Breaking news

Are you a Broughton business seeking a fabulous new marketing opportunity? Do you wish to associate your company name, product or service with youthful vigour and the pursuit of excellence?

No? What about the pursuit of balls then?

Drummond Community High School are seeking a commercial sponsor for their football team's kit, and would be delighted to sport a community company's logo on the strip in return.

They're a young, dynamic bunch who enjoy great support locally, so any deal could work to both sides' advantage.

Spurtle Issue 201 will be printed today, ready for distribution through wind, rain and blizzard during the first week of December.

Whisky Kiss are a Broughton-based, souped-up ceilidh band (with DJs and dancers to give the cutting-edge show a 21st-century edge), writes bassist Iain MacPhail who ought to know. We are currently touring China before moving on to Muscat in Oman.

My local store – Bellevue Newsagents on the corner of Bellevue Road and Annandale Street – was granted a drinks licence yesterday, writes Broughton resident Iain McGill.

It appeared to me to have the most obvious case for approval that I could recall – and I’ve been politically active in the area for ages, and licensing spokesman for the New Town and Broughton Community Council for just about as long.

Whisky Kiss are quite possibly the spawniest ceilidh band that has ever whistled, piped and fiddled through a Gay Gordons or Strip the Willow [at least according to not-at-all-massively-biased Broughton-based band bassist Iain MacPhail].

Locals have known for some time that a social enterprise-focused street market is due to appear outside St Mary's Cathedral on Broughton Street this Christmas (Thurs–Fri, 8–24 December).

What's now emerging is that the market will have running alongside it an intriguing 'noir-themed' programme of free events. They are intended to widen the market's audience, and increase the amount of time visitors spend there.

Dreaming of a Noir Christmas will include circus sideshows, escapology, magic, live music, dance and pedal-powered film in a yurt.

Protestors opposed to the cutting down of trees at Canonmills appear to be running rings around a confused City of Edinburgh Council.

Below we reproduce unedited and in full a reply to the protestors' letter of Monday 21 November. It is from David Anderson in City Development, and reads like a rather flat-footed reassertion of intent whilst facts are checked frantically in the background.

As we predicted in Issue 200 ('New Town wheelie bins – an open and shut case?), City of Edinburgh Council looks set to phase out black bin bags across the World Heritage Site.

A report, 'Modernising Waste Collection in the World Heritage Area', based on the pilot scheme which began in September 2010 will now go before the Transport, Infrastructure and Environment Committee on 29 November.

It will recommend complete phasing-out of black bin bag collections in the city centre and their replacement by communal wheelie-bins (or gull-proof bags where appropriate).

'HULLO THERE, CHINA!' is a well-known Glaswegian greeting, featuring in publications like Parliamo Glasgow, and made famous by the peerless Stanley Baxter and his peers Chic Murray and Rikki Fulton.

Well, now you can add a new name to that list, people. Broughton-based ceilidh band Whisky Kiss yelled it out as we landed in Shanghai on our 'East of Edin' tour.

Christmas will arrive early in Broughton this weekend and at full jingle.

Broughton St Mary's Parish Church will kick off proceedings with a Christmas Fair from 11am to 2pm.

Stand by for: home baking (sweet and savoury), preserves, gifts and toiletries, jewellery, books and CDs, a hamper draw, lucky dip, a guess-the-weight-of-the-cake competition, light lunches (soup and filled rolls), and all things Christmassy.