Ratho Fire

This fire at Craigpark Quarry in Ratho, in a pile of tyres, started last Sunday morning and has caused considerable concern and inconvenience to the residents of the village. Being immediately to the west of the village, with a westerly breeze and dry conditions for the last few days hasn't helped either, with sooty deposits left on everything; cars, gardens, clothes, pets and children. Just managed to get my hands on the basic facts yesterday and slightly disappointed at the lack of proactive communications from the formal agencies. It would seem that there is no threat to health, which is reassuring but I suspect local people will demand a few answers about site storage and security at the quarry so that we can be confident of no repetition. Answers will be sought.

Bad Week for Grannies and Gideons

It takes a certain unusual mix of skills for a politician to be able to unite all the varied wings of the British media in condemnation. George Osborne managed it this week. There's so much time and energy obviously expended in preparing the spin and hype surrounding the Budget these days that you really don't expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to f**k it up on the day. Didn't manage to catch much of the news coverage on budget day itself but the newspaper headlines the following morning said it all. Mugging Grannies to pay for lower taxes for millionaires probably wasn't what Gideon was trying to achieve but it does give the rest of us an intriguing insight into the priorities of the ConDem Cabinet.

Rest of the week was pretty busy and is summarised as follows - 

Sunday - Balerno Church followed by opening of refurbished St Joseph's Centre, joyous occasion. Tynecastle, another derby victory, also a joyous occasion.

Monday - City Chambers, Surgeries, Ratho Community Council, fractious.

Tuesday - Finance and Resources Committee. Not exactly riveting.

Wednesday - Hearts progress to semi finals of the Scottish Cup. Pleasing.

Thursday - Door knocking in Balerno followed by Neighbourhood Partnership Funding Panel meeting. Business like.

Friday - City Chambers followed by Drumbrae Gala fundraising quiz. Clueless.

Saturday - Juniper Green Farmers Market followed by door knocking in Currie. Productive.

Leaflets, St Joseph and Righteous Indignation

Balerno Parish Church

Excellent leafleting session in Ratho this morning. Thanks to the local Labour team and good to see former local Labour Cllr John Longstaff in fine form. A bite of lunch in the Bridge Inn brought proceedings to a satisfactory conclusion.  

Was delighted to accept an invitation to the opening of the refurbished St Joseph's Centre tomorrow, part of Balerno Parish Church's community facilities. The opening ceremony will be preceded by a service in the church, to be addressed by the Rt Rev David Arnott, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (longest job title in the world !). Okay, not my usual Sunday morning routine, but looking forward to it. This will be followed by a hasty dash to Tynecastle for the third (and possibly last?) derby of the season. Ridiculous kick off time of 1200 but that's what happens when you sell your soul to TV.

An amusing postscript to the Pentland Hills parking charges debacle covered below. At Leader's question time during full Council on Thursday, SNP Group Leader Steve Cardownie launched into a tirade condemning the incompetence of the PHRP and demanding an investigation. His righteous indignation was brought to a shuddering halt when reminded that the chair of the PHRP is none other than his SNP colleague Cllr Colin Keir, now an MSP.

Council Debt - Easy Answers

The practice of submitting questions to Council meetings to be answered by Convenors has been around for a while. We introduced it in 2003, I think. Normally opposition members seek to elicit information that they hope will be useful in debate or is pertinent to a local issue. When an Administration Councillor asks a question it can be assumed that it has been "planted" to give the Convenor the opportunity to showboat or prove a point. Therefore I was intrigued to see a question submitted to today's Council meeting from Cllr Tim McKay, LibDem colleague of Phil Wheeler, Convenor of Finance, about Council debt. the question and answer are as follows -
 

QUESTION

What assurance can the Convener give that the Council’s current level of

indebtedness is reasonable and manageable?

ANSWER

Council sets its capital expenditure plans in accordance with the prudential 

code, a framework introduced by CIPFA in 2004-05. The objectives of the 

prudential code are to provide a framework for local authority capital finance 

that will ensure for individual local authorities that:

1. capital expenditure plans are affordable;
2. all external borrowing and other long-term liabilities are within prudent and 
   sustainable levels; and
3. treasury management decisions are taken in accordance with professional
   good practice.

Oh well, that's okay then. £1.5bn of debt, which costs £110m / year (every year) to service, and growing by the day. That's £3000 of debt for every man, woman and child in Edinburgh, the highest in Scotland, dealt with by 3 bullet points. No figures (perhaps for obvious reasons) no analysis or projections, just "Trust us, we know what we're doing".

Why am I not reassured ?

VAT Blunder kills car park charges

Oh dear ! A "clerical oversight" (not to mention PR disaster) omitting VAT from the calculations looks to have killed off the initiative to charge for parking in the car parks around the Pentland Hills Regional Park (PHRP). Red faces all round methinks and comprehensively covered here by the Evening News.

Okay, there were some mixed views locally on the charges, which were, after all, to cover for cuts elsewhere in the PHRP budget, but I think this will be welcomed by most who were worried about parking displacement into access roads and of course the added expense to a walk in the hills. Is it any wonder the Council gets a bad reputation ?

Manifesto Launch

After many months of consultation and development and many hundreds of comments from the public and various organisations we finally launched the Edinburgh Labour Manifesto for the local elections on 3rd May this morning. The launch event went very well, ably chaired by Lesley Hinds and a couple of fine contributions from Labour Group Leader Andrew Burns and Scottish Labour Leader Johann Lamont. Well attended too by the media and associated photographers (the photo outside with us all holding manifestos in the air felt a bit naff, but hey, these guys know what they're doing. Don't they ?) Well ahead of the other parties, once again we're leading from the front and hopefully the manifesto, which can be read on this link, will create much debate and examination of the ideas that we've brought forward, in the final few weeks of the campaign.

Tattie Day, Farmers Market and Scottish Cup frustration

Balerno's Tattie Day was going like a fair and the Farmers Market was the busiest I've seen it for a while. Very encouraging. The Scout Hall was bursting at the seams with stalls selling seed potatoes and offering advice on planting, maintenance and harvesting as well as a table where potato art was testing the boundaries of cultural innovation. 

One or two additional stalls at the market, one selling the tastiest burgers I've had in a long time. Washed it down with a half pint in the Grey Horse and a chat with Paul. Also bumped into one of the Conservative candidates, Sheila Low, who was accompanied by a rather ingenious campaigning vehicle, her dog, which was adorned with a coat bearing the legend "Aim High Vote Low". Very good. Obviously, I want to emulate this idea. Does anyone know how to make a "Vote Labour" coat for a budgie ? 

Then jumped on a 44 down to Tynecastle to endure a frustrating Scottish Cup Quarter final tie against St Mirren. Entertaining for the TV viewers perhaps but a 2-2 draw means a midweek replay in Paisley when really we should have booked our trip to Hampden yesterday.

Gorgie / Sighthill Campaign Launch

One of the more unusual campaign launches last night but you can't say Donald Wilson and Eric Milligan don't do things in style. They launched their Gorgie / Sighthill election campaign at the Longstone Prison Officers Club and invited the Diamonigue Twirlers majorette troupe to kick off the proceedings. From tots to teenagers (all from the local area) they strutted their stuff and set a fun tone for the rest of the proceedings. Eric even had Sister Aildridge along to endorse the campaign. With a start like this, they can't lose !

Right, off to the Balerno Tattie Day and Farmers Market, then on to Tynecastle for the Scottish Cup quarter final tie. Serious campaigning will resume tomorrow....

Public Entertainment Licences

As expected, the impending changes to PELs has created a lot of email traffic and media debate. Still not clear what the intention of the changes actually are but the Council is obliged to comply with legislation handed on by the Scottish Government. This seems to have led to the ridiculous situation where a Scottish Council was going to licence (with a charge) for a children's Easter egg hunt !!

This mornings Regulatory Committee passed the following motion -

" That the Committee :-

1.   Adopt option a) as set out in paragraphs 2.6 to 2.8 of the report with the proviso that the minimum fee detailed in paragraph 2.7 is to be nil.

2.    Determine subject to statutory consultation to vary the City of Edinburgh Public Entertainment Resolution 1994 to exclude from the scope of the Resolution, the following places where members of the public are admitted or may use any facilities for the purposes of entertainment or recreation without payment of money or moneys’ worth and the capacity does not exceed 200 persons:-

Premises used for functions held by charitable, religious, youth, sporting, community, political or similar organisations;

Premises used for exhibitions of art work;

Premises in which live music is being provided incidentally to the main purpose or use of the premises where that main purpose or use is not as a place of public entertainment; and,

Premises used for oral recitals including poetry reading and story telling.

3.   Direct that the statutory procedure for making a variation to the City of Edinburgh Public Entertainment Resolution 1994 be commenced immediately with a view to the Committee considering any representations made about the proposed variation at its meeting on  20 April 2012.

4.   Note that in the interim period the Council will prioritise licensing of those free to enter events which are large scale.

5.   Discharge the outstanding remit relating to the impact of changes to legislation governing public entertainment licensing following the meeting on 27 January 2012 "

Which, if I've understood it properly, means we will conduct a consultation exercise on the proposals above (other categories may emerge through the consultation) in order to avoid the effects of the legislation that is about to be enacted. Yes.... I think I've got that right. Confused ??? You will be. The bureaucratic maze could be endless.

Hare and Heads

As it turned out I managed to make a bit of progress on the issues outlined below at the Neighbourhood Partnership. Was particularly pleased to get agreement that we should argue for an allocation for the Pentlands NP and that local communities should decide what priorities it should be used for. Reported this to Balerno Community Council on Thursday and it was generally well received. The BCC meeting was very busy as usual and didn't finish until 10pm.

Just returned from a couple of nights in Strathblane, just north of Glasgow in the Kirkhouse Inn. Lovely little village, very quiet and a good base for the Trossachs but also only 20mins or so drive into central Glasgow, so managed to visit the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum for the first time. Beautiful building and impressive exhibitions. The Floating Heads, above, particularly caught my eye and myself and my companion, below, managed to grab a refreshing cuppa. Then we went to the Peoples Palace and Winter Garden. Glasgow's social history on display, similar to the excellent Peoples Story in Edinburgh. Winter Gardens tearoom obviously a popular place to take young children on a Saturday afternoon.

I confidently predict this week's big issue will be the new licensing regime being introduced for public entertainment arts events. More later.....

Setting the Agenda

Meeting of the Pentlands Neighbourhood Partnership tonight at Currie High School. Normally a relatively productive meeting with no hidden agendas or axes to be ground but I have to admit to being a bit disappointed that a couple of items that I had asked to be on the agenda have failed to appear. After the tragic death of a cyclist recently on the Lanark Road I had suggested that this should be discussed by the NP with a view to reviewing road safety measures on the Lanark Road, if necessary. I also asked for the "10 acre site" at Wester Hailes to be on the agenda so that we can learn what progress has been made regarding development of the site after Prospect Housing Association reluctantly decided to withdraw from the project at the end of last year. I don't want to be a pain or throw my toys out of the pram but these are important issues and if Neighbourhood Partnerships want to be seen as relevant they need to discuss topical local issues not just subject members to death by power point every 6-8 weeks. There's also the small matter of the additional £3m to be spent on "road repairs" throughout the city. There's still no information on how this is to be allocated and I would have thought that NPs would want to have an input. Or am I just getting grumpy in my old age ????......

Full House ?

Last night saw visits to Wester Hailes and Juniper Green Community Councils, two adjacent, but completely different communities. Strangely, last night they were discussing a common issue, housing. Wester Hailes is coming to terms with the withdrawl of Prospect Housing Association from a development at the "10 acre site" partly due to reduced housing grant money available from the Scottish Government. It means that much needed affordable housing could be denied to an area that badly needs it. There is some talk of alternative developers being interested but possibly with an inferior design. We need more information on this and it will be pursued.

Then up to  Juniper Green for a brief presentation by Taylor Wimpey on why they think the Green Belt should be breached to build houses on the field at Muir Wood Road. I wonder if they've thought about building at Wester Hailes ...? Probably not.

Talking of which, some new council housing has been built in the south of the city, unfortunately not enough and certainly not enough to make an impact on the 3000 homes that have been lost in the last 5 years.

Labour's Cammy Day explains in more detail on the rather excellent Edinburgh Labour website.

Ratho

Surgeries were relatively quiet last night and managed to get to Ratho Community Council which covered a wide variety of issues including the soon to be ex 48 bus service. Some discussion about possible timetable problems but generally a sense of resignation. Its frustrating when people feel unable to influence the decisions that affect them most and sure enough the Council report outlining the changes to this and other services was duly noted by the Council's Transport Committee today although Lesley Hinds the Labour spokesperson did manage to get cross party agreement for making representations to the Transport minister. Was also reminded last night to check the Ratho Community Counsil website for news of what's happening locally and its really good.

Spent most of tonight phoning complete strangers asking them which way they will vote on 3rd May. Really, its no way for a grown man to spend his time ......

Doorknocking in Currie (2)

Another productive session in Currie today, more on the eastern side of Currie this time. Many thanks to the activists who turned up to help and local people who took time to talk on the doorstep. Conditions much better as can be seen from the photo of Nether Currie Place. More chance of sun stroke today than frost bite. The huskies have had to take early retirement.

Doorknocking in Currie

Productive door knocking session in Currie this morning. Okay, conditions weren't ideal as can been seen from the photo, but my campaign team aren't the type of people to be put off by a snowflake or two. And, you know, when you tell people in the city centre that the weather can be a bit more severe in the Pentland Hills ward they often scoff. Can you believe that ??? Out again tomorrow after the huskies have had a good rest.

WEGARAH

Currie Community Council last night, mostly dominated by ongoing planning issues. Tonight is the latest meeting of  WEGARAH, the West Edinburgh Group Against Racial Attack and Harassment, a joint community / multi-agency working group looking at issues around racist incidents in the area and how our colleagues in the Police, Council etc deal with reports and offer support to victims. Usually a pretty constructive forum although one is always left wrestling with the dilemma of - do more incidents reported to the police indicate an increasing problem or more confidence in the authorities to deal effectively with reports ? And vice-versa, less reports = less of a problem or reduced faith by the community, so fewer incidents reported ? Personally, I prefer the former. 

Will do my best not to let my mind wander to Perth where Hearts still have a slim chance of maintaining an interest in the next stage of the Scottish Cup.

Horny handed son of the soil - Not

Balerno Farmers Market yesterday. Managed to pop into the Grey Horse for a chat with Paul on a couple of local issues. Some good ideas that need to be explored further. Also collected the two apple trees that I had ordered in December. They're dwarf varieties which means they'll hopefully be suitable for our rather small garden. Following the advice that they should be planted as soon as possible I set about the task with the enthusiasm of an amateur that didn't have a clue what he was doing and obviously had no idea what a back breaking task lay ahead ! Anyway, they're in the ground now and will be carefully watched over the next few weeks and months for signs of growth. Anyone know any good recipes for home made cider ?

Should finally get round to some door knocking in Currie today. 

Post Budget Day Blues

Its always the same. You build yourself up for the big event, put in the time, the energy, late hours revising and re-revising your plans, poring over endless sheets of figures. Then the day arrives, you've got butterflies in your stomach, sweaty palms. The sense of anticipation builds, the nerves jangle. How will it go ? How will I perform ? Will I convince others of the merits of my argument ? And what happens ? Yep, you've guessed it....... The Great Budget Debate (pantomime) goes exactly as predicted with votes cast along party lines. Political theatre ? Certainly. Great drama ? Not really. You had to be in Glasgow for that, apparently. Oh well, that's the budget over for another year although we were happy with our proposals, as referenced in other posts, and how they linked to the Manifesto so expect to see some of the ideas resurfacing over the next few weeks.

Edinburgh East Labour Party Quiz tonight. I'm taking my Dunce's cap just to be on the safe side.

Budget Plans Published

Council budget for the next financial year is set on Thursday. Its always a tortuous process with numerous reports issued by Council Directors either bidding for additional resources or highlighting pressures that can't be contained and a drip feed of information through which a budget picture, of sorts, emerges. And it all culminates with the biggest set piece debate of the Council year with political groups moving their own amendments and the SNP/LibDem coalition pushing through their proposals on the strength of numbers. Not exactly an inclusive process. As with previous years the Labour Group have been the first and only political group to have published our proposals well in advance and offer them for scrutiny and comment. Best place to get the details is on Andrew Burns "Really Bad Blog" .

By the way, this morning's weigh-in produced a return of 12st 12lb. Still moving in the right direction, but its a bloody hard slog ! Pass me another carrot.

National Decisions - Local Impact

Fare increase to £1.40 single, £3.40 day ticket

Very disappointing to start the first post of the month on a negative note but as reported today by the Evening News Lothian Buses are about to increase their fares due to a drop in passenger numbers and a "multi million pound reduction" in their grant from the Scottish Government. Hadn't realised until I read the story that this has also led to the withdrawal of the 48 bus which serves Ratho. It will be replaced by an amended 12 service but with a reduced frequency. Not good news and it just shows how decisions made in splendid isolation at a national level can have a very real impact on people at a local level. Transport Minister Keith Brown is quoted as saying changes to the Bus Services Operators Grant would encourage fuel economy and secure rural services. Is that right Keith ? I thought Ratho was a rural community and yet their service will reduce and be more expensive. I don't get it....