Christmas tree goes up at The Mound

It took  six workers, a crane and the co-operation of the citizens of Bergen and Edinburgh to once again raise a Norwegian Christmas Tree on Edinburgh’s Mound today.

Carefully preparation of the tree, donated by Bergens’s Hordaland Community Council, allowed it to be smoothly hoisted into pride of place overlooking Princes Street.

The 20 metre tree weighs over three tonnes and will be decked with 2,500 low energy lights which will be officially illuminated  on Light Night, Thursday 24 November 2011.

This ”Frost and Fire Show” to light the tree will be part of the launch of the six-week City of Edinburgh Council Christmas celebrations, which end on Wednesday 4 January 2012.

It is the 26th year of this special bond of friendship between Norway and Scotland marking the assistance Scots provided during the dark days of the World War II.

Upon the fall of Norway in 1940, more than 7,000 exiles were based in Scotland as the Norwegian Brigade, fighting to free their country.  The help and support they received from the Scots has never been forgotten.

The Reporter waited for a while this morning to get the photographs and the video of the tree being hoisted into place which you can see below.And it went up at exactly one o’clock so the bonus is that you hear the one o’clock gun too. The workers had to prepare the base of the tree so that it fitted exactly into the steel pipe which will hold it in place over the next six weeks or so.

City Art Centre – Waves and Weaves

The City Art Centre is hosting two exhibitions over the Christmas and New Year period.

The Edinburgh Reporter spoke to tapestry artist, Fiona Hutchison, who has work which will be displayed in both shows.

“I’ve had a passion for the sea since I was 12,”‘ said Fiona. “The sea and everything associated with it, its folklore, its poetry and the voyages made over it, are the inspiration for my work. I was born in Newhaven and the harbour was the place I used to hang around. My father loved messing around with boats and built some dinghies. At home my mother did embroidery so both of them were ‘makers’. All this has fed into my work.”

Fiona has several large tapestries in the ‘That was then : this is NOW’ exhibition. Sixteen tapestry makers of STAR (Scottish Tapestry Artists Regrouped) are involved and the show includes work from the 1960s up to the present day. “We chose this title because we hope to show how our weaving has evolved over a long period,” Fiona explained. “Edinburgh is known as a centre of excellence for tapestry and we are all graduates of the former Tapestry Department of the Edinburgh College of Art which had a very open approach to the medium. A group show is a good idea because of the length of the tapestry making process.”

As well as exhibiting large scale works, the artists selected a common format to show samples of their work. In this part of the exhibition these little jewels are a good way to appreciate the dazzling invention and skill gathered here. Fiona’s pieces deconstruct tapestry. In one of them the wefts leap in and out of the warps lightly, like dancing swirls of froth.

 

In Fiona’s case the oldest of the larger works is “Fastnet 79″, a tapestry marking the yachting race which was hit by storms. There are references to the geography and meteorology woven into the work, as well as marks representing the yachts, which seem to indicate the tragic outcome of the race. The CAC acquired the piece when the Edinburgh College of Art graduates put on their degree show in the gallery. “This was a tremendous boost for me as a young graduate,” she said. Another tapestry, “The Wave” hails from her postgraduate period. This one is imposingly, extraordinarily wide, its focus a massive wave which hasn’t yet broken. The weaving reflects the breadth of the horizon and captures the power and menace of the sea. Its thick, knobbly yarns, the hairiness and roughness of the wefts and muted, tweedy colours of the piece seem very Scottish. A later work, “Tide Line”, has more intense colours. The reds, blues and greens evoke the shapes and masses of the harbour.

Fiona has also contributed to another exhibition on the top floor of the gallery. This show entitled “Reflection”, highlights artists and makers who have been supported by the Visual Arts Awards and Craft Maker Awards run by the City of Edinburgh Council. There are examples of painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, installation, film and new media as well as ceramics, glassmaking, jewellery and textiles from emerging and established artists of the city’s thriving art and craft sector.

“These awards are a great help for artists and craftworkers,” she commented. “The application process is fairly simple and the grants allow you the space and time to develop aspects of your work.”  The tapestry on show here, “Where Two Tides meet” shows her recent work which is concerned with the play of the light on the surface of the sea. In it lighter blues and whites imitate the shimmer of the sun combined with the movement of the water.

Both exhibitions are free and there’s also a full programme of events and workshops for adults and families, a great way to do something creative on dull winter days. The “That was then : this is NOW” exhibition runs from 12 November 2011 – 8 January 2012 and “Reflection-Contemporary visual Arts and Crafts In Edinburgh” is showing from 19 November 2011 – 12 February 2012.

Creative Scotland backs Edinburgh’s initiative to drive growth in the creative industries

Creative Scotland and The City of Edinburgh Council have this week announced new funding to support a strategy for developing the city’s creative enterprises.

The heart of the plan is the revival of Creative Edinburgh, which will be marked with a formal launch on 3 November. The organisation will help businesses work together, make the most of the city’s reputation and generate inward investment.

Creative Scotland is providing £120,000 which will complement investment from the Council and assistance already received from the European Union. The funding will support various initiatives in the Council’s People, Place and Pound strategy for creative industries.

Councillor Tom Buchanan, Economic Development Convener for The City of Edinburgh Council, welcomed the announcement:

‘We have long recognised the important contribution that the creative industries can, and do, make to the economy. I look forward to working with partner organisations on our strategy to grow the size, scope and international competitiveness of the creative industries base here in Edinburgh.’

Caroline Parkinson, Director of Creative Development at Creative Scotland, said: ‘This investment will support creative businesses to continue to develop, grow and innovate. Whether finding new workspaces, or creative hubs, Creative Edinburgh is well placed to establish a network to share experience, find new clients and generate business growth.’

As home to the world’s most famous arts festivals, Edinburgh has a unique offer in its creative and cultural industries sector but the sector remains one of the city’s least understood economic assets. Creative Scotland’s investment is aimed at strengthening the sector, driving growth and promoting Scotland’s global reputation for innovation.’

The work of Creative Edinburgh supports the Council’s People, Place and Pound strategy to support the creative industries in the city. Key areas for development include:

• Promoting and connecting creative businesses to each other and potential customers.
• Identifying creative spaces, including locations that can act as ‘incubators’ for new businesses.
• Providing business development support to help new creative start-ups get off the ground.

Overall, Scotland’s creative industries are growing at a faster rate than the average of the Scottish economy over last 10 years. The creative industries represent 5% of all registered businesses in Scotland and contribute £2.4 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) to the Scottish economy.

In Edinburgh alone, it is estimated that there are 4000 creative businesses and organisations, which provide jobs for 26,000 people.

 

Council to Vote on £1bn Privatisation plans next week

by Alyson Macdonald

On Thursday 27 October 2011 The City of Edinburgh Council will take a crucial vote to decide whether to privatise £1 billion worth of services. Waste and recycling, council tax collection, parks, building maintenance, cleaning, and school catering are among the services which could be awarded to the lowest bidder under a project known as the Alternative Business Models Programme.

 

It may come as a surprise to local residents, but the Lib-Dem/SNP administration have been investigating the option of putting services out to tender since 2009. Privatisation wasn’t in either party’s manifesto during the last local elections – the Lib-Dems even made a commitment to keep services in the public sector so that they could be democratically controlled – and the level of public consultation has been minimal. When campaign groups were set up to criticise the plans, councillors hastily commissioned MORI to conduct a poll, but they have refused to release the results, claiming that to do so would “prejudice [the council's] interests”.

 

The City of Edinburgh Council’s track record with private sector contractors has been particularly poor in recent years; they have presided over the corruption scandal surrounding statutory building notices, and invested large sums of public money in the disastrous trams project. A recent BBC investigation found that the councillors appointed to run the tram-building project didn’t have the appropriate knowledge and skills to manage contractors working on such a project. This time the problems have begun even before the contracts have been awarded: two companies tried to hide the fact that they’d previously been fined for price-fixing, while another two failed to disclose convictions arising from fatal accidents. Even though these companies have been caught out, they were allowed to continue negotiations to run public services.

 

The main concern raised by the campaign groups opposing privatisation is that it will make services less accountable to the public than if they were run by the council. At the moment, if you have a problem with any council services, you can take it up with your elected representatives, or use public pressure to encourage change, but it’s more difficult to use that pressure on a company, especially when they’ve signed a long-term contract. The contracts that the Council are negotiating now are likely to last for several years, and with local elections due to be held next spring, that means the contracts will outlast the current administration. Even if the politicians responsible are voted out in 2012, it we wouldn’t be able to get out of the deals they’d made without paying millions in cancellation fees.

 

The official reason for exploring private sector options is that it will save money, but in practice, for-profit companies rarely provide better value for money. Local authorities in England, where privatisation is more common, are learning this the hard way. In Somerset, the contractor running most of the council’s back-office functions is so inefficient that even the local Tory MP is campaigning to have the services brought back into the public sector. Liverpool Council awarded a contract for IT and customer services to BT in 2001 in the hope of reducing costs, but they’re being overcharged by around £10M per year, and, on top of that, they’ve run up six-figure bills investigating BT’s practises – only to discover that it would have been cheaper to run the services in-house. These aren’t isolated incidents: the Audit Commission estimates that 70% of partnerships with the private sector end in failure.

The odds are stacked against success for Edinburgh’s Alternative Business Models, which is why local campaign groups are putting pressure on councillors to vote against the proposals, and are calling on their neighbours to scrutinise what little information has been allowed into the public domain. In the absence of any official publicity from the council, residents’ groups across the city have been distributing flyers and organising public meetings so that local people have a chance to discuss the proposals – and their reactions have been overwhelmingly negative.

 

As a result of recent lobbying, senior council officials have now agreed to take part in a debate prior to the Alternative Business Models vote. The debate will be held in Edinburgh University’s Appleton Tower in Crichton Street at 7pm on Monday 24^th October, and all interested members of the public are welcome to attend.

 

With just over a week to go until the vote, it’s still anyone’s guess which way it will go. Labour and Green councillors have pledged to vote against giving contracts to any private companies, so it would only take a few SNP or Lib Dem councillors to vote against the administration for the ABM proposals to be thrown out. This has the potential to influence the next year’s council elections and will set the tone for the next administration. Despite the lack of media interest, it’s clearly the issue to watch in local politics.

Bio: Alyson Macdonald has been involved in the campaign against the privatisation of Edinburgh’s public services since she attended their initial public meeting in July. The campaign is run by a network of neighbourhood groups from across the city, and is not affiliated to any political party or other organisation, although some of the groups work alongside a similar campaign by UNISON City of Edinburgh branch.

 

Unison warn Edinburgh council over privatisation

Unison have launched a campaign against Edinburgh City Council’s privatisation plans.

Malcolm Chisholm MSP, Sheila Gilmore MP and Councillor Ricky Henderson were among those who turned out to lend support to the unions rally and leafleting event.

Vice Chair of the Edinburgh branch of Unison, Matthew Crighton, claimed that services such as street cleaning, refuse collection, park management, benefits, revenues, council tax payment and management of council properties could be privatised. Crighton said: -”This is the first step in our campaign against the outsourcing of large chunks of the council services. The council has been going through a process it calls alternative business models under which it enters into contracts with private companies to do big pieces of council work.

“We reckon it is going to be bad for the council bad for the councils finances and probably bad for the services that people receive.”

One of the major aims of the campaign is to make the people of Edinburgh aware of what is happening. Crighton said:- “Our main aim today is to tell people because the council has failed to tell the public that they are doing this. They will be taking a decision on this on the 27^th of October and most people in Edinburgh are not aware of this.”

A number of local community groups have appeared in recent months in opposition to the council’s plans. Nick Gardner is a founder member of one such group, Greater Leith Against the Cuts, who were supporting the Unison event. Gardner said: “The whole point is that is if you have [private] services on 7 or 12 year contracts ran as businesses then there is real issues on the costing of those.

Also whether your local councillor can intervene anymore if services are privatised. Currently if you are not happy you can contact your councillor who can act on your behalf. If this was no longer the case that would be a real concern.”

Unison is holding a public meeting on Monday October 24 2011 at  the Appleton Tower from 7pm. They also plan to protest outside the full City of Edinburgh Council meeting on Thursday October 27th.

Step up the housing ladder for armed forces

Ex-service personnel have been given a boost in their bid to find a new home by The City of Edinburgh Council.

Inverleith Park – Council Depot Not to be Sold

There was a triumph for the Save Inverleith Park Campaign this morning when the Policy and Strategy Committee agreed to a motion which ensured the land occupied by a Council depot at Inverleith Park would not now be sold off.

In what turned out to be at times a lively discussion, councillors debated amendments to a motion which overturned the ‘Council Depot at Inverleith’ Report before the committee which recommended no decision on the Inverleith depot sale meantime until the site could formally be declared as surplus.

Save Inverleith Park Campaign Convenor Tony Cook presented a deputation to the meeting.  He first highlighted that the council depot was not a separate part of the park, before he went on to outline the series of events which led to housing plans being drawn up and the proposal for selling off the depot land being formulated.  He asked the Council to retract the building plans, rezone the depot back to open space status and refocus on engaging with the community as to how the space could be used.

The motion put forward by the SNP/Liberal Democrat administration was unanimously approved subject only to the council undertaking to review the planning process about this area of the park. SNP Councillor Steve Cardownie vehemently stated :-”This is no fudge.  This land will not be sold off to the private sector.  This council is making the decision not to proceed with a potential sale.”

It was the outcome that the group had campaigned for.  Fiona Houston from the Friends of Inverleith Park said prior to the meeting that they were “hoping to have the council throw out this plan. We want them to retract and put the park back to its original historic boundaries and change the designation on the piece of land that they’re trying to develop.”

She said that the response to the campaign has been great.  “We’ve got so much support from the community. There are over 8,000 people who have signed a petition and everyone is universal in their condemnation of this crazy plan.”

Councillor Lesley Hinds who supported the protest before the meeting said:-”I am delighted that the Policy and Strategy Committee today agreed to stop the sale of the Parks Depot at Inverleith Park.Congratulations must go to the Save Inverleith Park group who campaigned very effectively to ensure the Lib Dem/SNP Council changed their minds on this sell off of public land. It goes to show that when local Councillors listen and work with their local community, changes can come about.”

Over 25 members of the Save Inverleith Park Campaign group gathered outside Edinburgh’s City Chambers this morning to demonstrate against the proposed Inverleith Park sell off before this morning’s Committee meeting.

The next meeting of the Policy and Strategy Committee meeting will be held on Tuesday 8 November 2011.

Meeting on Wednesday to discuss Council Plans

Councillor Cammy Day, the Labour representative for Forth Ward and Peter Hunter of Unison will discuss The City of Edinburgh Council Plans to sell off many of its services at a meeting in the Thistle Room at Meadowbank Sports Centre on Wednesday at 7p.m.

The meeting has been organised by worried East Edinburgh residents who are alarmed at the lack of consultation over the far reaching proposals.

“We approached our local councillor for more information because these are plans to run many of the council services for profit.However he was unable to answer our questions,” said one Willowbrae resident.  It`s important that local people should be consulted about these changes. We have invited the LibDem and SNP councillors who represent us to speak at the meeting and hope they will come to explain how they intend to spend our taxes.”

Anyone who would like to know more about these issues is invited to attend the meeting on Wednesday evening.

Makars’ Court unveils first of two new inscriptions

It has been described as Scotland’s literary answer to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, with the words of more than thirty of the country’s finest writers preserved in stone for posterity.  Now Makars’ Court, an evolving national literary monument in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town, has welcomed the first of two new members to its illustrious ranks.

The first new stone commemorating Scottish Poet Sir David Lyndsay was masked by the national flag until its unveiling by on 14 July by The Lord Lyon King of Arms, Mr W. David Sellar. He said:- “I will be delighted to remove the Saltire from the stone recognising the achievement of arguably my greatest predecessor in the Office of Lyon King of Arms.”

The inscription reads ‘Sir David Lyndsay, c.1486-1555‘, as well as bearing a coat of arms and the quote ‘Lat us haif the bukis necessare To commoun weill‘, which translates as ‘Let us have the books necessary To our common good‘.

Councillor Steve Cardownie, Deputy Leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, said:- “Makars’ Court has now become one of the highlights of the Old Town tourist trail, and the addition of these two new inscriptions will no doubt attract yet more visitors. Scotland – and not least its capital city – has produced an extraordinary number of accomplished writers and the Makars’ Court is an excellent way of paying tribute to them and celebrating their work.”

The new flagstone lies beside the Writers’ Museum in Lady Stairs Close.

The second of the new stones, commemorating Lachlan Mór MacMhuirich, will be unveiled this week on 22 July.

Development Management Sub-Committee meeting 6 July 2011

The Development Management Sub-Committee of The City of Edinburgh Council is meeting this Wednesday to discuss eleven applications, all of which, without exception, have been recommended for approval.

There are two applications for presentation:- a one and half storey extension at 14 Greenbank Park and the proposed mixed use development consisting of 16 flats and 420 square metres of office space on 64-84 Slateford Road. The committee continued this application from last month to examine the parking issues.

Other applications include the extension of an existing hotel on 3 Craigmillar Park, a public art project including railings, a statue and other signage on 7 Dell Road and the external refurbishment scheme at other properties on Dumbledykes Road, Holyrood Road, Viewcraig Street and Viewcraig Gardens.

The meeting will be at 10am in the City Chambers.

The agenda is shown below

Devsub 06.07.11 10am Agenda

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