Breaking news

BY BARNARDO'S GRANT GILROY  

Many people know about the concept of fostering and adoption – very few are aware of ‘Supported Carers’. Barnardo’s Lothian Supported Carers Scheme (LSCS) is campaigning to change that.  

LSCS is campaigning to raise awareness of the needs of young people who have left the care system and/or do not have a family home they can stay in. Supported Carers provide that home. In simple terms they act like ‘landlords’ or ‘hosts’ and offer a young person a room in their home.

Contrast the swift response of Edinburgh Council's 'Noise Team' in silencing the chimes of St Stephen's Church – an issue which according to

Attempts to solve the problem of the Stephen’s Church clock chime appear to have got nowhere.

Locals have been divided between those who find the hourly bell at night nuisance and those who consider it a welcome presence which predates a small number of complainants.

City of Edinburgh Council officials decided back in late August 2014 that the bell was indeed too loud (Breaking news, 2.9.14).

The term ‘blue faced’, when it is not being used to describe a popular breed of longwool Leicester sheep, has an altogether more modern meaning with which many  readers will already be familiar.

Among hip people, like the Spurtle team, it refers to the practice of emailing or texting in such a way that the device used casts a blue-ish hue onto the face of the messager.

‘Hey, dude,’ we often say to each other at the start of the distribution process, ‘quit blue-facin. We’ve got to go and hit da hood with da ink.’

An unbuilt flat-pack chair sat gathering dust in our living room for several months. When built, it would transform our lives, or so I was told. In a way it did. 

I can’t stand flat-pack furniture. It’s probably the reason why I’ve never been to Sweden.

A couple of weeks ago, writes David Jackson Young, Spurtle encouraged readers unhappy with the post-festive state of St Andrew Square to contact Essential Edinburgh and copy the paper in on any correspondence (Breaking news, 18.1.15).

On 19 January I wrote to Essential Edinburgh via their website as follows:

Re: St Andrew Square Garden

The gushing Hose of News has been turned off.

The last article has been checked, corrected, rechecked and hand-burnished by craftspeople. No semicolons survive. The Editor is having a hissy fit. Spurtle’s legal adviser has gone to bed with two Ibuprofens and a bottle of whisky. All is well in the barony.

Issue 237 has now entered the eye-swivelling production stage and will be out on the streets of Broughton within days.

I have spent much of the past few months observing people’s bin behaviour, writes Fred Street of the New Town Clean Streets Campaign.

Not just communal bins – also gull bags, red and blue recycling boxes, food caddies, and trade waste bins. I've noted and plotted all sorts of psycho-social variables; performed extensive regression analyses; and have have now arrived at the following conclusion.

This New Town door to nowhere has long intrigued passers-by. It seemed to have no purpose. No-one ever came, no-one ever left. Only the graffiti changed.

Now, though, after years of neglect, the mysterious interior behind No. 134 Dundas Street will partially reopen to  public view.

A new shop – possibly called Smoking Hot but the staff member we spoke to wasn't sure – will open either tomorrow or on Wednesday, depending upon when the last of its stock is delivered.

A new work by Edinburgh figurative artist Deirdre Nicholls will go on show in Ayr next month.

The bust will form part of an exhibition organised by the Scottish National Trust, and is of Robert Burns.

Nicholls’s work is the product of careful research into written, painted and snipped accounts of the bard’s appearance, and may be the most accurate depiction of him ever seen.

However, this is an area fraught with difficulties, as will be realised by following this link.