Local community Police Constables Sarah Hall and Tony Lawrence will be at Royston Wardieburn Community Centre from 7 – 8pm next Thursday (6 June).
Other police drop-in dates for Royston Wardieburn are:
Thursday 6th June
Thursday 4th July
Thursday 1st August
Thursday 29th August
Thursday 24th October
Thursday 21st November
Nutmegs, an exciting new weekly programme for parents, carers and pre-school children, is starting at West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre next week.
Run in association with The Spartans Community Football Academy, Nutmegs starts on Monday (3 June) from 9.30 – 10.30 and will run for four weeks until 24 June. Activities on offer include teamwork, coordination, balance, communication and fun games – and it’s all free!
To find out more or to bbok your place telephone West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre on 551 3194.
Donate a night’s sleep – and help The MoonWalkers Walk the Walk!
Have you always wanted to be part of The MoonWalk Edinburgh, but thought that taking on a Power Walking challenge was a few steps too far? Donating a night’s sleep by volunteering during the event could be just the answer!
The MoonWalk Edinburgh Scotland 2013 takes place at Leith Links on 8 June, organised by grant-making breast cancer charity Walk the Walk. Thousands of women and men Power Walk through the city at Midnight, wearing brightly decorated bras, raising money and awareness for breast cancer.
Walk the Walk needs a thousand volunteers – these amazing people literally make the event happen. Without them, thousands of MoonWalkers couldn’t take on their Power Walking challenges, and raise millions of pounds for vital breast cancer causes.
There is a wide variety of roles to suit everyone. Marshalls guide and direct walkers around the route, encouraging and cheering them on as they complete their challenge, as well as manning water stops. Keen cyclists, with their own bike, can join the cycle support team.
On The MoonWalk City site, volunteers help sell a fabulous selection of bra pins, gorgeous pink balloons and colourful Walk the Walk tattoos to walkers, raising even more money. Do you have a professional massage qualification? If so, you can join the charity’s team of masseuses, giving walkers a much needed confidence boost just before The MoonWalk. Whilst many people are needed overnight, the 6am shift is ideal for early birds. As hundreds of dedicated volunteers near the end of a long but rewarding night, a fresh team of enthusiastic workers takes over!
Nina Barough CBE, Founder and Chief Executive of Walk The Walk said: “Every year I am so touched by the enormous generosity of all those people who Volunteer for The MoonWalk, they are so committed to supporting our Walkers and helping to make the night a success. Without them, the event could not take place. These are the people who will still be smiling and cheering in the small hours, and will be on the Finish Line until the last person makes it home! It really is a night when everybody can help make a difference, and the Walk the Walk Volunteers are second to none. It’s probably the most dynamic and awe-inspiring night you can experience”.
To sign up as a volunteer for The MoonWalk Edinburgh Scotland, and for more information, go to
Entries for The New Moon, a 6.55 miles quarter marathon, are open until Wednesday (29 May).
Craigroyston Community High School are holding a car boot sale on Saturday. Susanne Mackay, Curriculum Leader of Health and Wellbeing, explained: “Our car boot sale is to allow us to add to our ongoing fundraising efforts for the school, and also to continue to develop the community links and services which we have in place”.
The details:
Saturday 1st June 10am – 1pm (9am arrival for anyone selling)
£10 entry for anyone wishing to sell goods, tables available to hire for £3 each.
Indoor area set aside for bad weather alternative.
Anyone interested should contact the school on admin@craigroyston.edin.sch.uk
or telephone 0131 477 7801.
A very happy birthday to Pilton’s own Betty McVay, who is eighty years old today. Many happy returns, Betty – see you at the party!
Selex ES Chairman Allan Cook CBE rolled up his sleeves and worked alongside a number of Selex ES apprentices including the company’s current and former apprentices of the year yesterday.
Allan (pictured above) started his career as an apprentice and is a chartered engineer with more than 30 years’ international experience in the automotive, aerospace and defence industries. As Chairman of Semta, the UK’s Sector Skills Council for the advanced manufacturing and engineering sectors, Allan is a passionate advocate of apprenticeships and believes that they add tremendous value to industry. Allan was joined by Alastair Morrison, Senior Vice President Radar and Advanced Targeting, who also returned to the shop floor to experience life as an apprentice first hand.
“It’s always a pleasure to spend time with our apprentices, the dedication and focus they exhibit gives me great confidence in the future of the skilled trades in Scotland and the wider UK”, he said. “As a technology leader, Selex ES benefits strongly from the fresh talent brought into the company by our highly-rated apprenticeship schemes.”
The activity was the culmination of Selex ES’s participation in Scottish Apprenticeship Week, which saw current Selex ES apprentice Callum Anderson send out live tweets from internal and external events associated with the week-long celebration of apprenticeships’ contribution to industry, including a special event at Scottish Parliament.
Tick tock. Tick tock. As those jolly Jambo japesters are always only too keen to point out – 111 years and counting! The last time Hibs lifted the Scottish Cup there were trams on Edinburgh’s streets, for goodness sake! But maybe, just maybe, it’s time …
On the face of it, Sunday’s cup final should be little more than a stroll for Celtic. After all, the Glasgow team won the SPL with plenty in hand, despite losing a surprising number of games – seven. Mind you, when you are so dominant it’s easy to take your eye off the ball.
Celtic coasted to league victory with such ease that it’s hard to call the SPL ‘title race’ a competition. Really, it was over as a contest as soon as ‘The Rangers’ disappeared into the depths of the lower leagues – the question was always going to be: who’ll finish second?
With the resources Celtic have at their disposal, perhaps that’s as it should be. Now a lone giant in a diddy wee league, over the course of a long, hard – okay, maybe not that hard – season they have by far the biggest squad with the greatest quality in Scotland. True, they’re not up against much, but that’s not their fault. All Celtic could do was win, and usually they did just that. Not always playing pretty, silky soccer – but then we are talking Scottish football.
And yet Celtic surprised many critics of the Scottish game – and there are plenty of them – with that memorable defeat of the mighty Barcelona in the Champions League. They may play in a poor league, but make no mistake: Celtic are a good team, and at the end of a steady and satisfactory if unspectacular season, a league and cup double would be a fair reflection of Celtic’s current domination of Scottish football – the icing on the cake.
Celtic should have too many players of real quality to suffer any shocks on Sunday, with potential match winners all over the park – including two ex-Hibees Scott Brown and Anthony Stokes. Celtic are well aware of Hibs’ strengths (one in particular!) and weaknesses – an inability to deal decisively with cross balls is one area that Celtic will surely try to exploit. If Celtic’s attitude is right, and they bring their ‘A’ game on the day, there’s not a team in Scotland to beat them.
And yet …
Inconsistent is perhaps the most charitable way to describe Hibs’ season. Yes, there’s been the occasional fragile green shoot of recovery, the tantalising glimmer of hope that the team has turned the corner, but for much of the season Hibs form has been poor – that bottom six league position doesn’t lie. A hesitant defence that leaked goals, self-inflicited wounds, games lost or drawn that should have been won …
And yet … over the last few weeks, Hibs seem to have found their stride and have hit form at just the right time.
Maybe going three goals down to a First Division team in a Hampden semi-final was the collective wake-up call they so desperately needed: that remarkable fightback not only resurrected Hibs’ season but also perhaps exorcised some of the demons of last year’s Hampden horror show.
Perhaps it was the shared experience of that Falkirk fright, and the elation of the hard-fought victory, that lifted the spirits and galvanised the Easter Road men. They seem to have discovered a collective resolve, a fighting team spirit and self-belief that has been sadly lacking over what has been – Scottish Cup aside – a distinctly lacklustre season. Whatever the catalyst, there’s a quiet confidence and assurance creeping in at Easter Road – and at last, things are going the right way and Hibs have a team that is worthy of the name.
Young players of quality are coming through the youth setup once again. There’s real competition for places and manager Pat Fenlon has choices and decisions to make – it would be wrong to assume that Hibs are a one man team. The loss of captain James McPake, a natural leader, is a huge blow – his presence and experience will be sorely missed and it’s now up to other senior players to show that same level of commitment and leadership on Sunday. It’s a day for big performances.
And Hibs do have Leigh Griffiths. Whatever the young man’s off-field travails, Hibs seem to have unlocked Griffiths’ undoubted potential. With twenty-eight goals to his name, Leigh Griffiths has been the difference between relative success and abject failure at Easter Road this season, adding an impressive work rate to an unerring eye for goal. His attitude has been transformed and Griffiths has matured into a prodigious talent.
Whether Hibs can hang on to their talisman remains in doubt but Griffiths has at least one more game in a Hibs shirt – a game in which his name could go down in history as the man who brought the cup back to Easter Road after all those years. And for Hibs fan Griffiths what a great way to go, if go he must.
So Hibs fans in their thousands will head out west tomorrow more in hope than expectation. Yes it’s unlikely, but Hibs can win the Scottish Cup – although it would be very unwise to give Celtic the same three goal start they gifted Falkirk on their last Hampden visit.
Celtic, for all their qualities, are not invincible and this time round Hibs fans really have nothing to fear. Because, whatever tomorrow’s result, surely it could never feel anything like as bad as last year’s craven capitulation, that Hampden humiliation at the hands of Hearts?
The year of the underdog? Maybe. Perhaps it really is time. Tick tock …
Congratulations to Broughton High School’s S1 football team, who beat Grange Academy 2-1 in the final of the Under 13 Scottish Shield at Rugby Park in Kilmarnock last night.
A volunteer who has been carrying out unpaid work in North Edinburgh has had her bike stolen.
The volunteer was conducting an interview a community activist as background research for a Pilton Community Health Project initiative when the bike was stolen from outside North Edinburgh Arts and Muirhouse Library in Pennywell Court.
The victim, who asked not to be named, said: “It was stolen between 12.30 and 2pm. I’m totally gutted – I have been volunteering my free time in the community, I only work part-time and the bike gets me around for my job. Any help to retrieve my mode of transport would be greatly appreciated.”
The bike is a black and white (mans size) specialised road bike, with P2 type overendz bar ends on the handlebars. If you have any information about the stolen bike or can help in any way please contact local police or you can contact Crimestoppers in confidence on 0800 555 111.
A community campaign to reopen Leith Waterworld has voiced concerns over a late £1 million bid to buy the building and reopen it as a soft play centre. Splashback are urging councillors to show conviction and to stick with commitments made in January.
Councillors voted to give further support the community initiative in January, and since then Splashback have been working with the city council to progress the feasibility of reopening Waterworld as a social enterprise – so news of a fresh bid for Waterworld has not been welcomed.
In a statement, the group said: “We were delighted when, on 31 January this year, the city’s Councillors overwhelmingly voted to work with Splashback and to establish a working group to develop the business plan for a community-run Leith Waterworld. This reflected the administration’s desire to work cooperatively with the citizens of Edinburgh, as set out in the Capital Coalition agreement. Over the last three and a half months, we have worked with Councillors and officials in good faith, and while there remains much still to do, we have made significant progress, including developing a fundraising plan and applying for charitable status.”
The statement continues: “The development of Leith Waterworld as a community-led social enterprise would support the first two partnership commitments of the coalition, namely ‘ensuring every child in Edinburgh has the best start in life’ and ‘reducing poverty, inequality and deprivation’. The coalition agreement acknowledged the breakdown in trust between the residents of Edinburgh and their elected representatives, and that the city will be able to judge the Council against the promises it makes in the agreement.
“Splashback understands that this new bid leaves Councillors with a decision to make at next week’s Full Council meeting – whether to continue working with us to achieve a revitalised Leith Waterworld, or to pursue the new bid at this stage. However, we have faith in the letter and the spirit of the amendment carried on 31 January, and believe that the conviction displayed by Councillors on that day will guide their decision. We look forward to continuing to work with the Council to deliver on the commitments they made in January.”
Councillor Richard Lewis, the city’s Culture and Sport Convener, said: “Over the last few months officials and elected members have been working closely with Splashback to progress the feasibility phase of their community bid to run Leith Waterworld. I’d like to thank Splashback for their continued commitment to developing their community bid.
“The council had agreed in January to re-market the property whilst we were supporting the feasibility phase of Splashback’s bid and in the intervening months we received two new unsolicited notes of interest in purchasing Leith Waterworld, one of which is being taken to council for consideration.”
Councillors will discuss the bid – and receive a progress report on the Splashback initiative – at next Thursday’s full council meeting.
