Whitmuir Organics offer local farm-made organic terrine, pate, cooked ham, beef, bacon, quiche, vegetables, and eggs. They will also have bread rolls from their new community-supported bakery;

Maddy Corbin will be selling Scotch eggs (meat and vegetarian), cheese biscuits, sausage rolls, unusual preserves, and traditional handmade crepe paper christmas crackers;

Fare will be on site selling beautiful ready-to-cook organic meals and Christmas puddings this month;

Wood N Menagerie produce wooden gifts, ornaments and toys hand crafted from joinery off-cuts and other recycled materials;

Changeworks Zero Waste volunteers will be on hand to give you free friendly advice on how to reduce your waste;

And Portobello Swim Centre will be promoting membership deals that can help you reduce your waist.

At the PEDAL stall we’ll be selling our Porty branded t-shirts (two designs, ‘I Love Porty’ and ‘Home Sweet Home’). Various colours and sizes are available.

Where: Brighton Park, Brighton Place, Portobello

When: 9.30am  —  1.30pm

Full list of stallholders for November 5th.

On Sunday they ran a Welcome event as part of the run up to the Cultural Olympiad. Called the Big Welcome it involved groups making tablecloths a fair and even ceilidh dancing on the prom!

I hope these photos give a flavour of the day… it’s worth saying that Big Things on the Beach also have a great track record of providing stunning weather for their events!

The protest was as truly prophetic as befitted a man who was one of the few genuine prophets of our time. By speaking truth to power, by bearing witness to the slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq Brian Haw was able to remind our leaders of their folly on a daily basis. He was joined by many others who shared Brian’s desire to end the war in Iraq and prevent more illegal wars.

But this prophetic stance came at a personal cost. The authorities harassed Haw, forcing him to move the peace camp onto the pavement. There are moves afoot to prevent the camp being on the pavement. This bureaucratic determination to suppress the voice of justice reflects just how successful Haw and his fellow peace-campers have been. It did, however, take a toll on Brian’s health and he had been fighting lung cancer. This was a fight Brian lost last night.

When I was on a rare visit to London last week I was challenged by the personal sacrifice and political persistence of those at the peace camp. I stopped to offer support, and went away thinking about what more I could do for peace.

The protest is just over 10 years old now. A fitting tribute to Brian Haw would be that there is no further need for the camp, with withdrawal from Afghanistan and an end to Britain’s involvement in imperial interventions.

Two groups – one in Portobello and one in Leith are looking for your support to put funding on a more sustainable footing. To support them you can join this group.

Where there was a steady (if not infrequently unreliable) stream of funding available from a mix of funders, much of this has dried up. Many Local Authorities and the NHS have reduced or discontinued their funding to community groups, endowed funds and trusts have had their portfolios reduced by decline and unpredictability the stock market, and the remaining funders have had to focus on the areas of highest need to replace other sources of funding.

It is more vital than ever before that community groups seek dedicated and self-generated funds. Some of this can be done through trading and some through more aggressive fundraising. But the major opportunity for communities is in harnessing renewables.

There are plenty of great stories about communities like Eigg or Fintry that have used wind power to generate funds for their communities. But there are very few examples of this happening in an urban context. Community groups in Portobello and Leith have got together to break new ground in urban renewables in Scotland. Greener Leith and PEDAL -> Portobello Transition Town have put together a joint bid for funding for a wind turbine.

You can read more about it here.

It is really important that communities get control of this resource. It is an opportunity to get community control of one of the few remaining commons that hasn’t been subjected to corporate ownership and the profit motive.

We’d really like to get funding for this. But we’re hampered by the reduction in funding available to community groups, and the reluctance of the banks to invest in renewables, when they could be supporting tar sands development or cluster bombs instead.

So we’d love it if you went to the EnergyShare website and supported our project. It will help to support the community in Leith and Portobello, but more importantly it will create a valuable precedent for other urban groups wanting to take ownership of the natural resources offered by wind power.

The notion that victims of sexual assault and abuse are party to blame has always existed. It is shocking that figures like Ken Clarke and public bodies like Edinburgh Council are happy to promote this wrong-headed notion.

The good news is that Reclaim the Night Edinburgh will go ahead to challenge our blame-the-victim culture. It will assemble on the 28^th May at 8.30pm for a 9pm start. Bright Green urges everyone in Edinburgh to attend. The march will go ahead despite the efforts of Edinburgh City Council to refuse it permission. It is one of two events that aimed to raise awareness of violence against women which have been refused permission.

Reclaim the Night is part of an international movement to reclaim public spaces for those who find the night a dangerous time to be on the streets. Using collective action to change people’s perceptions about what is safe is an essential part of removing the threat of violence to women.

We must be absolutely clear: if you are the victim of crime that is never your fault. Everyone has the right to be on the streets at any time without the fear or expectation of verbal abuse, assault or other crime. This is a universal truth.

The most frequent victims of crime are those who are marginalised through the power structures of our society. In many cases these victims are seen as partly responsible for the crimes of which they are victims. And that brings us to the second event that Edinburgh Council has banned.

As part of a presentation on health and safety to school students in Toronto, a police constable, Michael Sanguinetti said “I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this – however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.” A better articulation of blaming the victim is hard to imagine.

“Slutwalk” marches are a global reaction to these comments. The marches aim to reclaim the term “slut” and make it clear that however someone is dressed, it is never right to attack or abuse them. The marches promote the progressive position that blame must never be attributed to the victim. This march was also rejected by the Council. It was rejected because of a major football match being broadcast that evening. Because of the football match the Council refused permission to march, claiming “demonstrators would be subject to negative drunken attention by men on the street.” So Edinburgh Council believe we must be stopped from changing attitudes to women in case men subject them to “negative drunken attention.” It seems that bigots in Edinburgh Council believe it is their role to make decisions that reinforce the long history of blaming the victim.

In Scotland we’ve had some experience of prominent individuals blaming the victims of sex crime. In February the then Conservative Justice spokesperson Bill Aitken was forced to resign as Chair of the Justice Committee.

Following a series of rapes in Glasgow’s city centre, Aitken suggested to a Sunday Herald journalist that “I really think we need to know a bit more about these [rapes]. They are not always as they seem to be, put it that way.” Aitken went on to say “Somebody should be asking [the rape victim] what she was doing in Renfrew Lane. Did she go there with somebody? … Now, Renfrew Lane is known as a place where things happen, put it that way.” When asked what he meant about Renfrew Lane he said “It’s an area where a lot of the hookers [sic] take their clients. Now that may not have happened in this case. But you know … what was happening? There’s always a lot more to these city-centre rapes than meets the eye.”

Aitken was clearly inferring either that the women who had been raped were sex workers and therefore the crime was somehow different to any other sex attack, or that the women who were raped should not have been in the Renfrew Lane area, and it was somehow their fault for endangering themselves. This set of beliefs encourages violence against sex workers and women who happen to be in areas that people like Aitken believe “things happen.”

So the Convener of the Parliament’s Justice Committee and Edinburgh City Council still hold the reprehensible belief that a victim can be held responsible for a crime to which they’ve been subjected. Changing these offensive and outdated beliefs should be a priority for all progressive people. And what better way to do that than by joining the march the Edinburgh Council bigots chose to refuse permission for. The need to change these beliefs has become even clearer as Ken Clarke suggested that there were “serious rapes and other categories of rape.” His suggestion that “date rape” fits into the “other category of rape” reinforces the idea that women are partly to blame for being attacked. It’s an idea that must be crushed.

Come on the Reclaim the Night March on the 28^th May to take a stand against blaming the victim. Everyone should be entitled to go out any time they want without fear or expectation of attack. However anyone dresses there must be no assumption that she could be the subject of abuse or assault. We must change the public perception that women, or other marglinalised groups, are to blame for being attacked, a perception so universal that Edinburgh Council feel entitled to use it to refuse the right to march. The Council’s decision makes the case for change even more urgent.

It seems oddly derelict:

You can imagine the surprise of community representatives when we discovered that the area has over £168,000 of its Fairer Scotland Fund allocation that will be almost impossible to spend by the March 2011 deadline. It will be even more of a surprise to find that the Council-appointed Neighbourhood Manager was suggesting that this money would be either difficult or impossible to spend as any project would have to be commissioned using a tendering process that takes around 6 months. Astonishingly this can apply to sums as small as £5000. It must apply to sums over £10,000.

This means that many tendering processes will cost more than the grant itself. It’s preposterous. It’s a complete waste of council resources, and the resources of the organisations that have to tender for this. It could only be bone-headed stupidity or a cynical attempt to ensure that the money cannot be spent on dealing with need in Portobello. I assume that the unspent money will go back to Council to cover its incompetence elsewhere.

The Neighbourhood Partnership met on Wednesday this week. It’s responsible for allocating Fairer Scotland Fund moneys. This Fund is to be used to support work in places with severe area deprivation, like Craigmillar. But instead we were told (with an extraordinarily straight face) by the senior official that we wouldn’t be able to spend it because Edinburgh Council’s Director of Finance wouldn’t let him.

I’ve been a member of the Neighbourhood Partnership for 3 years now. The genuine difference made by the Partnership is hard to see. Broadly speaking it is official-led, with Community representatives sidelined by Council employees. It was unable to do much when the Education departments decided to close the excellent Instep project, which helped children adjust to High School.

The gigantic underspend is exacerbated by the fact there is so much need in Craigmillar. The money could and should have been spent on a variety of projects that could have saved the Council and other public services substantial sums of money. Instead it is being hoarded by the Council and their ludicrously over-wrought approach to tendering. Money that could have saved lives is instead filling Council coffers.

There is an urgent need for all public authorities to review their use of tendering. Since its introduction as a Thatcherite tool for giving public subsidy to the private sector public officials have become obsessed with its use. There may be circumstances where very large sums are involved and it is appropriate. But even the Scottish Government does not recommend its use for projects under £50,000. In these circumstances grants are much more efficient and effective.

The cynical might suggest that Edinburgh’s Director of Finance has set down these rules to ensure an underspend. Money not spent could be reallocated to the Council’s financial black hole. I’m sure that’s not the case. But along the way they’ve wasted a vast amount of money and time on wildly bureaucratic tendering processes. And that time and money has been diverted from the vital work done by voluntary sector groups fighting inequality and improving lives in Craigmillar.

There’s a simple answer here. Waive the ludicrous rules on tendering, and allow groups to apply for funds up to £50,000 as a grant. It’ll be cheap and effective and will result in vital funds being used to meet need, not line a Council bank account.

Sunday 19^th September 1.30 – 4pm

Bottom of Bath Street, near the Prom

including…….

Dress up your Bike workshop – Friday 17^th September 2-4pm

Ashpits, Towerbank Primary School – £2 donation

A chance for kids and adults to recycle willow, cardboard, plastic, and other materials to turn your bike into a bike worth parading!

Bike Parade – Sunday 19^th September 1.30pm

Meet at the Prom end of Kings Road at 1.15 to set off at 1.30pm: first visiting the proposed community turbine site, then taking a child friendly back street route via Adelphi Place and Rosefield Avenue to the bottom of Bath Street.

Car Free Day Street party – Sunday 19^th September 2-4pm

Bottom of Bath Street  by the Prom (and also Straiton Place between Bath Street and Regent Street if the residents want to have a street party).

Stalls will include:

-       PEDAL Food and Energy stalls, and Transport stall with questionnaire

-       Spokes Bike Campaign stall

-       Food and Bric a brac stalls, etc.

-       Lothians and Borders Police security marking bikes

-       Tyre planting – grow food in a tyre (especially for those with no gardens)

-       If you want to hold a stall (e.g. to raise money for your local good cause, then let us know).

We hope to have quiet acoustic music and to have Cosybike back again this year, and hope to end with a Storybike journey for those who want, leaving Bath Street for Leith at 4pm and hearing stories of Portobello and Leith on the way.