£EITH CHOOSES – Local Democracy in Action!
Your Leith Links Community Councillors were out in force yesterday helping to run the amazing £eith Chooses Voting day. It was hard work but it was terrific fun. We love to meet up with our community!
This year’s voting day was a record-breaker in every sense of the word – more posters, leaflets, lamppost wraps; more project applications than ever before; more money to be distributed (though still still not enough, sadly); more new project groups applying; more diverse projects, in terms of minority groups in our community; and more people attending to vote than ever before! (Also more worry and panic, before the day, right up to the very last minute, due to the horrendous snowy weather and difficult conditions for getting about.) We are also now shaping up to see more online votes than ever before rolling in.
Many thanks also to our friends and colleagues from Leith Harbour and Newhaven, and Leith Central Community Councils, who have been helping to organise £eith Chooses and were also there yesterday to help.
People possibly don’t realise that a large part of all of this is done by volunteers! Having said that, Leith Links Community Council and fellow Community Councils certainly couldn’t have put on this whole event without our close partnership with Edinburgh City Council and their dedicated and super-hard-working staff team. And last but not least, our great elected representatives (some of whom were last seen shovelling snow in the Kirkgate!) from Leith and Leith Walk: Marion, Chas, Susan, Amy, Adam, Gordon.
We ALL worked hard for our amazing Leith community, and it was great!
The strapline on our Leith Links community Council bid to the Scottish Government Community Grants Fund (which brought us £72.000 for community projects) was ‘Local Democracy in Action’. Well, it certainly was, yesterday.
MSP Ben MacPherson seems to like £eith Chooses as much as everybody else did.
This is IT – you have three days left to get your project grant application in to £EITH CHOOSES – the deadline is 31 January 7pm.
Last week there was a protest in Leith Links outside the Abbot’s House hostel, against the Council’s use of B&Bs for homeless people, especially for families with young children. This Community Council supports the protesters and stands with the vulnerable people who suffer in this horrible situation, caused initially by Council and government cuts, benefit capping, sanctions and welfare ‘reforms’. This Community Council has questioned the use of such accommodation – in some cases, basically slums – in the area for many years, but the Council continues to pour money into the pockets of a few rich landlords, instead of building new houses or as a minimum in the short term, ensuring that temporary accommodation is at least safe and clean. This has reached crisis proportions as Edinburgh’s population grows, rents soar sky high, and cuts bite.
