet at the same time Dick Place has gone from third in the league table of Scotland's most expensive streets to top.  And Edinburgh has fallen from having 15 in the top 20 in March to 13 in the reports today.  So perhaps the headline should be. . .


Housing prices in Edinburgh falling.

You can find out who some of the residents are in other articles covering the story:

• Daily Record
• Evening News (not online at time of post - but the Kings and Becks are interviewed)
• Deadline News

Leeds, Norfolk, Teeside and Lincolnshire

These are the destinations for much of the domestic waste we recycle.

Edinburgh's recycling goes, according to this investigation, to:
Batteries: Garlaston, West Midlands
Glass: Leeds
Paper:  Norfolk
Plastics:  Teeside then Lincolnshire

Council policies are significantly directed by the EU driven landfill tax, and the Scottish Government's target of 50% of waste being recycled by 2013.

When you factor in the time and effort of separating everything at source (in our homes) it does beg a question or two about how efficient we are being.  

In our desire to reduce excess waste this all leaves some questions around the policies which we are following.  Views welcome.

Festive: bins and parking

Parking regulations are back to normal today - as are refuse collections.   See here for collection details of all types of bins and here for the parking arrangements.

Note that next week there is no relaxation of parking regulations on Monday 2nd January.

Happy Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone.  Here is a picture of carol singers in Nicolson Square earlier this evening.

They were from the nearby Methodist Church.

Holyrood Park closures

The park is closed to motor vehicle traffic on Boxing Day and 2nd January as well as Christmas Day and New Year's Day (it is usually closed on a Sunday)..

The reason: so children can try out their new bikes.

Closure times are between 8am and 4pm.  More details here.

Nicolson Street fast food turned down

Over-provision of fast food shops is the reasons cited by the Government Reporter in upholding the decision of planning officials earlier in the year, to turn down permission to create another cafe at 77 Nicolson Street.

Brief details here.

Crags Community Sports Centre

The Crags is up and running under new management. The building, just off St Leonard's Street, will be operating fully from the beginning of January but there have already been lets to community groups and the key partners working together are now making use of the premises.

There will be five trustees and the 'key partners are

• Boroughmuir Blaze Basketball Club
• basketballscotland
• Castle Rock Edinvar Housing Association

More details of the back story here.

Grange landlord fined

Landlord Yousef Mohammed has been fined £1000 for failing to have an HMO licence for a house he was renting out in the Grange.   Licences for Houses in Multiple Occupation are required for rented accommodation containing more than three separate people who are not related.

Details here on the STV Local website.

Inventor: from wi-fi to li-fi

An Edinburgh professor has been hailed for his team's work to provide a communication medium which transfers data by means of  LED light.  The system uses electronics to harness the variable light intensity in the bulbs to transmit data wirelessly.

See here for more details of the work of Professor Harald Haas who works in the Institute for Digital Communications, based in the Faraday Building at the King's Buildings.

Police seek Nicolson Street victim

A man has been arrested in connection with an Nicolson Street assault around 6am on Saturday last.  The problem the police have is in finding the victim.

Details here.  Earlier this week I reported this incident in the same vicinity earlier.

Christmas lunch

Know who these are? Click here

I confess I had a Christmas lunch last week courtesy of the Sheraton.  Streetwork had invited me to their Christmas lunch for the homeless.  It was served in their offices by staff from the homeless.

Here is a report.

3:45am Nicolson Street assault

A 25 year old man had his jaw broken in an incident in Nicolson Street early on Saturday morning (17th Dec).  It is thought he had intervened in an incident between two men and a security guard near to Scotmid.  A police spokesman is quoted:

In a totally unprovoked attack, this man received a serious facial injury.  We are appealing for anyone who witnessed this vicious assault or has any information to contact us.

Some more details here.

Royal Blind School

On Thursday I attended a wonderful performance of Alice in Wonderland at the Royal Blind School in Craigmillar Park.  It was a special performance by very special people - both young people and staff with a full house of parents relatives friends and local residents. Those with whom I spoke were rightly proud of the School and the atmosphere which enabled the high standard of performance to be achieved.

Founded in 1835, the royal Blind School provides specialist education, term-time residential care, therapies and support for youngsters up to 18.  As background, here are some of the previous posts about the Blind School.

Improving health of 'local people'

My efforts in the snow, Jan 2011

Almost £2m is being made available from a NHS related charity for projects which will improve the health of local people.  The money comes from donors and bequests made to hospitals and health care over many decades - and is now available to anyone who can propose a project which will improve the health of people local to the Lothians.  The charity is the Edinburgh and Lothians Health Foundation.

More details here.  Your application must be in by 31st January 2012.

Speaking of health, anyone care to join me for the Great Winter Run in Holyrood Park on 7th January?

Tourist tax illegal

The Scottish Government has no intention of giving Edinburgh powers to raise a tourist tax.  So said the Tourism minister Fergus Ewing in the Scottish Parliament today.  More details from this BBC report.

Background and previous post here.

Holyrood power blackout

Parts of the Holyrood Road area, as well as Broughton, St Andrews Square, Leith Walk and parts of the Old Town lost electricity for much of the afternoon today.  Supply was restored early evening.

More details here.

Stunning road casualty map

A map of road casualties shows locations and details of deaths in the ten years from 2000 to 2009 inclusive.

The interactive map can be found here.  It looks like two pedestrians and a cyclist have died in the ward in the last ten years.  See here.

Definitely worth a look.  

Bed tax - no thanks

The clue is in the word 'tax'!   A bed tax for Edinburgh hotels and guest houses is not a good idea.  It is better to knock down barriers for visitors coming to Edinburgh rather than put prices up. In any case there is the layer of bureaucracy involved in the collection of such a payment/tax. 

The policy, which has now been adopted in principle by Edinburgh Council, subject to further investigation, will affect the many bed and breakfast and hotel establishments in the Southside and Newington area particularly.

I thought comments of Steve Cardownie, the SNP deputy leader of the Council were particularly ill-judged.  He is quoted in this report as saying amongst other comments which will be hard to bear by many local businesses:

"The hotels make no contribution to festivals and events in this city."

Edinburgh struggles for accommodation at peak times and the wide range of accommodation available is a key part of the offer for visitors coming to this city.   Besides, this recent report gives just one example of a very practical contribution by one hotelier to keep the Princes Street Gardens Skating Rink alive.

Prominent amongst those pushing the proposal is another Steve, my fellow Southside & Newington councillor, Steve Burgess of the Greens, as this example of the coverage shows. 


The Evening News today suggests that imposing such a charge may be beyond the council's powers.

Squeezing The Grapes

Locals to The Grapes pub in South Clerk Street will know the reputation it has.

That reputation attracted the police who swooped at 1pm yesterday according to this article.  Not that they reported finding any crimes.

Less bovver with a hovver

I suspect we will hear a little more about the Council's decision earlier this week to reject proposals for a hovercraft service from Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh.  In the interests of transparency I was on the Planning Committee which took the decision by a narrow 6 votes to 5.

I was one of the five who voted to grant the planning application.  The opportunity to open up a new route with the Stagecoach company shouldering the investment risk (they had already invested significant effort to get to the venture before the planning committee) has now been passed up.

Who can say if the venture would have been a success in the long run, but the risk to Council funds was low and the potential of providing a valuable service which would save travel time for many and relieve the congestion of the Forth Bridge bottleneck was very attractive.

Certainly the site was not ideal (further west would have reduced distances to busy parts of the city) and provision of park and ride facilities would have helped, but for me at least, the opportunity to improve the city's transport links for travellers was a considerable prize which far outweighed any down sides.

Stagecoach have said they will not appeal.  I think the second and third bullet points at the head of their press release here sum up the key points rather well.  Another report here.

Council proposals

School Meals are included

There is a drop in session at Newington Library today to enable sight of proposals to deliver a chunk of building maintenance and services through a contract with a company.  The details can be seen and discussed between 10:00 and 12 noon.
The services include: 

• maintaining public buildings like community centres, libraries and schools
• janitorial and security services
• cleaning services
• providing school meals

The Council are set to take a decision on whether to sign the contract on 19th January.  More details on this page under the IFM section.

More lights to be switched on

The Mound

Prestonfield:  6pm today (9th Dec) at the War Memorial in Prestonfield Avenue
Marchmont/Sciennes: 4:30pm tomorrow (10th Dec) in Warrender Park Road outside Scotmid then at the German Speaking Church in Chalmers Crescent

Birlinn book blast on subsidies

Birlinn Ltd is a book publisher based in Newington Road.  Its managing director is Hugh Andrew.  Today he has an excellent article in the Scotsman raising important issues about subsidies.

Particularly, he railed against Amazon being paid £10m to locate in Scotland when local firms loose jobs and do not get such subsidy largesse.   Whilst all companies need to adapt to changing demands - and Amazon have a business model which is superbly efficient for customers who increasingly buy books online - he makes some excellent points about subsidies and the corrosive effect they have. Here below are a couple of  extracts but the full article is well worth a read.

It is this story that reveals the utter moral and economic bankruptcy at the heart of Scottish government. . . 

. . . Ultimately business flourishes not because of subsidy but profit, and it is the creation of a flourishing economic ecosystem which enables that profit to be generated. Every distortion, every subsidy represents not an enhancement of that ecosystem but its slow death. And to add insult to injury, it is indigenous business that will pay for its own destruction through a 5.6 per cent increase in business rates in the worst recession in our lifetimes.

Storm damage

An old picture from the Meadows

Well, the nurseries closed first and all Edinburgh Council schools closed at lunchtime.  Lothian Buses have scaled back services substantially, First Bus are withdrawing double deckers and Scotrail are operating a temporary timetable.   All libraries and community centres are closed.

And if you lose electricity, here are the emergency electricity numbers (Scottish Power is second on the list).

Camping, the Meadows and the Scotsman

There is an article in the Scotsman today grandly suggesting the Meadows might become a campsite during the Edinburgh Festival.

What happened was this.  A few months ago the Edinburgh Festivals Challenge - a online brainstorming of ideas to improve Edinburgh's festivals came up with 25 ideas.  One of them from Judy M of Edinburgh was the suggestion to use the Meadows as a campsite.  The idea took a bit of flak and Judy M agreed that the Meadows was not such a good idea though other sites could work.  Nonetheless, a panel of seven of the great and the good (see here) selected 5 of the ideas as worthy of a bit of further investigation as to whether they might contain something viable.

In today's Scotsman an inventive journalist has written the story up a bit, conjuring the prospect of  a kind of T in the Park in the Meadows.

It won't happen, though.  The Meadows is already busy enough in the summer.  The idea somewhere might have merit  in principle, but it won't happen in the Meadows.  The Council's events team are now doing all they can to scotch the possibility.

2500 posts - and more to come

This week has seen the 2500th post on this news blog.

For almost five years - from Monday 5th February 2007 - this blog has provided daily news and information, almost entirely local to the Southside and Newington area of Edinburgh.

Thank you to those many readers who follow it and especially those who have been kind enough to feed back to me its usefulness.
 

The blog also provides a handy archive of events in the area -  either via a Google search or the blog search field at the top left of every page.

Bristo culprits on CCTV?

Police believe these two males may be responsible

Police have released CCTV footage of two men (above) wanted in connection with a serious assault in the Bristo Square area which took place back in August.

The incident took place on 27th August at 2:30am when the 45 year-old male victim, walking from the underpass towards Bristo Square, was left with a fractured skull, cheekbone and jaw. 

Fuller details can be found on the police press release here and in the BBC report here.

Christmas lights switch on

There are three ceremonies switching on Christmas tree lights in the ward this week.

First in St Patrick Square at 6pm this evening followed by refreshments in the Southside Community Centre.  Edinburgh Maker Ron Butlin is pressing the switch.

Then Friday in Prestonfield, at the Prestonfield War Memorial in pPrestonfield Avenue at 6:30pm

And finally the Christmas tree in Marchmont will be lit outside the Co-op in Warrender Park Road at 4:30pm on Saturday.  There will be a choir and refreshments afterwards in the nearby German Speaking Church.

Meadows assaults: Man arrested

A male has been arrested and charged in connection with a number of sexual assaults within the Meadows area.  He will appear at Edinburgh Sheriff Court tomorrow (6th December).  I understand enquiries are still ongoing. 

Here is my post regarding an assault which took place near the tennis courts on 22nd November. Police have not indicated if the charges relate to this incident.

Update 8.12.11:  The Evening News has an article (not yet online) on the appearance in court of a 41 year-old-man charged with assaults in the Meadows (November 15th) and Causewayside (Dec 1st).

Pandamania

Add caption

The countdown until giant pandas Tian Tian and Yang Guang arrive in Edinburgh is almost over with just hours to go.

Full details here.

And for those of you looking for the Southside & Newington connection, there is none.  I just thought you might want to visit them before long. 

Edinburgh Makar lights up

Ron Butlin, the Southside based Edinburgh Makar, will switch on the Christmas Tree lights at St Patrick Square on Tuesday (6th).   There will be a short carol service at 6pm followed by light refreshments in the Southside Community Centre in Nicolson Street.  All welcome to both.

The Makar is Edinburgh's equivilent of the Poet-Laureate

MOD comes to Nicolson Street to consult

Wide and varied are the happenings in the Southside and Newington ward.

This month you can learn about (and give your views) to the Ministry of Defence on its (nuclear) submarine dismantling project.    The venue is Surgeon's Hall in Nicolson Street beginning on Friday 9th December. 

For dates, times and more details see here.