Five things you need to know today Edinburgh!

2014_Sept Edinburgh2

Free School Meals

Mark the spot with an X

The African Queen

Emily Dodd’s new book

Cupcakes

The council’s Education Children and Families Committee meets today when one of the matters before it will be the discussion of  The Scottish Government’s policy on free school meals for all Primary 1 to 3 pupils from January 2015.

The council has 88 primary schools and 7 special schools where there are P1 to P3 pupils and estimate that they will need £1.4m  in 2014/15 to enable them to implement the policy. They will seek full council approval later this month to this spending.

Extra funding is being made available by The Scottish Government of £16.5m next year and £54m the following financial year but the difficulty is that the council have no funds to meet the additional capital investment of £3.6m needed to deal with issues of capacity in school buildings around the city, but they expect that the Government will fund the gap.

 

The council estimate that they could be providing 900,000 school meals over a year which is almost double what they provide now. There are logistical problems in providing these meals as well as the cost.

Some schools at Cramond East Craigs, Sciennes and Towerbank will need some works which are described as ‘more substantive’ and it is not believed these schools will be ready by January next year.

In the first place however the Education Committee have to approve spending (and borrowing) of £1.4m to sort the school buildings and to allow them to be ready to provide the meals which the government has obliged them to do.

All the papers for the Education Committee are here.

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The Deputy Chief Counting Officer for Scotland and Counting Officer for Edinburgh has urged the public to make their vote count just over a week before the vote on Scottish Independence.

Sue Bruce, also Chief Executive of City of Edinburgh Council, has reminded the city’s electorate how crucial it is to take care when casting their vote.

She said: “I want to make sure everyone is able to have their say, so can’t stress enough how important it is to take care when completing their ballot paper, putting one ‘X’ in the box beside the option they wish to choose.

“Postal voters should also complete their voting statement carefully by inserting the correct date of birth and signature and ensuring it is returned to the Counting Officer by 18th September.

“All those planning to vote in person should check their polling cards to find out where their local polling place is, or visit the Council website for more information on where and how to vote.”

 

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We think you should all take the evening off whatever you are doing and go to see The African Queen this evening at The Filmhouse. Booking details here. Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart at 18.10.

If you don’t fancy this then you have to tell us wh

at you are doing that could be better!

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Emily Dodd is an Edinburgh-based author with a new book. And she is very excited about it going on sale so we wanted to share her excitement with you!

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Post by Banana me beautiful.
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photo 4

Cuckoo’s Cupcakes on Dundas Street have been releasing the results of their opinion poll on a regular basis for the last 25 weeks and as we approach the Referendum their poll appears to have shown remarkable consistency with the official polls.
At the end off week 25, Cuckoo’s cupcake opinion poll shows that it is still all to play for with the Undecideds remaining at 8%
YES – 43.2% (-2.1%)
NO – 46.6% (+1.5%)
UNDECIDED – 8.6% (+0.5%)
Graham Savage said: “We have seen an increase in sales generally and some big orders have come in from both sides!” Our poll has been conducted professionally throughout the campaign and we are delighted that the results have shown to be so similar to the official results.”
On Monday 15th September Cuckoo’s will be issuing the cumulative figures showing the total results of the Opinion Poll since we released the first figures on 7th March.”
Cuckoo’s anticipate that they will have sold 10,000 cupcakes during the period of the Referendum Opinion Poll. They show off the results in the window and we see people reading them and leave, amused with a smile on their face!
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