Pilton Youth & Children’s Project (PYCP) are holsing their Annual General Meeting at The Greenhouse off West Pilton Place this Friday (25 October) from 2 – 4pm. All welcome!
PS: Congratulations to all at PYCP who raised £150 when they supported the MacMillan World’s Biggest Coffee Morning last month!
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College bursaries and undergraduate student loans will increase and support for postgraduate students on eligible courses will be made available as part of the Scottish Government’s commitment to put more money in students’ pockets.
Investment of over £100 million in college bursaries will deliver an increase in line with inflation. Undergraduate student loans will increase by £250 a year, bringing the minimum income for those from the lowest income households to £7,500.
Scottish domiciled postgraduate students undertaking eligible supported courses, a majority of which cover STEM subjects which are in demand from employers, will be able to apply for a loan of up to £4,500 a year to help with living costs from 2015-16. This is in addition to the current loan available as a contribution towards the cost of tuition.
Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning Michael Russell said: “Providing protection from inflation for further education student support in the next academic year was a key priority for students. Our response will see the value of the total college bursaries package rise to around £105 million.
“For higher education students, we scrapped tuition fees, introduced a minimum income of £7,250 – which will now rise to £7,500 – for students from the lowest-income households and have provided what NUS describe as ‘the best package of student support in the UK.
“Today’s announcement to increase bursaries and loans builds on these commitments. College students will be better off while undergraduate students at university will have access to an extra £250 per year. Scottish domiciled postgraduate students on eligible courses will now be able to apply for a loan of up to £4,500 to help meet the cost of their living expenses.
“We want students in Scotland to be able to study for the qualification that suits their ability and ambition. These changes will help make that a reality and improve the life chances and employability of young Scots delivering real benefits to the Scottish economy in future.”
Black History Month brochure octFlyer
A fantastic event to mark Black History Month takes place at Edinburgh Academy on Saturday. See the brochure (below) for full details:
Black History Month brochure oct1
The city council is running an art competition for schoolchildren from Muirhouse, Pilton and Pennywell to mark the start of construction of new homes in West Pilton Crescent – and the closing date for entries is fast approaching.
‘What does home mean to you?’ is the appropriate theme of the competition which is open to pupils of Pirniehall, St David’s, Craigroyston and Forthview, Oaklands and Craigroyston Community High School. Entries can be drawings, paintings, a collage or photographs – but your artwork must be submitted by the closing date of next Friday, 25 October.
Winners of the various categories (see the attached poster) will be announced on
Thursday 21 November. Good luck!
I have attached (above) a copy of a leaflet publicising ‘We Will Be Free’, a new play by Townsend Theatre Productions, about the Tolpuddle Martyrs and their fight for justice (see blurb on back page). It’s being hosted by North Edinburgh Arts next Friday (25 October) as part of our Power to the People Autumn programme. Tickets are only £3 for local folk with good neighbour cards (free from the arts centre).
This is Townsend Theatre Productions second visit to North Edinburgh. Last year, they brought us ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ which they performed brilliantly.
Hope to see you at the performance!
Lynn McCabe
Research by Scottish Green MSP Alison Johnstone has revealed a mounting crisis in Lothian region for the increasingly popular idea of growing your own food. A Freedom of Information request has revealed that Lothian residents face waits of up to NINE YEARS for a council allotment.
Research has revealed that over 3000 people are on waiting lists across the region – Edinburgh’s current waiting list is 2773 – with the waiting time for sites varying from four to nine years with an average waiting time of four to five years.
The Greens add that some local authorities are opposing the idea of timescales and targets for providing allotments. Existing legislation says councils should provide allotments but it doesn’t specify any timescale, resulting in huge waiting lists – and this despite statistics showing a third of Scotland’s population lives within 500 metres of vacant land!
Alison Johnstone, Green MSP for Lothian and food spokesperson for the Scottish Greens (pictured above), said: “These figures suggest Scotland needs Right to Grow legislation in the same way we have seen community groups being given the right to buy land that comes up for sale. It is appalling that across Lothian than are over 3,000 people on waiting lists and probably hundreds more who feel it’s pointless putting their name down.
“It is hugely embarrassing that in East Lothian – known as the Garden of Scotland – there are over 300 people waiting yet the local authority doesn’t want to set timescales to reduce the lists. I will be looking for opportunities in the forthcoming Community Empowerment Bill to give control to the increasing numbers of people looking to grow their own food. The demand is there, the land is there and the benefits are obvious.”
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Substance use in North Edinburgh is the main theme of next week’s Forth & Inverleith Voluntary Sector Forum meeting, which will take place at 10am on Wednesday 23 October at North Edinburgh Arts.
The meeting offers an opportunity to hear from the organisations who work in this field and learn how your organisation can work more closely with them. Substances use impacts not just on the user but on families and the wider community too, so all local voluntary and community organisations are invited to join in the discussion.
For further information call EVOC’s Neighbourhood Partnership Development Officer Kate Kasprowicz on 555 9100 or email kate.kasprowicz@evoc.org.uk
NHS Lothian is looking for children, young people and parents to give their views on the services it will provide for children and young people from now until 2020.
A public consultation on the organisation’s draft strategy, ‘Improving the Health and Wellbeing of Lothian’s Children and Young People’, is now underway and will run until 17 January 2014.
The consultation documents and a short questionnaire are available on the NHS Lothian website and have also been sent to the four local authorities and to voluntary organisations that work with children and young people.
NHS Lothian’s vision is that every child should have the best start in life and grow up being healthy, confident and resilient.
The draft strategy and approach has considered the changes that may be made to services in anticipation of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill coming into effect and should allow the Board to respond to this while maintaining high quality healthcare services for children and young people.
The priorities identified in the strategy include a focus on prevention, more integrated working across services and the building of a high quality replacement for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children.
Sally Egan, Associate Director and Child Health Commissioner, NHS Lothian said: “We provide a wide range of services for children and young people, from conception through the life stages, helping them grow up to become confident healthy people. For those young people that need ongoing specialist help we need to ensure a smooth transition to adult services.
“We want to make sure that our vision and outcomes for the next six years fit with those of the Scottish Government’s 20:20 Vision and are areas the people of Lothian want to see us focusing investment and resources on. I hope people take this opportunity to give us their views.”
The consultation documents can be accessed online at: http://www.nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk/OurOrganisation/Consultations/Current/Pages/default.aspx
By email: candypstrategy@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk, or alternatively by phoning, 0131 465 5549 to request a copy.
You can also complete the survey at the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NHSLothianCandYPStrategy
The next meeting of Inverleith Neighbourhood Partnership takes place on
Wednesday 6 November at 7.30pm at Blackhall Library.
The main part of the meeting will be Have your say on the Council’s Budget. More information on this can be found here.
Also on the agenda will be Community Grants Funding and also spend of additional £50,000 roads money in North.
We hope that you can join us. If you have any question, please get back to me.
Full papers will be available for download in advance of the meeting here.
Elaine Lennon, Partnership Development Officer
Tel: 0131 529 5270
Mark Lazarowicz MP put down a Parliamentary motion, an ‘Early Day Motion’, last week to congratulate Edinburgh’s Professor Peter Higgs on the award of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics. Among those supporting the North and Leith MP’s motion were fellow Edinburgh MPs Alistair Darling and Mike Crockart.
Professor Peter Higgs, who is now Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh, was awarded the prize in recognition of his theoretical discovery of the origins of mass of the fundamental particles that make up the world. His theoretical work first published in 1964 was confirmed in July 2012 – almost half a century later – by the Hadron Collider based in Switzerland showing just how groundbreaking his work was.
A shy and modest man, Professor Higgs shares the prize with a Belgian physicist,François Englert, who also published on the same subject in the summer of 1964.
Mark Lazarowicz said: “Professor Higgs’ achievement has at last received the long awaited recognition of the award of the Nobel Prize, and as the MP for the constituency where Professor Higgs lives I wanted to make sure that achievement and award was marked by Parliament also.”
Professor Higgs has announced that he will formally retire next year, when he is 85.
