Rubbish looms large again on Edinburgh streets – according to…..The Herald (Page 5 of the News section of the print edition) and here online which has the scandalous story that there will be big black wheelie bins on Heriot Row soon…. and show photos from a street which is definitely not Heriot Row to illustrate it. There will be special corrals set up at the end of the street to allow the residents to walk along the street with their rubbish, according to the paper. This story has one glaring omission from it. The residents of Edinburgh’s New Town are very fortunate in that the city council has arranged daily (that is every single day 7 days a week) rubbish collections. Oh actually one other omission – has the council actually decided to do this – if so where is the evidence?
The Broughton Spurtle has now entered the fray decrying the piece in The Herald and in The Edinburgh Evening News by pointing out that they had both perhaps lifted their information from a piece by The Spurtle!
Well in search of the answers we have spoken to LibDem Councillor for the City Centre Charles Dundas and this is what he told us:- “No-one can ignore the massive change in funding which we face on the Council, so radical changes in how we provide services are called for if we are to avoid cutting what we do back to the bare minimum. This whole thing is triggered by the need to continue delivering top quality services, but with less money to do it.
“However, the most important thing to stress is that this is only an exploration of alternatives – which we felt it necessary to make, so as to enable an informed decision in the future – the Council is in no way committed to any of the Alternative Models; such as shared services with other Coucils, Charitable Trusts (like Glasgow’s Arts and Culture one), LLPs, or Joint Ventures like the Council’s existing partnership with BT for internal IT provision.
“The current status of the investigation is that initial expressions of interest have been sought and a shortlist of companies drawn up for further negotiations on what they can offer. I can assure you that no big steps like this will be taken without considerable discussion from all councillors across the Council Chamber.”
We are currently researching the other evidence and will bring you the full story as soon as we can.
In the meantime we leave you with a great cartoon from Frank Boyle…..
