Breaking news

Remember this from last month? 

The New Town Clean Streets campaign first brought it to our attention via Twitter – a lorry with generator and illuminated sign that sat on yellow lines in Hanover Street, blaring out music all day. 

Apparently, parking attendants were under the impression it had been granted an official dispensation. 

Few passers-by were impressed, and those in neighbouring offices soon tweeted that they’d been driven round the bend by the din for much of 13–19 January.

Spurtle was unable to attend the world premiere of T2 Trainspotting on 22 January, but belatedly boarded the bandwagon last night in search of locations. 

T2 filmcrew had been spotted all across Broughton over the spring/summer last year, and we confidently anticipated seeing a number of familiar faces or facades on the big screen. 

There are few days at this time of year that would not be improved by interposing a community newspaper between you and them. 

Fortunately, a brand new February-resistant issue of the Spurtle will be leaving the printers this afternoon and making its way onto Broughton shelves and counters first thing in the morning. 

This weekend and on Monday, thousands of people across the country are taking part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. 

The idea is to spend an hour in one spot, noting down the largest number of any one bird species you see on the ground at one time.

The survey – which has been running since 1979 – helps the RSPB track population trends nationwide. In 2015, more than 500,000 observers counted over 8 million birds in the UK.

This year, Spurtle decided not to repeat last year’s mistake of sitting with binoculars in the bushes of a shared garden.

WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE TO TRANSFORM A LIFE? 

What’s the best thing you’ve done lately for a complete stranger?

Given up a seat on the bus? Helped someone across the road? Dropped a few coins in a hat? 

They’re all admirable in their way, but they rather pale into insignificance compared to a contribution made by local resident Richard de Soldenhoff last year. 

Drummond Community High School pupils Michal Wrobel, Alizah Mughal, Dalia Saadi and Haia Jihan will be filmed in and around the school as part of a new video resource for the Youth and Philanthropy Initiative (YPI). 

Over the weekend, we posted on Facebook here the photograph you see on the right alongside the question posed in the headline above. 

We wondered whether Edinburgh residents had become accepting, indifferent, or too exhausted by another year’s mudfest to feel much fussed about the issue. We wanted to gauge whether the sorry state of our ‘tranquil green space’ still stirred local feelings.

EDINBURGH TRIBUTE TO WORLD LEADER

Today’s Presidential inauguration will take place amid much pomp and ceremony. 

Nothing, it seems, could be more American. 

Only, there will be a distinctly Scottish component to the day’s events – once for the outgoing Barack Obama and later for the newly installed Donald Trump. 

‘Little Green Men’ have been with us for years. 

An exclusively bean-eating brother and sister arrived in Woolpit, Suffolk at some point in the 12th century, orginating in the subterranean ‘St Martin’s Land’ and emerging from a cave, drawn by the bells of Bury St Edmunds. 

A green-coloured Martian was reported for the first time in the Kennebec Journal of 1908, newly arrived in Augusta, Maine. Two years later a crashed extraterrestrial was supposedly recovered in Apulia, Italy. 

Locals will meet on Thursday this week to discuss setting up a new residents association. 

‘With city developments encroaching on us in adjacent areas, we feel that now is the time to make sure that our voice is heard at the Council table,’ reads a flyer circulating in the area. 

’We also feel that as a community we would benefit from knowing and supporting our neighbours better.’