Susan Rae: Leith Walk and Hawick Riding

Comfy in Susan Rae’s tiny sitting-room, in her flat at the top of Shrubhill, with a cup of tea, I ask her “So why did you move to Edinburgh from the Borders?” I knew she’d moved here seven years ago.

An American once told me, exasperated, “When I ask why you guys always say ‘Well, four hundred years ago – ‘”

This is of course quite untrue. Sometimes, it’s five hundred years ago.

Edinburgh Trams: Only Three Years Late

The Edinburgh Trams Project was meant to deliver three new public transport routes across the city. Instead, after a massive overspend (total cost said to be £776 Million) and years overrun, Edinburgh Council only managed to build one line that didn’t even go as far as planned: Edinburgh Airport to York Place, a route which is already very well served by multiple LRT buses and which runs in parallel to the railway line from Waverley through Haymarket almost all the way.

Where does David Coburn live?

Edinburgh is a lovely place to live. (Second on the quality-of-living index for the whole of the UK.) Edinburgh is one of a few cities around the world that are genuinely beautiful.

David Coburn is the list-topper candidate for UKIP in Scotland in the EuroElections on Thursday – Nigel Farage feels “bullish” that Coburn will become one of UKIP’s MEPs after the elections on 22nd May. And, Coburn says, he lives in Edinburgh.

David Coburn was born in Glasgow, and moved to London over twenty years ago: he was working in Kensington in 1993, where he ran the Lexicon School of English, which was dissolved in 1993 by the Companies Registrar after failing to file accounts.

He’s lived in Kensington, W11 at least since 14th August 2006 (from Companies House – he’s been the director of several companies) and he was still living there on 24th April 2014, the deadline for UKIP submitting their note of candidates to the Electoral Commission.

46 years of safe legal abortion

On 27th April 1968, 46 years ago, the Abortion Act became law, and women in the UK – except in Northern Ireland – were entitled to get safe, legal abortions. That’s half a lifetime ago. There can be few doctors or nurses still practicing who have first-hand memories of the bad old prolife days.

Every year for the past few years, on the Saturday closest to that date, SPUC stand in a line down Lothian Road, on the Sheraton Hotel side, and express their sorrow and regret for 46 years of health and wellbeing for women.

Against the SDL, Against Hate

This is the speech I made at the rally against the SDL this time last year, when Edinburgh Council gave them permission for a short march from Abbyhill to the East End in May 2012.

“We’re still here – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, of all faiths and none – we’re here, lesbian, gay, bisexual, straight, and transgender – young and old, Scots of all ethnicities and cultures, against the SDL. Some Tories have been telling David Cameron that the reason he’s slipped in the polls isn’t the cuts or unemployment, it’s the reform of the House of Lords and gay marriage. We’re here because we believe in working peacefully, democratically, respecting differences, to get equality and human rights.

“One of the Equality Network supporters of this march was telling me as we walked along about how years ago he and his boyfriend had gone to a BNP march in London, dressed in lumberjack shirts and mini-skirts, to dance in front of the BNPers and taunt them.

“We know what they’re like. They cannot bear difference. They cannot bear diversity. They want their rigid and cold ideas enforced on all of us.

Autumn in Leith: swans on the river

There’s a breeding pair of mute swans on the Water of Leith: they have a whiteness of cygnets every year.

Scotland Says Nae Nazis

Today, the Yes Scotland campaign is having a march. The main reason for the march seems to be so that the march planned for 21st September 2013 is not the first march for independence.

Next Saturday, there will be another march: I expect it to be quite a bit smaller, but much more important. Alex Salmond won’t turn out for it, there won’t be any fancy rally in Princes Street gardens.

BNP outside KFC Meadowbank

Update, 5th July: The BNP will be back outside this KFC on Saturday 7th July from 12:30. UAF plan counterprotest.
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First I heard they were going to be there was this morning.

BNP plan racist demo at KFC Meadowbank #Edinburgh 1pm today. twitter.com/nickgriffinmep… Scotland – one country, many cultures. Peacefully oppose.

— EdinburghEye (@EyeEdinburgh) June 23, 2012

They claimed they were there because they were protesting animal cruelty. Also because this KFC uses halal chickens, and they complained they were being “forced” to eat halal meat.

Most of the time we were there (three of us) there were only three of them.

13:22

(The man in the brown jacket isn’t BNP: he’s just one of several customers that went in and out without hindrance during their demo. There were several police there, too. The man with the union jack on his cap kept raising his BNP sign to cover his face whenever he saw a camera pointed in his direction.)

Access to Waverley Station: Network Rail replies

Steve Montgomery, ScotRail’s managing director, and David Simpson, Network Rail’s route managing director, wrote:

“Thank you for your patience. We are committed to giving more people than ever before the opportunity to travel by rail.”

Unless they’re old. Or have a disability that makes stairs difficult. Or have small children. Or need to travel with heavy luggage.

On 16th April I wrote:

Network Rail want to ban coaches, cars, and taxis from Waverley Station. They’ve come up with a range of excuses why this is a good idea, but I’m pretty certain the real reason is that if they get rid of the taxi rank at the south side of the station, they can have a new row of stalls or shops there.

Edinburgh Farmers Market