Edinburgh Airport incident – Free School Meals – Wester Hailes Digital Sentinel – Your cats – National Librarian to retire
Edinburgh airport was evacuated yesterday around 2:00pm due to a scare over a piece of hand luggage. It took until just after 5:00 until the police lifted restrictions and allowed the airport to reopen.
Two of our readers had arrived at the airport around 2:00pm only to find that their incoming aircraft had landed but they were not allowed into the building to check in. On getting home later in the evening, they told The Edinburgh Reporter:-“We are now due to fly tomorrow – the airport was totally chaos – if only someone had come out and let us know what was going on. I could have done better – we ended up letting airport staff know what was going on, as we received more news on our smart phones, than they received… That can’t be right…. Our airline staff were brilliant however.”
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Families and young people across Scotland will benefit from millions of pounds of additional support after First Minister Alex Salmond announced a significant expansion of free school meals and childcare provision.
As part of a £114 million package for young people over two years, every one of Scotland’s P1 to P3 children will have the option of a free meal in school from January next year, improving health and wellbeing, increasing attainment and saving families at least £330 a year for each child.
Speaking during a parliamentary debate on poverty and the early years yesterday afternoon, Mr Salmond also announced that free childcare provision would be expanded to every two year-old from a workless household in Scotland – around 8,400 children or 15 per cent of all two year-olds – by August this year.
And by August next year, free childcare provision would be extended further, reaching 15,400 children – 27 per cent of all two year-olds – by widening entitlement to families that received certain welfare benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance.
The First Minister said the extension to childcare provision would ensure that, by August 2015, Scotland will deliver 80 million hours of childcare to pre-school children – the greatest amount in the UK and 6.5 per cent more than if Scotland followed Westminster’s approach in England.
But he warned that, only with independence could a truly transformational shift in childcare be funded, because the economic gains and revenues generated by such a policy will go to a Scottish exchequer and not the London Treasury.
The First Minister said:
“The announcements that we are making today will have the greatest possible effect, given the limited resources available to us.
“Under this government, Scotland has made free meals available in primary school to families which receive child and working tax credits – a step which hasn’t been taken in England and Wales, and which contributed to 10,000 more pupils registering for free school meals.
“Now, we can go further. I can announce today that – after discussions with our partners in local government – we will fund free school meals for all school children in primary 1 to primary 3 from next January.
“This measure will build on, and learn from, the pilots we established in five local authority areas in 2007 and 2008. It will remove any possibility of free meals being a source of stigma during the first years of a child’s schooling; it will improve health and wellbeing; and it will be worth at least £330 a year for each child to families across the country.
“The measure has been supported by a powerful alliance of campaigners against child poverty, including Child Poverty Action Group Scotland, Children in Scotland, One Parent Families Scotland, the Church of Scotland and trade unions.”
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Do you live in Wester Hailes? Would you like to get involved in a new project to bring the local news to life? Then get along to WHALE today from 1:00pm or Wester Hailes Library from 5.30pm to find out how you can help find and report on the news for the Digital Sentinel. Today’s session is all about audio, learning how to record it and produce it for publication on the internet. Age does not matter, but enthusiasm is required!
More information on the Digital Sentinel website here.
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Do you have a cat? Would you like to show them off to us and our readers? Then head over to EdinburghReportage where there is a new storyboard waiting to be filled with photos of your moggies! Register over here…..
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After 11 successful years, Martyn Wade is to retire from his post as National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland (NLS).
Mr Wade joined NLS, one of Scotland’s premier cultural institutions, in 2002 and led a significant period of innovation that widened public access to its world class collections.
Mr Wade’s tenure has seen many significant developments at NLS. Highlights of his period in post include the acquisition of world renowned John Murray Archive in 2006, the opening of a public visitor centre in 2009 and of a special collections reading room in 2012, all sited in the Library’s flagship building on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh. He also led the merger of the Scottish Screen Archive (SSA) with NLS, contributed to the current plans to find the SSA a permanent home in the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow and is currently leading the development of an innovative ne w National Sound Archive for Scotland.
Online access was expanded in 2010 when over a million resources previously only available by a visit to NLS in Edinburgh were made available at the click of a button for people all over Scotland. Mr Wade also played a key part in the introduction of e-legal deposit, which enabled NLS and the five other legal deposit libraries to begin collecting and storing websites and born-digital material in the same way that printed material has been collected for centuries.
Mr Wade said: ‘After 11 years, I feel the time is right to move on and I’m very proud to have been part of the organisation during such a period of development and innovation.’
The Chair of the Library’s Board, James Boyle, said: ‘Widening access to the public has been the cornerstone of Martyn Wade’s contribution to NLS. Martyn has ensured that many more people use the collections in person or online, attend events, or simply visit the Library to enjoy exhibitions and use the cafe and shop. Under his leadership, the Library has taken major steps forward and we thank him for all that he has achieved.’
Before joining NLS, Mr Wade was Head of Library, Information and Learning at Glasgow City Council, the largest public library and information service in Scotland. He is active in the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) where he chairs a committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression. He has been a member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals since 1976; in 2010 he was appointed as a Fellow of the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University, and in 2011 as Honorary Professor at Robert Gordon University’s Department of Information Management, in recognition of his contribution to the leadership of library and information services in Scotland.
Mr Wade retires at the end of March 2014.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
