Breaking news

Autumn is here, and so is the October Spurtle.

Spreading silently across the barony like freshly made coffee leaking from a thermos into the deepest recesses of your briefcase, Issue 278 brings to you hot news affecting Broughton and neighbouring bits of the world beyond.

We begin with a new face soon to be more familiar, and a well-known face cheerfully bidding farewell. 

We cover mixed views on an overlooked playground, an upbeat assessment of city transformation, and a decidedly disappointed response to a Council department struggling to cope.

Broughton Scouts, who celebrate 100 years of local Scouting in 2019, have found themselves unprepared for sweeping changes to school janitor contracts resulting in the doors to their school hall being firmly locked after 6pm. 

All sections of the Broughton group, some 75 young people, recently found themselves out on the street. 

Scout Leader Scott Richards says, ‘From a leaked e-mail I’ve seen, it’s clear the Edinburgh Council had been planning these changes for months. But we only found out when we tried to return to local scouting after summer camp. 

Tesco on Broughton Road want to change the hours during which it can deliver on Sunday mornings. Yet again. 

The latest application (Ref. 18/07477/FUL) seeks to amend an earlier permission (Ref. 09/00039/FUL) which allows Sunday deliveries from noon to 6pm. Tesco wants an extra two hours, starting from 10am. Locals simply want one morning a week when they can lie in bed, or sit in the garden, undisturbed. 

If you complete just one online Council consultation exercise this year, make it this one. It has the potential to transform how we reach, linger in and traverse the city. 

Get it wrong, and Edinburgh could grind to a traffic-filled halt – an ill-tempered snarl-up wreathed in recrimination and sooty particulates. 

Get it right, and the capital could become a place where business thrives and people can move efficiently, pleasurably and without damaging their health.

DAVID STERRATT GETS DEEP DOWN AND DIRTY 

Breakfast spoiler alert: Article contains graphic images of an overflowing drain.

Recently, we had an unpleasant issue with overflowing drains at the back of our tenement. It was more difficult than I anticipated to solve the problem, taking over two weeks to sort out. Here’s what I learned from the experience.

Look up your drainage records

 ‘What is this life if, full of care, 

 We have no time to stand and stare?’ 

What would the poet W.H. Davies have to say about so many who now seem umbilically affixed to their mobile phones, as if their very survival depended on them?

How many, while so engaged, never look up or around them when they might discover architectural marvels and throngs of silent watchers over our beautiful city?

As you read this, copies of the September Spurtle are already percolating through the barony like fresh coffee through a linen tablecloth.

Issue 277 brings you a bear, a yarn bomb, and much ado about Planning; a liner on Dublin Street, an abundance of butterflies, an abomination of slithering, another bear, views on views and a special 70th-birthday celebration. 

City of Edinburgh Council's Development Management Subcommittee yesterday unanimously refused planning permission for a controversial short-term letting proposal at 7–8 Baxter’s Place (Ref. 17/05645/FUL). 

City of Edinburgh Council is to consult on ways to develop public space on Arboretum Place outside the West Gate of the Royal Botanic Garden. 

The area is currently dominated by parking, with (often fast-moving) traffic dividing Inverleith Park from the John Hope Gateway. 

According to a leaflet circulating today, ‘The proposal is to create a space more suitable for pedestrians and cyclists, with some disabled parking remaining at the kerb.

Save Leith Walk campaigners got an early taste of the Planning system’s complexities and frustrations this afternoon when they tried to present a petition opposing Drum Property’s development of 106–54 Stead’s Place. 

The petition has attracted some 12,200 signatures over the last 4 months. But councillors and officials on the Planning Committee refused to accept it. Since the planning application is now live, they could not be seen to be influenced by the document. Nor could they ask questions of the 3-person deputation which appeared before them at the same meeting.