Robert Louis Stevenson – Portobello High School – Ceilidh date for your diary – Blood Donors – Lazarowicz on East Coast
Now we know that this is Movember, but today you should be sporting your Robert Louis Stevenson moustache… and you can get one here…..
There are many, many events today to celebrate the author’s birthday, and details of most of these (and they go on all day!) are here.
We spoke to Professor Linda Dryden last week about the event that Edinburgh Napier University are running tonight.
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Today at Holyrood the 5th meeting of the City of Edinburgh (Portobello Park) Bill Committee meets. in Committee Room 5 at the Scottish Parliament. You can book a public gallery seat if you wish by phoning 0131 348 5200 or through Visitor Services.
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Calling all blood donors! Today you can go along to St. Columba’s Parish Church, Hillhouse Road, EH4 3QR
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Reprivatisation of East Coast: Mark Lazarowicz MP hits out at Government dogma and calls for profits to be reinvested to improve service
In a debate on the future of the East Coast Line today, Mark Lazarowicz MP highlighted the good record of the public sector company running the line and called on the Government to ditch ideology and allow it to remain publicly operated. He also said the profits which East Coast trains make which are returned to the Government could be used to improve the infrastructure of the line, such as overhead line, so as to cut delays.
Mark said:-“The East Coast Line returned £209 million to the taxpayer last year – that’s the UK taxpayer at a time when 10 out of the 18 UK franchises are run by companies owned by the German, Dutch or French state run rail companies. It also received the second lowest government subsidy of any train operator underlining that a public sector company can be a success and not a drain on the state. Set that against private companies twice previously having to give up the contract for the line because they found they weren’t able to make it pay.
“This is a chance to modernise the infrastructure of the line which was electrified on the cheap in the 1990s under the then Conservative Government in order to cut delays. Far better to let the public operator reinvest its profits to the taxpayer and for those resources to be used to build an even better service rather than wasting time and money on reprivatising it.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
