Sprouting suites

Tonight was the West Pilton & Granton Community Council - well attended and full of ire about estate maintenance and the Fairer Scotland Fund.

Everybody thinks the estates are looking more neglected than ever: the streets and pavements are sprouting furniture which the Community Council attributes to private landlords dumping whenever tenants leave and also to decisions about charging for second special uplifts. At the corner of West Pilton Park (where I work daytime) the corner has seen 4 different suites dumped in as many weeks and the picture is the same across the area.

Along with sprouting suites are invasive weeds in every corner, flagstone, edge and verge. It was reported tonight that 6 workmen were spotted spraying the verges along Inverleith parallel to the Botanics...nary a sign of any weedspraying yet in Granton, Pilton or Muirhouse. Soon they'll need to take the strimmer to it...

Fairer Scotland Fund is a beezer...£700,000 out of North Edinburgh alone:Community Learning & Development cut by £800,000 for the entire city and a huge whack of that out of North Edinburgh...the voluntary sector in the North is being hammered. There is to be a meeting on Wednesday 23 July to try to gather information on the overall impact...it will be towsy, no doubt about that.