An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
City of Edinburgh Council has taken stock of its existing powers, and set out a wish-list for new powers it wants from the Scottish Government, in a bid to control problematic short-term lets.
The findings are contained in a report going before the Corporate Policy and Strategy Committee for consideration on 7 August (see pdf at foot of page).
Concerns
As mentioned in Issue 275, the subject of the 2017 film The King and I is kenspeckle local resident Graham Croan Bee.
Croan Bee lives in Scotland Street and is well known in a sartorial way for what he chooses to wear and when he doesn’t. He is also noted for imparting memorable greetings to all creatures great and small as he meanders in and around the area. Not infrequently, he bears fine bouquets of flowers. He belongs to the numerous Croan Bee family and is uncle to Daniel, current proprietor of Something Fishy in Broughton Street.
As you read this, the August printed edition of the Spurtle is thundering off the press like a flash flood down Dublin Street. Copies will be inundating areas near you soon.
Page 1 launches with a playground splash, mixed views on an uphill struggle, more political promises, and a new date for the return of nude bathing in the Water of Leith.
And now for some good news.
The application to redevelop Canon Mill has stalled.
As first reported here back in January, the Thistle Property Group wanted to retain the façade of 1–3 Canon Street and demolish everything behind it, to create 11 new flats and a commercial space at ground-floor level (Ref. 17/05967/FUL).
We like this striking collage of Broughton Street shopfronts, available as a greetings card from Concrete Wardrobe at No 50a.
It is the work of nomadic Polish photographer Daniel Dabrowski, who has recently been based in Edinburgh.
His atmospheric images of the capital can be found at [http://daniellauda.com].
Separate incidents on the same day have led to Edinburgh Police appealing for witnesses.
The first (Incident no. 3698) happened on Monday 23 July, at around 7.25pm, when a female was struck by a male cyclist (perhaps in his 30s) on a pedestrian crossing between Gayfield Square and London Road. She was taken to hospital with a head injury.
The cyclist stopped but did not leave contact details.
Police are keen to trace him.
Attack
Were you disgusted by images of the plastic-filled ocean in Blue Planet?
Monty Roy of the Leith Walk police box was, and he’s sickened too by all the cigarette butts and chocolate wrappers he has to pick up from Edinburgh’s pavements.
No wonder, then, that he was so keen to tell us about the latest pop-up on Croall Place tomorrow afternoon.
CAN ANY READER HELP?
In the general scheme of things – the rise and fall of empires, the extinction of species, the erosion of mountain ranges – it's no great shakes.
But in the mind of a small child, it looms very large indeed.
The sign shown here has appeared on a lamppost at the corner of Bellevue and Bellevue Terrace. It announces the recent loss of Ratty the jellycat teddy in the Broughton area, and clearly reflects one Lilly Rose's anxiety to be reunited with him or her or indeed it.
Thousands marched through central Edinburgh this afternoon to protest against the arrival of President Trump in the UK in general, and Scotland in particular.
Spurtle photographed over a hundred banners and placards, ranging in tone from serious and political to anatomical and scatalogical.
Below we've focused on those which were effectively concise, or filled us with admiration for their artistry, or said something distinctively Scottish, or made us laugh, or in retrospect conveyed a clear sense of the overall mood.
SLOW GOING LIKELY
Expect traffic delays tomorrow as an anti-Trump protest passes through the city centre at lunchtime.
An unspecified number of people will take an unknown amount of time to process from Horse's Wynd to the Meadows, starting at noon.