Hutchison and Chesser Community Council

Hutchison and Chesser Community Council meeting this evening - including a brief presentation by officers on the proposals for a Skateboard-Park within Saughton Park.

Despite some concern about the 'exact' location of the Skateboard-Park, I felt there was general support for the principal of locating the facility within Saughton Park.

Various issues rightly raised as a prerequisite for any final implementation: CCTV needs to be installed; crossing on Balgreen Road needs to be finalised; toilet facilities need to be available (and adequate!). Hopefully, they can all be delivered as part of any overall package ...

... watch this space for when the detailed planning application is finally submitted in a few weeks time.

Separately, there was also some discussion about the ongoing success of the Estate walkabouts ... I can't resist publishing this picture - I should say that this is NOT a caption contest :-((

Clutch-cable saga

Spent most of this morning attending to a broken clutch-cable :-(

- thankfully, we took the train to Sheffield, but on Sunday evening took a quick trip to the allotment (by car!) to do some watering, and on the approach up Chesser Loan, the clutch-cable evidently snapped leaving us completely stranded :-((

Even more frustratingly, was the fact that the whole trip appears to have been unnecessary as we were told by one gleeful allotment-holder that very heavy thunderstorms emptied out of the Edinburgh skies on Saturday night ... there was certainly no rain in sunny Sheffield ;-)

Oh well ... car should be ready for collection tomorrow.

Back from Sheffield

Well, the Sheffield visit was a real success ... the canal boat was a definite change from the usual 'B&B/Hotel' accommodation, and junior loved it!

... and we managed not to sink it ;-)

We also enjoyed Sheffield itself - particularly the very impressive-looking trams :-)

Stiff drink required

I just knew Boris Johnson, within days of being elected, would be a disaster as London Mayor ...

... proof-positive, of just such a terrible start, now being reported in the Daily Mash ;-)

The Sun appears to be reporting an equally outrageous story this Friday morning :-((

Off to sunny Sheffield ...

Off to sunny (hopefully) Sheffield this weekend on the 2.05pm train tomorrow - bit of a weekend escape for the family - and we're staying in a 'houseboat hotel' ... really, we are :-)

It will be a definite first - and I don't even own a waterproof laptop! - thus blogging may be somewhat light over the next few days ... but I'll report back later on whether we sink or swim?

... I suspect many Party colleagues will be contemplating such issues over the weekend :-(

Switch the power on?

South West Neighbourhood Partnership (NP) meeting this evening - it has to be said, nearly one-year on and all the hope for any form of serious devolution to NP's has pretty much come to nothing.

It is fairly startling - although depressingly 'true-to-form' - that despite several years of putting significant sums of money into Local Development Committees (LDC's being NP's predecessors!) whilst framing their Opposition budgets, the Liberals this year (now in power) put completely 'zero' new money into their Administration budget for NP's :-(

... of course, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they don't hold the 'majority' on all of the 12 NP's across the city ... no, no, no, of course not.

We were told tonight it was because 'officers' were finding it terribly difficult to devolve power away from the centre; they have been 'asked' to speed things up; and everyone is really trying hard to sort things out; but these things are very complicated you know ...

Truly depressing stuff.

... but, it's all part of Edinburgh's 'Bright New Future', so that's okay really.

Some 'local' political drama too ...

Enough of all this national and international, political drama ... here, in Edinburgh itself, local political drama continues with the snail-like progress of a funding solution for any new school buildings in the Capital City ...

... might not be 'quite' as dramatic as events elsewhere, but for hundreds of parents and families across Edinburgh its a very real issue - Evening News ran a short piece from me on this topic today, which can be found here.

As I say in the article, the Lib-Dem/SNP Council has frankly made little or no progress in filling the funding vacuum of the last 12-months. And progress can indeed be made – several Councils across Scotland have developed alternative, local funding-mechanisms since mid-2007, and are now close to initiating building contracts.

... and before I hear the howls of 'what would you have done' - well, we did have an alternative model in our budget proposals. It acknowledged that the pre-2007 methods of funding were gone, and put forward a local solution for all 5-schools that would have kept progress alive until the mythical Scottish Futures Trust (or some other, viable financing-option) could be delivered by the Scottish Government.

Of course, it wasn't passed (text is below, for reference) - but just like our earlier pleas of June 2007 about schools rationalisation, I think the local Libs/Nats may well have to face up to some such 'Local Trust' solution fairly soon.


==========

School Building Local Trusts

Council agrees to set up local School Building Trusts for the following schools in the ‘third wave’ of the school building programme:

• Portobello High School
• St Crispin’s Special School
• James Gillespies High School
• Boroughmuir High School
• St Johns Primary School

Each School Building Trust will be allocated £75,000, in 2008/09, to develop plans for the rebuilding, or refurbishment, of their school building.

This specific £0.375million, to be part of a wider £8.75million allocated to the development of all 5 ‘third wave’ schools to ‘Stage D Design Level’ by the end of 2010/11; subject to additional funding being provided by the Scottish Government.

The required £8.75million to be funded from:

• additional receipts identified by the ‘Capital Receipts’ review
• with the immediate £0.375m being funded from the review of departmental management structures across the Council

==========

Boring, boring, boring ...

Hard to say which political story is more gripping just at the moment: this or this?

... and they say modern-politics is boring??

The End

The BBC has finally got it ;-)

... he is now the Democratic candidate - there may be 6-more contests through until 3rd June, but the final result can surely no longer be in any doubt.

Next stop - the 'real' Super-Tuesday: 4th November 2008.

No school meals here

Well, despite my earlier predictions of 'lots more to come' ... I wasn't expecting this - I see in my favourite local paper today that on-site, cooked school meals are to be axed from several Primary Schools ... and Nurseries :-(

I'm not aware that this move has been sanctioned by any Committee of the Council, and I'm also not aware that it was contained in the SNP/Lib Coalition Budget passed in February ...

... mind you, the current Coalition do have a bit of a track-record, when it comes to making decisions on-the-hoof about schools meals - see this story and blog entry from last December; all about an idea which was quickly shelved after the unsurprising parental outcry.

Now, surely they wouldn't be stupid enough to resurrect that would they??

For Scotland, read Quebec?

I've watched the developing 'bring it on' story over the last couple of days with an ever-so-slight sense of 'deja-vu' ...

... not only do the increasingly potential parallels with Quebec, Canada (and Catalonia, Spain) become ever-more real ... but to 'some' extent we have been here before as a nation ...

... although I do obviously accept (see this post and comments thereafter) that there has not yet been a referendum with the distinct option of 'Independence' on the ballot paper; I sense that even a substantial 'No-vote' in 2009/10 (or whenever any referendum 'might' happen) would NOT be the end of the matter.

Devolutionists, and even Federalists, should expect nothing else ...

... only one-thing in life is constant - change.

Politics is not so different.

Therapeutic day

The sun has shone brightly all day long, down at the allotment, and current political travails were thankfully banished to the deeper recesses of my mind ... at least for a good few hours this afternoon anyhow ;-)

Last bed now edged (10 in total, including the fruit-cage which you can see here on the left) and most of them planted up ...

... you should also be able to see what's become known as "The Rocket" - a 'living-willow' frame, that was given to my better-half as a very generous Birthday present ;-))

So - vegetable-wise ... we now have potatoes; onions; spinach; carrots, beetroot, radishes all planted up! More to go over the next few weeks, but most of the beds are now sown.

And - plant-wise ... a huge variety of flowers, bulbs and herbs all planted - including sweet-peas which will hopefully cover "The Rocket" in the not-too-distant future :-)

... all good therapy after the trauma of the last few days :-(

Wonderful Slough

Okay - self-pity over ... its a Bank Holiday weekend and we're off to the allotment today to finish edging the very last bed :-)

... a huge amount of planting is also to take place - various, impressive photographs may follow later :-))


P.S. does anyone know why Slough is so bloody wonderful?

Desperately seeking solace ...

Well, no more 'Labour gains', and congratulations do have to go to Mayor Johnson - no matter what I may think about his politics, his team clearly ran a good campaign and he won the popular vote ... that's democracy!

Livingstone's percentage of the first preferences is the only 'crumb-of-comfort' from what's been a pretty dismal couple of days for Labour - he managed 36% of the first preferences (details here) compared to Labour's 24% of the popular vote across the rest of the country ...

... mind you, that's a small 'crumb' - but there are undoubtedly lessons behind those starkly differing statistics.

LAB gain ??

In a vain attempt to cheer myself up, I thought I would have a quick look at the BBC "Election results in detail" section - here - and do a search for any 'LAB gain' ...

... only two hits :-(

• Slough - details here
• Durham - details here

Now, before you rush off and relocate to Durham, it is a new unitary authority so not sure if that really counts as a 'gain' :-((

... but Slough is a definite Labour gain from 'no overall control'.

Given it looks like Johnson is going to take London, it seems a move to Slough could well be on the cards ...

Full Council meeting (part 2)

So, as promised, a whole post on the Single Outcome Agreement (SOA) - you're beside yourself with excitement I can tell ...

... I know its not necessarily a headline-grabbing topic, but what we're potentially about to do in the next few weeks (as a Local Authority) will, I believe, lead to a serious diminution of local democracy - I have mentioned this in several previous posts: for example, here.

And in the debate at Full Council, when the SOA paper was being discussed, we had a truly astonishing moment when the Council Leader claimed that there was 'no connection between signing the SOA and freezing Council Tax' ...

... errrr, with respect, I think she should first look here, and then more crucially read the Concordat between COSLA and the Scottish Government here - in particular, she might like to look at the "Specified set of commitments" on page 4, particularly the bit that says:

"for the entire package to remain intact, and as part of their contribution to the new relationship, the Scottish Government and local government will each do what is required to ensure delivery of key government policies and programmes including: Freezing council tax rates in each local authority at 2007-08 levels."

The rest of the "specified set of commitments", and the fact that they are practically all unfunded, make very, very worrying reading financially...

... but what's much more worrying is that the Council Leader of the Capital city of Scotland clearly doesn't know what she's signing up to - 'no connection between signing the SOA and freezing the Council Tax'

THAT IS PLAIN WRONG.

Full Council meeting (part 1)

Full Council meeting was, amazingly, not quite as lengthy as I'd expected ... finishing before 5pm!

Most significant debate of the day (I believe) was on the Single Outcome Agreement - it deserves a whole post of its own, especially given what was said by our Council Leader, so I'll come back to that in a minute.

Meantime, other highlights (or should it be lowlights?) of the day:

• two items were approved, by the Nat/Lib Coalition, on the casting vote of the Lord Provost (LP) ...

1. choosing to vote down a Motion (see item 10.5) to lobby the Scottish Government concerning the recent 10p price rise in Lothian Bus fares. Instead, not only did the LP use his casting vote, our Convener of Transport actually said "in the greater scheme of things this is not a substantial increase". 10% - not substantial??
2. choosing to vote down another Motion (see item 10.8) asking for a report outlining how the 'outreach' work of Scottish Ballet and Opera could potentially continue. Instead the LP, who is Chair of Edinburgh International Festival, voted down this request with his casting vote. Not clever.

• The Lord Provost (he had a busy day) ruling that during 'questions' (see item 4) the Opposition Councillors could only have 1 supplementary question, and not the usual 2 or more ... in the 9-years I've been a Councillor, I've never seen a Lord Provost resort to such tactics ... and he has the cheek to call himself a (Liberal) Democrat :-(

• The Convener of Education telling me that she need not reflect on answers given to me about Wave 3 schools because negotiations are ongoing with the Scottish Government ... this despite me quoting a letter from the relevant Minister saying that all the capital allocations for the next 3-years are settled and there is no more money :-((

And, of course, lets not overlook that in answer to another one of my questions the 2007/08 revenue budget (Nat/Lib Coalition in charge) appears to be heading towards an overspend that may be not far removed from the 2006/07 (Labour in charge) final overspend - which was £5.53million, or 0.69% of the overall revenue budget ... see the bottom of Page 5 here.

The bright new future is here ...

Thoughts elsewhere ...

Full Council meeting today; but in large part my thoughts are elsewhere ...

... can't help but think back to this time last year and just how frantically busy we all were - exactly the same will be the case for numerous colleagues down South today, especially in London.

... are Londoners really about to put Boris Johnson in City Hall? - even my Scottish Tory friends (yes, I do have some!) can't quite believe it will come to pass??

We'll know tomorrow ...