A story which has intrigued The Reporter for years is the story of The Great Lafayette, and whether he did indeed perish in the fire at The Empire at the beginning of the 20th Century. There is a grave in Piershill Cemetery. The wonderful Edinburgh City Library blog Tales of One City alerts us to the fact that today marks his birthday….and points us all in the direction of the exhibition at The Edinburgh Room in the Central Library. So now you can make up your own minds…
Wester Hailes is to get a new state of the art Health Hub….. Read more here.
The Bike Station has published its Inner City Bike Map today – a new take on the London Tube map to show off the many cycle paths in and around Edinburgh which we cyclists prefer to use. We are indeed fortunate to live in a city where there are so many alternatives to using the city streets as a means of getting exercise or just getting from A to B. The Guardian Blog has a closer look at it here.
For the insomniacs among you, there is a listing on the National Library of Scotland website which may be of interest. They have decided to put up a complete list of the Post Office directories, allowing you to find out who lived where and when. The directories cover the period from 1773 to 1911 and may help people who are researching their family history.
And the BBC report that convicted killer, Luke Mitchell, was in The Appeal Court in Edinburgh yesterday to appeal against his conviction on the basis of the recent Cadder decision in the Supreme Court. The Cadder case decided that Scots Law was at odds with human rights if the accused person did not have representation at an early stage. The Scots Law News, penned by Professor Hector MacQueen of Edinburgh Law School, reported on the Cadder decision stating that “As expected, the seven-judge court decides that the human rights of a person detained by the police without immediate access to a lawyer are thereby infringed; but the major hassle that might have occurred were the decision to have been fully retrospective is avoided by holding the judgment not applicable to already closed cases.”
This seems to infer that those cases already decided would not have any rights of appeal under the Cadder principle….. Certainly within the decision itself their Lordships were fairly clear that it should not have retrospective effect, although it might affect cases which are still open. So is Mitchell’s case now going to change that? The court decision will be issued in due course.
This is the latest in a series of appeals that Mitchell has made against his conviction of murdering his girlfriend, Jodi Jones, and a separate appeal against the length of his sentence.
