An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
Underbelly’s Ed Bartlam (EB) and Charlie Wood (CW) this morning made a presentation on Edinburgh’s Winter Festivals (Edinburgh’s Christmas and Edinburgh’s Hogmanay) 2018–19 to the Culture & Communities Committee.
Below we summarise their points, and the question-and-answer session which followed. Then we move on to a motion by Councillor Staniforth and the Scottish Greens.
Presentation
Today we present the second in our series of recipes first published in the pages of Mrs Williamson’s 1854 book The Practice of Cookery and Pastry, Adapted to the Business of Every Day Life.
For more on this remarkable local figure, see Barclay Price’s article in Issue 289.
A short and moving service of remembrance was held early this morning in Warriston Cemetery.
Led by the Rev. Joanne Foster of Inverleith St Serf’s Church, it recalled those lost or injured in the service of their country, as well as those civilians who suffered as a result of conflict on and off the battlefield.
Warriston contains 72 First World War burials, 27 from the Second World War, and one Belgian war grave.
The service was attended by around 20 people: cemetery volunteers, local residents, and Councillor Hal Osler (Ward 5).
The Ross Development Trust and City of Edinburgh Council are consulting the public about proposals for West Princes Street Gardens (WPSG) as part of their Proposal of Application Notice (Ref. 19/05115/PAN).
Underbelly has now submitted its Proposal of Application Notice (PAN) for East Princes Street Gardens.
The major development comprises market stalls, fairground rides, a maze, bars, box offices, associated site offices, and ancillary facilities.
Following approval of the PAN, the applicant can next submit a full planning application after 12 weeks, which – according to some local observers – the Development Management Sub-committee is unlikely to determine until April 2020 … long after the Christmas Market has packed up and gone.
As you read this, early copies of the November Spurtle are already flittering across the halloween Barony like vampire bats out of a witch’s haunted coffin carried by zombies covered in spiders. Or something.
Page 1 rattles its chains with news of disquiet, an abandoned station, the borderland between one world and the next, and things that cling in the night.
On Page 2 we look at the quick and the not-so-quick, odd noises from liminal spaces, mysterious diggers, and the folk who failed to materialise.
Last night, the Council issued a briefing note to councillors about the situation in East Princes Street Gardens.
You can read it on Cllr Scott Arthur’s blog HERE, or in the pdf at the foot of this page.
Spurtle thinks the briefing raises as many questions as it answers. We summarise some key statements from it, and give our responses below.
Stall holders in East Princes Street Gardens risk operating illegally during the Winter Festival.
As some readers may now know, the Cockburn Association established on Friday that the scaffold ‘space-deck’ in East Princes Street Gardens requires planning permission, but does not have it.
In the light of today's massive social-media response to Underbelly's scaffolding structure in East Princes Street Gardens, Spurtle sought a response from Edinburgh Council.
This evening we got it:
Edinburgh’s Christmas continues to grow in popularity and not just with visitors. Just last year over 186,000 tickets were purchased for Christmas rides, attractions and shows by residents using their 20% discount (a 31% increase on 2017).
In the current controversies surrounding use and development of Edinburgh’s public spaces, particularly green spaces, it is sometimes tempting to think we live uniquely in a time of moral slippage and civic decline.
How much better it would be if we could return to a more decorous period, when people knew how to behave and the city’s parks were places of sacrosanct amenity.
Today, Spurtle looks back and basks in the glow of Princes Street Gardens’ 19th-century golden age.