From today (Monday 3rd October 2022), the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service is changing its guidance around Covid-19. Please read the important information below:
Face masks
It is no longer mandatory to wear a face mask when you come to give blood. However, it is still recommended you wear a face mask or face covering. We can provide a face mask for you.
If you would like any further advice or guidance please contact us in advance, or speak to us when you come to session.
Social distancing
Social distancing will be removed across all blood donation sessions.
Staying well
Please do not come to session if you have symptoms of Covid-19, flu or any other common respiratory infection. These may include:
continuous cough
high temperature, fever or chills
loss of, or change in, your normal sense of taste or smell
shortness of breath
unexplained tiredness, lack of energy
muscle aches or pains that are not due to exercise
not wanting to eat or not feeling hungry
headache that is unusual or longer lasting than usual
sore throat, stuffy or runny nose
diarrhoea, feeling sick or being sick
If you have any of these symptoms, please let us know so we can re-allocate your appointment to someone else.
Our Covid-19: Advice for donors live article remains on the front page of our site, and will continue to be updated as and when changes are made.
Luxury restaurant chain Haute Dolci will be opening its doors to diners in Edinburgh on the 8th of October, creating 30 local jobs and introducing its famous dessert and brunch menu to its first-ever Scottish store.
The flagship store is located in the vibrant St James Quarter and will form part of the cosmopolitan landscape of the city, offering shoppers a chance to enjoy the best in decadent sweet treats and mouth-watering savoury dishes.
The grand opening will start at 10am and will include a variety of entertainment throughout the day, so diners are urged to get there early to make the most of a DJ and magician.
Daniel Gillett, the restaurant manager for Haute Dolci in Edinburgh, said: “We’re delighted to be able to open our first ever Scottish store, bringing Haute Dolci’s stylish and friendly atmosphere to the people of Edinburgh.
“The team has worked incredibly hard to ensure we’re ready to welcome guests to the grand opening and we are so excited to see lots of faces over the course of the day!”
The grand opening follows the famous key hunt, which offers lucky dessert-lovers access to loyalty club benefits and discounts. Clues are still being shared via the restaurant chain’s social media channels — Facebook and Instagram in the run-up to the opening.
For more information on the Haute Dolci brand or to make a reservation at the new Edinburgh restaurant, please visit hautedolci.co.uk.
Haute Dolci franchise opportunities are available across the UK; please contact Franchise@hauteworld.co.uk for more information.
Relationships built at ‘Fun Day’ as home hosts students from Fettes College
A partnership between one of Edinburgh’s most up-market care homes and a prestigious local school sees residents and students uniting for a fun day of intergenerational interaction.
14 students, aged 16-17, from Fettes College visited Cramond Residence as volunteers, where they were able to form connections with the residents across various activities taking place on each floor of the home, including arts and crafts, nail painting and gentle exercise classes.
The event was organised as an opportunity for the school and care home to come together and build relationships that are beneficial for both residents and students.
Craigleith House Coordinator at Fettes College, Eileen Crawford, said: “The fun day was a huge success and we would like to thank Cramond Residence for giving the students a very enjoyable trip and a new learning experience – it was lovely to see bonds formed.
“At Fettes, we want to instil the importance of our students engaging with the community in a positive way and this fun day was the perfect opportunity. The students had a great time and many of them have expressed their desire in making a trip to Cramond a monthly activity.
“There is so much that the younger generation can learn from the older – their world experience is invaluable to our young people taking the first steps in their own lives.
“This event marked the start of a new partnership between Fettes and Cramond, and some students will continue volunteering at the home for their Duke of Edinburgh awards.”
Cramond Residence prides itself on the vast array of exciting activities that its residents can take part in and enjoy, with the Fettes College Fun Day being one of the latest additions to the home’s bustling monthly program.
Designed to promote independent living and socialisation, the fun day saw residents at the home exchanging vibrant life stories with the students while basking outside in the sun, or indulging in a spot of pampering, painting and games.
Client Liaison Manager at Cramond Residence, Christian Daraio, said: “It was an incredible day for everyone involved and the students put a huge smile on the residents’ faces.
“Connecting with the wider community helps eliminate the feelings of isolation that are common in the older generation.
“These events are important for fostering intergenerational engagement that play such a big role in the positive mental health of our residents. We are looking forward to welcoming the students back for more volunteering at the home.”
Cramond Residence, launched in 2018, has provided small-group living for up to 74 residents in nine luxuriously-appointed accommodation with the highest quality of care.
The highly-trained team organises exciting activities and excursions for their residents and offer specialised and individually tailored care in respite, recuperation and dementia care provision.
The care and support provided is based on a detailed personal care plan, which is continually assessed and revised by health care professionals and other experts to ensure that the best possible care is being delivered.
The luxury home will continue to channel its efforts into improving the quality of life for its residents by introducing more innovative workshops and ideas.
To find out more about Cramond Residence, call 0131 341 4037 or visit:
RUSSELL Edwards, the man who has spent the last seven years investigating and trying to find the grave of Keith Bennett, believes people have spent many years “looking in the wrong place.”
The author from Birkenhead, Wirral, discussed the latest as police revealed they have not yet found human remains following the reported discovery of what Russell believes to be Keith’s skull 60 years after he was killed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
Speaking with Anne Diamond and Stephen Dixon on their breakfast show on GB News, Russell explained why he was drawn to a particular location in the Moors and how everybody else was “looking in the wrong place”.
He said: “They’ve been looking at Hoe Grain and Shiny Brook, where Myra Hindley said they took Keith. But, I’ve been helped by one of the former authorities on the story, and she gave me all the information many, many years ago. Our paths crossed on the Ripper work actually and I said our pathways were meant to cross.
“She gave me information that really led me – to putting the pieces together in great detail. Ian Brady told Peter Topping after the first visit that he wanted to go and specifically look at Eagle Rock and the view of the reservoir. When the landowner took me out to show me the murder scenes, where the bodies were discovered, I’ve got to say I’m very sympathetic to this.
“He pointed out Eagle Rock to me and it all just fitted in. Keith has got to be near John Kilbride, the second victim.”
Russell focused his search on the Eagle Rock area of the moors, where Brady is thought to have revisited with a former GMP detective after his imprisonment in 1966.
Russell continued: “I firmly believe that the boys are buried one side and the girls are buried the other (in the land).
“Something that’s very significant was car parking spaces. There’s only two-lane traffic, so you’re not going to put your car on the main road. So you’re going to park your card to the side, where one parking space is and where John is and where we found the evidence of Keith’s remains and on the other side round the corner is where they found Lesley Ann Downey. So that is how I put it all together.”
Russell, who is described as having a lifelong obsession with unsolved cases, contacted Greater Manchester Police at 11.25 am on September 29, claiming he had found the skull of 12-year-old Keith.
The teenager was one of five youngsters killed by Ian Brady and his partner Myra Hindley in the 1960s. He disappeared on 16 June 1964 while on his way to see his grandmother in Manchester.
The infamous couple tortured and killed five youngsters over a period of two years and buried four of their victims on Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines but Keith’s body is the only one that has not been recovered.
Since Russell’s claims, Greater Manchester Police has confirmed they were searching the famous Saddleworth Moor following reports of suspected human remains being found.
Speaking more about his discovery, Russell said: “We were looking for elements in the summer that shouldn’t be there and on that assessment, we got calcium, phosphorus and magnesium, so evidence of skeletal remains.
“It was me that actually found that spot through seven years of relentless work. On the day we found what looked like material, hair, and tissue, that’s what’s left in the body outside of the skeleton and we took a sample of that and gave it to the police.”
Russell went on to explain that an archaeologist confirmed that the teeth discovered matched someone who was of similar age to Keith as it only had one molar.
If you are aged 50 to 64 with no additional risk factors, please wait to be contacted about your winter vaccination appointment. The flu and COVID-19 vaccines are being given to those most at risk first.
More businesses to be categorised as small businesses, meaning less red tape
Move will potentially exempt tens of thousands of the UK’s growing businesses from relevant future regulations, saving them thousands of pounds
Start of a sweeping package of reforms to cut red tape for business and stimulate growth
Thousands of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses will be released from reporting requirements and other regulations in the future, as part of plans aimed at boosting productivity and supercharging growth, Prime Minister Liz Truss announced yesterday.
Currently, small businesses are presumed to be exempt from certain regulations. However, many medium sized businesses – those with between 50 and 249 employees – still report that they are spending over 22 staff days per month on average dealing with regulation, and over half of all businesses consider regulation to be a burden to their operation [source].
The Prime Minister has announced plans to widen these exemptions to businesses with fewer than 500 employees for future and reviewed regulations, meaning an additional 40,000 businesses will be freed from future bureaucracy and the accompanying paperwork that is expensive and burdensome for all but the largest firms.
The exemption will be applied in a proportionate way to ensure workers’ rights and other standards will be protected, while at the same time reducing the burden for growing businesses.
Regulatory exemptions are often granted for SMEs, which the EU defines at below 250 employees. However, we are free to take our own approach and exempt more businesses to those with under 500 employees. We will also be able to apply this to retained EU law currently under review, which we would not have been able to do without our exit from the EU.
The changed threshold will apply from today (Monday 3 October) to all new regulations under development as well as those under current and future review, including retained EU laws. The Government will also look at plans to consult in the future on potentially extending the threshold to businesses with 1000 employees, once the impact on the current extension is known.
This is the first step in a package of reforms to ensure UK business regulation works for the UK economy. The reforms will harness the freedoms the UK has since leaving the EU to remove bureaucratic and burdensome regulations on businesses, while streamlining and making it easier for them to comply with existing rules, ultimately saving them valuable time and money.
An Abertay University student has been named Young Software Engineer of the Year at the 33rd annual ceremony from Scotland’s tech trade body ScotlandIS.
Daniel Gearie took first place at the awards ceremony, held as part of the ScotSoft2022 conference, in Edinburgh last week for developing software that can physically locate the position of a drone operator using a variety of tools and techniques.
While drones are being used to transform many industries, they can be problematic in the wrong hands,– with airport disruptions providing a recent example. Locating drone operators, rather than the drones themselves, can provide longer-term solutions to these issues.
When reviewing submissions, the judges were particularly impressed by the way Daniel identified gaps in the effectiveness of current market-leading technology to track drone pilot locations, with his prototype recognised for being expandable in its use and potentially more secure than other systems.
While Daniel took top spot, the awards recognised a further three students for their outstanding work.
Lilli Freischem, of University of Edinburgh, was named runner up for producing a new software tool that can identify essential genes – ones that are critical to the survival of an organism – in a wide range of life forms.
The detection of essential genes is a grand challenge in personalised medicine, the discovery of new drug targets in cancer, and in the identification of genetic markers for the diagnosis of disease. Lilli’s software is able to communicate seamlessly with tools that are already widely adopted, and end users can use its improved predictive power with little additional training or technical expertise.
Robert Gordon University graduate, Raufs Dunamalijevs, was also a runner up for his work to implement two new penalty estimation algorithms in quadratic unconstrainted binary optimisations, improving the accuracy of combinatorial optimisation problems, which forms an important and complex part of computer science and AI.
Finally, Callum Inglis, Computer Science graduate from the University of Strathclyde, was awarded the Leidos Best Engineering Prize at the ceremony.
He won the award for developing a low-cost, off-grid sensor monitoring system, capable of remote sensing in areas without any existing infrastructure.
While the system is built to be applicable to many industries, Callum’s demonstration of his system focussed on indoor and outdoor air quality data collection, which could ultimately be used to support and inform public health decisions.
The longstanding Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards are held annually by ScotlandIS, to champion budding talent in the Scottish technology industry and highlight the innovation and ideas coming from Scotland’s university students.
To enter, universities submit the best final year software engineering project from among their undergraduate computing science and software engineering courses for the awards.
Karen Meechan, CEO at ScotlandIS, said:“This year, we are celebrating ideas that display an impressive combination of innovation, creativity, and scalability. Each idea brings a potential real term impact to its related sector, making a genuine contribution.
“For decades we have recognised some of the best minds coming from our universities, demonstrating the strength and breadth of tech talent being developed within Scotland.
“In a sector that shows consistent demand for skilled talent, it’s important that, as an industry, we take time to recognise the individuals who truly embody the definition of talent.”
Unlimited monthly winter golf for just £27.50 per month
Wrap up warm, fill up your thermos and grab your clubs. Winter golf at the largest club in town returns on 1st October. And with the unpredictable Scottish weather, you won’t have to rely on one course.
For die hard golf fans who want to keep in the swing of it, even during the winter months, Edinburgh Leisure’s golf membership can be bought online for just £27.50 per month. With minimal use of winter greens and no mats, it’s the ideal opportunity to keep your golf on par until the summer returns.
Winter membership prices stretch from 1st October 2022 to 31st March 2023 and allow access to Edinburgh Leisure’s six golf courses. Edinburgh Leisure’s 18-hole courses include Braid Hills, Carrick Knowe, Craigentinny, and Silverknowes. If you’re after a shorter then you can play our 9-hole courses at Portobello and the Wee Braids.
Payable monthly by direct debit, different membership options are available including access to all the courses, seven days a week; and a five-day membership, costing £22.50, with access to all courses Monday to Friday.
The membership also gives 20% off other Edinburgh Leisure activities including the gym, swimming, racquet sports and climbing, at the various Edinburgh Leisure venues across the city.
