An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
According to Libby Brooks in the Guardian (1 January 2017), Fife and Glasgow Councils are currently considering pilot schemes for a universal fixed, basic income no matter what recipients already earn in benefits or wages.
Advocates see the proposal as a means of radically simplifying the UK’s unwieldy benefits system, strengthening social solidarity, and widening choices/mobility about what life course each individual can embark upon.
LOCALS OPPOSE UNWELCOME DEVELOPMENT
The following account of a public meeting appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News on 4 December 1888.
PROPOSED POLICE AND FIRE-ENGINE STATIONS IN BROUGHTON STREET.
CUBS REFLECT ON CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS
Adventure, Challenge, Fun – all words associated with Scouting, writes Broughton Scout Group’s Assistant Leader John Hawryluk.
At the start of 2016 Chief Scout Bear Grylls challenged Cub sections the length and breadth of the country to celebrate ‘The Wildest Birthday Ever’ for the Centenary of Cub Scouts. The Cubs at 11th Broughton St Mary’s definitely rose to the challenge.
Many thanks to Rhys Fullerton, who caught these beautiful images in the Botanics yesterday.
‘I spotted it posing and keeping warm in the temperate lands glasshouse and got within half a metre of it,’ he told us later.
The bird was obviously fascinated by Fullerton’s artistic displays.
For more on robins, see Miles Forde’s article in Issue 247, p.3.
Did you enjoy your city-centre shopping experience this weekend?
The cheerful and excited throng?
The elegance of Edinburgh in all its festive finery?
Reader David Young did not, and here are his Christmas snarls explaining why.
1. St Andrew Square
Spurtle is grateful for any and all Christmas cards received.
But of the one card we have received so far in 2016, this from Napier Bathrooms & Interiors in Canonmills is far and away our favourite.
Somehow, we were tickled by the combination of festive sentiment, gradually de-railing scansion, and a glossy insert gushing warmly about the latest in Whirlspray and TurboFlush technology.
How have we managed so long without an orientation light?
Read and be amazed …
This won’t be the most exciting post you’ll read this Christmas, but it may be among the more useful.
Bin collection arrangements – for landfill and recycling – will not change over the holiday period. Put out your bins or boxes by 6am on 26 and 27 December, and 2 and 3 January.
If they aren’t collected, leave them outside until they are.
Communal bins will also be emptied as usual, although extra uplifts for glass and packaging may be introduced if necessary.
Can any reader explain this? Not the cat …
The wall-mounted rail, pulley, raised doors, blocks and curved ironwork suggest an arrangement for moving heavy items (barrels?) in or out of the 19th-century building at the western end of Dublin Street Lane South.
When they were last used – and for what kind of business – we don’t know. But in any case, their days may be numbered.
Nine applications to populate George Street with double-sided LCD advertising screens have been refused by City of Edinburgh Council.
As described here in October, JCDecaux wanted to use bus stops and freestanding monoliths – laughably described as ‘community information panels’ – at various locations along a thoroughfare which needs no such beautification.
In a crushing report to the Development Management Subcommittee, CEC officials concluded:
The regional Openreach Customer Network Solutions Manager contacted Spurtle today to allay local concerns about telephone engineers working on the Heriot (‘Sandy’) Hill site and neighbouring buildings.
Kieron Freyne says he was among the genuine BT engineers on-site last month, wearing the requisite ID. They had accessed the area with legal authority, and permission from at least one resident in each tenement block.
They left, he says, after receiving a verbal threat.