29/07/2014 – The NEN – North Edinburgh News

Family fun and games at Grassmarket

Old Town gets ready to celebrate Playday

Edinburgh’s Grassmarket will be transformed into a giant children’s play area tomorrow as the city to promote play in the city. The historic Old Town street will be transformed, with lots of family-friendly activities on offer including junk drumming, giant weaving, magic potions, a giant sand pit, water play and a cardboard city!

The event hopes to build on the successes of previous years where thousands of people have came along to join in Playday activities.

Playday is the national day for play, which is being celebrated next week. On Playday thousands of children and their families get out to play at hundreds of community events across the UK.

As well as a celebration of children’s right to play, Playday is a campaign that highlights the importance of play in children’s lives. It’s all about learning for life and showing that play is fun not just for the child but for adults as well.

Councillor Keith Robson is the city council’s ‘Play Champion’. He said: “Play is a massively important part of a child’s development and makes a tremendous contribution to happy and healthy childhoods. Our very popular Playday in the Grassmarket provides a fantastic opportunity to celebrate play and promote its many benefits.

“One of our objectives is that we want to ensure that communities recognise the importance of play for children especially outdoor play. Not only are there significant health benefits from being out in the open air, but also exposure to a range of different activities can help a child’s development.

“Here in Edinburgh we’re very lucky to have some fantastic outdoor spaces and I would encourage all parents to get outdoors with their children during these lovely summer months. The great park at west end of Princes Street Gardens has been a family favourite these holidays when friends have been visiting from around the UK.”

Edinburgh’s Playday event will be held in the Grassmarket from 12.30pm – 4.30pm. On offer will be a giant sand pit, water play, magic potions, cardboard city, play pod, mud kitchen, giant weaving, play for babies, junk drumming and much more!

Access is free but children should be accompanied by an adult. For more information contact

cf.play@edinburgh.gov.uk

There have already been two meetings of the Edinburgh Play Forum which is made up of various community groups, schools and other organisations with an interest in promoting play in the city. The aim is to make Edinburgh a playful city where children can enjoy their childhood.

The Council is currently updating it’s Play Strategy which will be discussed at the Education, Children & Families Committee later in the year.

Driving licence fees set to fall

Driving licence fees are set to fall by up to 32% under plans announced by Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander and Transport Minister Claire Perry.

The proposals are contained in a public consultation on driver licensing fees. The consultation sets out a proposed reduction in driving licence fees of 32% for digital transactions and 15% for paper applications.

As part of the proposals, drivers who apply online for their first driving licence would see the fee drop from £50 to £34. Drivers who renew their licence after 10 years would see the fee drop from £20 to £14. All driver tachograph cards would fall from £38 to £32.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander said: “I have been working hard to drive savings across the whole public sector and it’s great to see the benefit of these efficiencies feed through to drivers and businesses pockets. What the DVLA have shown today is that you can do more for less.”

Transport Minister Claire Perry said: “The cost of driving can be significant, especially for new drivers. I’m pleased to say that we are planning to save drivers £18m a year by cutting licence fees, thanks to the DVLA making significant savings to their running costs.”

The proposals are expected to save drivers nearly £18 million and the industry around £2 million every year.

DVLA is currently reviewing all the fees they charge to motorists and the consultation launched today is the first step in this ongoing review. The consultation (document attached below) closes on 25 August 2014.

14-07-02_Annex_B_Fees_Submission_Public_Consultation

Don’t judge our young people too quickly

Youngsters get stuck in to support Millennium Centre

Some of the youngsters in Muirhouse are given a hard time by others, but here we show the other side of them and prove we should not judge the majority by the minority.

Some youngsters came along to the Centre and volunteered during their summer holiday period and we thought it was a great idea. The lads went at it with gusto, tidying the garden as our older retired volunteer was on his annual vacation, and as shown in the photo sweeping and hoeing the paths and car park spaces. No task was beneath these young lads, and they were polite, friendly and hard working.

We would like to thank them all and ask others not to judge our young people too quickly.

James McGinty

Muirhouse Millennium Community Centre

Unknown Soldier: just one week left

Who said the art of letter writing was dead? LETTER TO AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER has turned out to be a huge success, and more than 16,000 people have contributed so far to this new kind of war memorial. Letters have poured in from all over the UK and beyond, each one expressing a different opinion, some deeply personal, others political, some loving and tender, others full of anger.

We’ve had letters from school children and politicians, midwives and teachers, published writers and servicemen and women. This week’s letters include one from the former Home Secretary and postman Alan Johnson, one about the experience of Sikh soldiers in the trenches and hundreds of letters from students around the country, including an absolute gem from 11 year old Craig Hayden Rankin from Rosebank Primary School in Nairn, Scotland.

A week today, the project will come to an end. Will you help us make it an even bigger success? Please, share this link and ask your friends and colleagues to write their own letter too. Our twitter name is @letter1418 and on facebook you can find us at Facebook.com/letter1418. Who knows, maybe we can reach 20,000 letters with your help!

1418now.org.uk/letter

Seeing is believing: new project tells the story of Edinburgh’s blind people

A Heritage Lottery Fund project that will bring to life the stories of people with sight loss in Edinburgh and the Lothians a hundred years ago is being launched today.

‘Seeing Our History’ will offer a unique but often grim glimpse of a time when the blind and partially sighted were consigned to the margins of society, almost wholly dependent on the goodwill of others.

Sight loss charity RNIB Scotland has received £55,700 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to begin the 12-month project.

The aim is to compile a 60-page booklet – in hard copy, braille and ‘talking-book’ formats – to accompany a series of six programmes to be broadcast on the charity’s award-winning Insight Radio station.

The project is indebted to former RNIB Scotland Chair and long-time community activist, campaigner and Councillor Jimmy Cook whose passionate interest in the history of blindness ensured that records survive today.

Dr Catriona Burness of RNIB Scotland said: “We are very excited to have received the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund for this unique project.

“Historical and cultural studies have mainly neglected the experiences of blind and partially sighted people. ‘Seeing our History’ will address this by showing what it was like to have sight loss in Edwardian Edinburgh and Lothians before the First World War. Adults and children endured harsh lives, usually dependent on subsistence work or welfare relief that was conditional on religious conformity.

“This was an era before sight-saving eye-treatments, disability benefits, computer screen-readers and audio-books. If to be poor then was to be at the margins of society, to be blind and poor was to be at the margins of the margins. People had to rely upon poor relief, charitable aid, and meagre supplementary earnings from activities such as hawking, knitting, teaching or playing music, selling tea or keeping house.

“‘Seeing Our History’ will give up to 12 research volunteers, including some with sight loss, an opportunity to develop heritage interest and learn new skills, while also taking the history of blindness to a wider audience who might not previously have given disability much thought.”

The project will base its work on the 1903-10 register of ‘the outdoor blind’ (ie, those not resident in institutions) recently donated by RNIB Scotland to the Lothian Health Services Archive. Details include names, address, place of birth, age when sight was lost, cause of blindness; marital status; how employed; weekly earnings before losing sight and weekly income after, and date of death.

The 1,170 entries in the register will be supplemented by other materials such as census returns, poor relief records, and family papers and wills for the wealthy to enable the project to reconstruct some of the stories of blind and partially sighted people’s lives across social class, gender, occupation, and locality.

Colin McLean, head of HLF Scotland, said “We are delighted to give this innovative project our support. As well as exploring a fascinating and so far largely undiscovered part of our heritage, the project provides opportunities for participants to learn new skills, expand their knowledge and produce a valuable resource for others to learn from, enjoy and be inspired by.”