The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has issued the following statement after the deadline for the re-formation of the Northern Ireland Executive passed:
As of earlier today, an Executive can no longer form and I am duty-bound by law to call new elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly as set out in the New Decade, New Approach agreement as soon as practicably possible and within 12 weeks.
I believe strongly that people in Northern Ireland deserve locally-elected decision-makers who are working for them, to address the issues that matter most to people here.
Having spoken with the various Party leaders this week, I know no one in Northern Ireland is calling for an election – but nearly all Parties signed up to the Agreement that put us in this position only a couple of years ago.
Today I also met the Chief Electoral Officer to discuss operational considerations to inform my decision about the election date.
It was particularly disappointing to see yesterday that the Assembly was still unable to elect a Speaker, despite all the time that has passed.
At a time when so many are struggling with the cost of living and fearful of what is to come, I understand people’s frustration that MLAs continue to draw a full salary when they are not performing all the duties they were elected to do.So, I will be considering my options to act on MLA pay.
Right now, the Executive no longer has Ministers in post to act for the people of Northern Ireland.
That means no Ministers to deliver the public services you rely on. That means no Ministers to manage the budget pressures affecting the funding of your hospitals, your schools, your doctors and nurses.
So in the absence of an Executive I will take limited but necessary steps to protect public finances and the delivery of public services.
I have already met the Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Jayne Brady, to discuss this and gather evidence on the state of Stormont’s financial position. I shall hopefully receive more detailed information about this next week.
Then I’ll soon outline our plan of action to make sure that the interests of the people of Northern Ireland are protected.
And to those who have called for “joint authority” of Northern Ireland in recent days, let me say this: this won’t be considered.
The UK Government is absolutely clear that the consent principle governs the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. We will not support any arrangements that are inconsistent with that principle.
Although Meadowbank Sports Centre opened its doors to the public on 19 July, The City of Edinburgh Council will be holding its official opening on Friday, 4 November.
To coincide with this opening, Edinburgh Leisure will be celebrating the occasion by opening the whole of Meadowbank Sports Centre for free from Friday, 4th until Sunday, 6th November 2022.
Over the weekend, there will be kids’ coaching, gym, fitness classes, racquet sports, and the running track and athletics area available for everyone to come and try for free and to find out first-hand what all the fuss is about.
Donald Goldsmith, Manager at Meadowbank Sports Centre said: “My team and I have been enjoying welcoming customers old and new to these state-of-the-art facilities but there are still lots of people across the city who haven’t had the opportunity to see this fantastic new facility for Edinburgh.
“So, whether it’s for nostalgic reasons or with a view to signing up for membership, please do take the opportunity to pay us a visit. I know you’ll be impressed. We have a fantastic joining offer of just 1p across the weekend too – our Penny Campaign, which is only available until 6th November, so don’t miss out on this fantastic offer to kick start your fitness and wellbeing routine.”
The new Meadowbank is supporting physical activity, sport, health, and wellbeing in Edinburgh for generations to come, while also recognising the legacy and heritage of the old Meadowbank and over 50 years of sporting history at the venue.
Edinburgh Leisure has different memberships that are flexible and affordable. Customers can choose a Gym, Swim or Fitness Class package at Meadowbank or their local venue or sign up for Edinburgh Leisure’s most popular Full Fitness membership giving individuals unlimited access to all their venues across the city.
18-24 year olds can enjoy unlimited access to gyms, pools, classes and climbing for just £25 a month with their Young Adult Membership.
There are additional member benefits like priority bookings, free gym introduction and discounts on a range of activities. There is no contract – and customers can freeze or cancel their membership at any time.
Picture – Chris Watt Photography
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The new Meadowbank has much to offer the local community and communities throughout Edinburgh and includes the following facilities:
Outdoor eight-lane athletics track with a 499-seat stand and outdoor throwing and jumps area
A 60m six-lane indoor athletics track and jumps space
Two multi-sport halls with fixed and moveable spectator seating
A hall for trampolining and dance
Two fitness studios (capacity – 30 each), which include world-renowned Les Mills programme of classes, smart tech bars and weights
The fitness class timetable will open with 92 classes
A Cycle Studio (capacity – 30) with Life Fitness IC7 bikes and ICG myride and Les Mills RPM classes
A gym with Life Fitness equipment, dumbbells up to 50kg, Watt bikes, SkiErg, row and Cybex SPARC machines (capacity – 90)
Combined bumped plates weighs in the gym – 2927.5kg
Combined dumbbell weight in the gym – 1,918kg
40+ pieces of resistance and free weights equipment
Two squash courts
A combat studio for martial arts
A boxing gym
Two 3G (synthetic) pitches, including one with a 499-seat stand
A hospitality Suite and event-hosting facilities
Cafe and meeting rooms
To find out how to book for the various free sessions during the Meadowbank Open Weekend (Friday, 4th – Sunday, 6th November 2022), visit:
TONIGHT and tomorrow we’re open on Pitt Street for the final time ahead of our move to Granton. See what’s on – below!
Friday (Ceilidh only) 6pm Doors open 8pm Tunes from The Radges
Saturday 12pm – 6pm Free entry to food stalls and bar 6pm Doors open for the ceilidh 8pm Tunes from The Dance Bandits
Food and drink from our residents (Spot., Free the Chilli, The Buffalo Truck, Ròst, Barnacles & Bones, Barney’s) and guests (Goodtimes Tacos, The Peruvian, The Funnel Cake Co.) will be served both days!
Also expect to see the familiar face of Wacky Winyl with us.
Halloween costumes are very welcome!
As thanks for subscribing to our newsletter, enjoy 25% off with the code ‘pittpals’. Grab your tickets to the ceilidhs below, or join us Saturday day for food and drink alone!
Our Halloween Fest is drawing ever closer. We’ll be at Granton Community Gardeners on Monday the 31st from 3-6pm and boy oh boy do we have a treat (or trick) in store for you!!!
Pop down for a cup of seasonal soup, get your face painted, and join in with some of our spooky activities.
All are welcome, so get yourself down to Granton Community Garden and have the fright of your life!
Elderly, disabled and other vulnerable people will get better support to stay safe online and avoid being misled by disinformation thanks to a funding boost from the government to mark UNESCO Global Media and Information Literacy Week.
Funding awarded to improve media literacy among vulnerable and ‘hard-to-reach’ groups
Will support projects across the UK to ensure everyone can protect themselves from online disinformation
Part of the government’s Online Media Literacy Strategy to help people be safe online
Elderly, disabled and other vulnerable people will get better support to stay safe online and avoid being misled by disinformation thanks to a funding boost from the government to mark UNESCO Global Media and Information Literacy Week.
More than £1 million has been granted to 17 UK organisations to pilot new ways of boosting media literacy skills for people at risk of experiencing online abuse and being deceived into believing false information, such as vaccine disinformation, deepfake videos or propaganda created by hostile states.
Research shows some people struggle to engage and benefit from the range of media literacy education on offer, due to limited experience or overconfidence in using the internet, as well as a lack of awareness of how to access resources and their unavailability outside of schools and colleges.
The Media Literacy Taskforce Fund is one of two funding schemes created to target ‘hard-to-reach’ and vulnerable groups by investing in community-led projects to ensure everyone has the opportunity to improve their media literacy skills and protect themselves from online disinformation.
Social enterprise Freshrb will work with young people to develop their own podcasts exploring online dis- and misinformation to be aired on local radio. Another project run by charity Internet Matters will provide media literacy training for dozens of care workers and leavers in the Greater Manchester area.
Elderly people from diverse backgrounds in Leeds will have access to digital media skills training online and in community centres as part of the Leeds Older People’s Forum. Parent Zone is working with eight local councils including Calderdale, Luton and Middlesborough to deliver media literacy resources tailored to parents and carers of teenagers.
A separate scheme, the Media Literacy Programme Fund, will deliver training courses, online learning, tech solutions and mentoring schemes to vulnerable internet users.
Digital Secretary Michelle Donelan said: “With the rise of online disinformation, teaching people to identify fact from fiction has never been more important to public safety.
“As well as bringing forward new laws to tackle the root causes of these problems, we are funding organisations to give people the skills to stay safe online so everyone can benefit from all the internet has to offer.”
NewsGuard, which will work with ageing-focused charities to, deliver workshops to older adults to support them in spotting mis- and disinformation online;
The Economist Educational Foundation will work with disadvantaged schools and boost teachers’ skills through news literacy training and support students to engage with the news and think critically about what they’re consuming online;
Online Safety charity Glitch will deliver workshops and training to vulnerable and marginalised women to support their media literacy skills including tackling online abuse.
All the schemes are part of the government’s plans to deliver the Online Media Literacy Strategy, a national action plan to empower people to stay safe online by giving them the skills they need to think critically about what they see and read on the internet.
Launched in July 2021, the three-year strategy supports media literacy organisations to deliver education and initiatives in a more wide-reaching and effective way. The year two plan, published in April, is backed by more than £2 million in targeted funding, including today’s announcement.
This is in addition to the £250,000 grant funding delivered to five organisations working with schools to adapt media literacy resources for teachers working with disabled students in our year one action plan.
The announcement coincides with the UNESCO Global Media and Information Literacy Week, a global initiative celebrating the progress countries have made toward making media literacy education more accessible to its citizens by implementing national media and information literacy policies.
The grant funding complements the measures in the groundbreaking Online Safety Bill, which supports a safer online environment by requiring tech firms to protect children from harmful content and tackle criminal activity on their platforms.
Changing Times inspires curious film experiences that connect future and past
A programme of special events is underway across the UK, all of which use film to connect us in these ever-changing times.
The Changing Times: Curious screen heritage programme, which began in earnest at Thurrock Film Festival, uses archive film to find new ways to celebrate the human desire to learn more about the people and things around us, bringing heritage cinema to new audiences in many different ways. The programme from the BFI Film Audience Network is made possible thanks to National Lottery funding.
Later in the autumn, The Box, in partnership with Plymouth Arts Cinema and Compass Presents, will show a selection of films as part of Changing Times: Curious, which allow audience members to expand their connection with the work in the galleries.
CURIOUS About British Art Show 9 will feature screenings that highlight the ways in which encounters between British and other cultures have enriched our society throughout history.
This follows the events in Thurrock by the Anglo Asiatic Arts and Heritage Alliance (AAAHA), which honoured several socio-historic milestones, namely the 75th anniversary of the Independence of India and Pakistan, the 50th year since the expulsion of South Asians and Sikhs from Uganda, and the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong.
Similarly, Re:Score was part of The Freedom Festival 2022, an annual feast of music and performance arts held since 2007 in honour of Hull’s slave trade abolitionist, the MP William Wilberforce. It featured commissions by The Broken Orchestra (UK), providing specially created scores to breathe new life into seemingly forgotten pieces of silent archive footage, featuring a Black May Queen in wartime Britain, and a charity supporting the families of local fisherman in the 1960s.
Journey to the Isles, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, a new commission from the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival offered a glimpse into the landscapes, folktales and songs that inspired one of Scotland’s great early collectors of traditional arts.
The tour of the piece across Scotland, including at Sea Change Festival by Screen Argyll in Tiree, Dundee Contemporary Arts, and An Tobar and Mull Theatre, concluded at Eden Court in Inverness and featured a performer Q&A, plus a live stream for international audiences.
In collaboration with the East Anglian Film Archive, Reel Connections in Norwich will host an archive package entitledSounds of Silents: Curious Youth at the Octagon Unitarian Chapel in the city on 27 October.
The event will include live scores by local musicians Broads, featuring Jess Blake, Kitty Perrin and Milly Hirst. A short film version will then be made available for screenings at community venues in partnership with Creative Arts East, later in the year.
This will be followed by I Ken Whaur I’m Gaun(I Know Where I’m Going) by Cinetopia at The French Institute in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town between 27 and 31 October.
The event, which will explore how folk songs have acted as a form of storytelling in Scotland over time, includes archive film screenings, live musical performances using material extracted from the National Library of Scotland’s moving image archive, and a looped audio-visual installation that will be on display throughout.
Having started on October 13 at Berneray in Borve, Uist Film will screen Gaelic documentary Dúthchas (Home) through the UK, accompanied by a minority language archival film programme using materials from across the UK’s film archives.
Dúthchas (Home) is a touching and emotive exploration of what it meant – and still means to people, especially women, to have to leave the island of their birth.
For the finale of Yorkshire Silent Film Festival on 6 November at Morecambe Winter Gardens, No Dots Ltd will present Echoes of the North: Four Chapters in Time, the world premiere of a silent film made from more than 100 fragments of archive film, together with an all-brass live score performance from Brighouse and Rastrick Band.
The event will be complemented by a selection of short films scored by Morecambe and Lancaster-based musicians.
Throughout November, Birds’s Eye View will present Queerious, an archive programme with short films from national archives that’s touring the UK, exploring a multitude of desires on screen in ways all too rarely seen in cinema, including stories of sexual awakenings and re-awakenings, and queer love through a feminist perspective.
Venues include the Exeter Phoenix, Glasgow Film Theatre, Broadway in Nottingham, London’s Rio and Genesis, the Showroom in Sheffield, Chapter in Cardiff, and Depot in Lewes.
Venues in Glasgow, Leeds and Erith this month and next will showcase After Hours,co-curated by Invisible Women and T A P E Collective to explore the significance of nightlife and safe cultural spaces through a queer/feminist lens.
Meanwhile, audiences in Walton, Liverpool can enjoy Walton Wonders under Cinema Nation’s The Spirit of Liverpool banner, a series ofscreenings and community events celebrating unexpected archive discoveries, including a Home Movie Day and a pop-up cinema at the Rice Lane Underpass in collaboration with the North West Film Archive.
A double bill of Welsh Horror films from the 1970s will be shown by Matchbox Cine in collaboration with the National Library of Wales Screen and Sound Archive. Screenings will take place at Weird Weekend, Glasgow on 30 October, and at Abertoir – The International Horror Film Festival of Wales in Aberystwyth, starting on 15 November.
And last but not least, Belfast Film Festival is to host Vox Populi: The Voice of the People, a walk-through installation at the Bank of Ireland building in the city featuring informal street interviews recorded between 1959-1969 from the Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, offering an insight into the area’s social history and highlighting unexpected attitudes of the day which both differ from, and echo, those held today.
Sheffield International Documentary Festival 2019
Screen Heritage Producer Andy Robson was a key decision-maker selecting projects to make up Changing Times: Curious. Speaking on the theme of curiosity, and the forthcoming events, he said: “The last few years have forced us to look at life through a new lens. Through disruption and isolation, we’ve recognised things we may have missed or never considered before.
“Through multiple lockdowns, we gained a new awareness of our communities and neighbourhoods, made discoveries of previously unacknowledged places on our doorsteps, and found satisfaction in personal passions and curiosities.
“However we experienced it, we were asked to question and learn something new, to understand the unfamiliar and seek solutions. Through film’s unique ability to transport us, illuminate ideas and to spark a conversation, we can seek those solutions and understand those experiences together.”
Visit individual venues and organisations to find out more about events and to book. And to find out more about Changing Times: Curious, visit
As part of NHS Lothian’s sustainability programme, they have recently introduced the use of e-Bikes to several services, which will allow nearly 200 staff to access this healthier and more eco-friendly way of getting around.
Last year the Podiatry department in Edinburgh were the first to be part of a trial in NHS Lothian designed to reduce carbon emissions, save money and support staff wellbeing. The eCargo bikes were used as a way of travelling to see and support patients.
Gillian Hawthorne, Team Lead Podiatrist said: “Although this pilot has both financial and environmental benefits, it also has the bonus of supporting our staff’s health and wellbeing by giving them more access to fresh air and exercise while working.
“We hope this project will help to reduce the use of cars for undertaking home visits whilst addressing the ever-increasing traffic congestion in the City of Edinburgh.”
Although the trial started small with just two e-bikes, the health board now has a total of 24 e-bikes over multiple services.
Some of the teams now using the e-bikes include a Rapid Response Team, a Health Visitors team, a Community Mental health team and several others.
We recently spoke to Ciara Feeney, Podiatrist, about her experience using the e-Bikes to visit patients and travel around the city. Watch a short video with Ciara online
Jane Hopton, Sustainability Lead and Programme Director for Facilities in NHS Lothian, said: “This roll out is the next step to our overall sustainability work in Lothian and we hope it will inspire other departments to do the same.
“The more people that make the decision to cycle or walk rather than drive, the more impact this will have on NHS Lothian’s carbon emissions.”
NHS Lothian is committed to sustainability and reducing carbon emissions.
Edinburgh Napier computing student graduates months after surgery
Leann Wilson has completed her course with distinction
A mum of three says her determination to set an example for her children has helped her to graduate from Edinburgh Napier University just months after undergoing thyroid removal surgery.
The 43-year-old from Stirling initially signed up to the graduate apprentice scheme, allowing her to continue working alongside her studies, so she could change the direction of her career.
After taking several weeks to recover from the procedure, she is now starting work in a new role as IT delivery manager at Sky.
Leann said: “It’s shown my commitment and resilience to complete the degree – despite the challenges which it has thrown up.
“I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and had to have my full thyroid removed in May this year. I needed time to recover and get back on track. It meant I was going through that period of ‘oh god – what if, what if’.
“My approach with everything was one thing at a time, just take baby steps.
“I’m still in a wee bit of shock that I’ve graduated to be honest! I’m giving myself a significant pat on the back. I’ve done it to show my kids not to give up.”
Leann has paid tribute to her three children, aged 19, 15 and 9, for helping her complete her studies, as well as programme leader Jyoti Bhardwaj.
Leann added: “When the opportunity to do this course came up, I grabbed it with both hands. My kids were older, so I had more time to focus on what I want to do.
“I started the degree when I was 39, which is obviously later than many. It was pretty full-on – then obviously the pandemic hit and I had to combine it with home schooling – which was hard going. I think I got through it because I’m so stubborn!
“I previously worked in financial services – and I’m proud to have changed careers just a few years after deciding to make the move.”
