MSP fights for Tollcross Fire Control Room – Thinking about Fostering? – Hidden Door Festival – Manipulate Festival – Judy Garland comes to Wester Hailes
Edinburgh MSP Jim Eadie wrote to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) yesterday in a bid to save the Fire Control Room in Tollcross. Eadie had already joined forces with fellow Edinburgh MSPs to fight closure of the Edinburgh control room.
The future of the Edinburgh control room in Tollcross is currently under threat following the decision by the SFRS to reduce the amount of control rooms in Scotland from eight to three. Eadie is concerned about the effect the closure of the fire control room would have on the safety of his constituents and those in other parts of South East Scotland.
In a statement Mr Eadie said: “Over the past 5 years, three in ten incidents in Scotland were dealt with by the control rooms in Edinburgh, Maddiston and Thornton. With the loss of two already confirmed, closure of the Edinburgh fire control room would leave South East Scotland without its own facility to deal with these calls. We cannot afford to compromise the safety of people in Edinburgh and the Lothians for the purpose of cost savings.”
In 2012/13 according to a draft report being submitted to the council’s Police and Fire Scrutiny Committee tomorrow, the Fire Service attended 701 house fires, 594 of which were accidental.
On 5 November last year Edinburgh Operations Control were called out to 108 bonfires of which 43 were considered to be adequately supervised, but in total the number of emergency calls which the Control staff dealt with totalled 365.
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If you are thinking about fostering then go and have a chat with the council’s foster care team and local carers at one of their Waverley Court events. They are held from 5-7pm at the City of Edinburgh Council HQ, 4 East Market Street EH8 8BG (view on a map)
- Thursday 23 January 2014
- Thursday 13 March
- Thursday 3 April
- Thursday 15 May
- Thursday 19 June
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Hidden Door is an arts festival that sets out to temporarily transform the 24 disused vaults of Market Street, Edinburgh at the end of March. (the dates have changed from what they were originally…)
The festival will be a dynamic platform for the best new breakthrough creative talent based in Scotland – featuring over 40 live music acts, 70 visual artists, a full programme of performing arts, a cinema space showing the work of new film makers and animators, and a programme of readings by a number of writers and poets throughout Scotland. There will also be seminars, talks and discussions.
The Hidden Door website shows off what the site may look like….click here.
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Manipulate Festival runs from 31 January to 8 February 2014 at The Traverse. The festival is billed as innovative international theatre and film, but also includes elements of puppetry and animation. You will find details of all that is on offer here and the video below might give you a flavour of what you can see.
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At WHALE Arts tomorrow evening the songs made famous by Judy Garland will be part of the production ‘Beyond the Rainbow’ by TRAM Direct Theatre Company exploring the star’s story and her eventual downfall. There is a five star review here.
More details here.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
