Monthly Archives: November 2009

Portobello WaveDD!!! At 9am on a wet Saturday morn­ing, 80 of us climbed onto the two buses near the Town Hall that Tom Ballantine had organ­ised and headed over to Glasgow to join the biggest ever demon­stra­tion against Climate Chaos in Scotland.  In all, about 8,000 people walked behind bright ban­ners — the huge Porty flower made by Towerbank’s P7 def­in­itely the best! — it was a great turn out from Porty and a great turn out from Scotland (even if Glasgow Council, or was it the police, had insisted the march take the back streets, pre­sum­baly so as not to dis­turb the shopping!)

A bunch of us went on from the march to the national gath­er­ing of Transition ini­ti­at­ives from across Scotland.  It was a fant­astic chance to met up with oth­ers, exchange stor­ies, attend diverse work­shops, make a won­der­ful ceilidh, and have bril­liant child­care that cul­min­ated with the kids teach­ing US! If you missed it — and in par­tic­u­lar if you’re used to hav­ing to miss such things because the kids won’t be happy — come next year: the kids were more than happy, and we all returned fab­ulously recharged from the week­end. (But remem­ber to book early — there were way more folk who wanted to come than there was room for). See: Transition Scotland Support’s web­site: www.transitionscotland.org

A brief round up of what’s happened/ what’s happening/ and what’s on it’s way (scroll down to find what’s com­ing up!)

1. Car Free Day was very suc­cess­ful in terms of num­bers in bike parade, the little mar­ket and a really well atten­ded Isle of Egg play. For next year we’ll try to be more ambi­tious and make Car Free Day also about a Pedestrianised zone that shows how the world could be. Would any­one like to sug­gest a par­tic­u­lar place where we might close a road (with the agree­ment of res­id­ents of course!), sup­port a cam­paign for improve­ments to that street, work­ing with the res­id­ents group, and have a street party?!

2. PEDAL Challenge [Free Bus Pass!]: We now have 3 people signed up for this – but still room for 2 more folk to have a months free bus pass to se what it is like to live without their car for a month and report the tribu­la­tions and bene­fits of using pub­lic transport/ cyling/ whatever; and con­trib­ut­ing to a blog on your expei­ences and being inter­viewed by the Evening News. This will prob­ably be for the month of January – let us know if you’d like to be one of them!

3. Tenement wanted to pilot an energy effi­cient [cut your heat­ing bills!] sys­tem: We are involving Changeworks in an Insulation hot­spot cam­paign – let us know if you want to be part of this.

4. PEDAL Office going into hiberna­tion: we have decided not to keep the office on the High Street going – since it would be bet­ter con­trib­ut­ing to a vibrant High Street [as the office was when we had folk work­ing in it] than con­trib­ut­ing to a hole in our pock­ets and a silent High Street. However, if we receive Climate Challenge Funding for the next phase of our work, we will need office space for 3 workers.

5. 2^nd CCF bid: We are apply­ing for fund­ing to employ a full time man­ager, an energy worker, and a food worker to take for­ward the com­munity orch­ard (already under­way), the farm­ers mar­ket, the insu­la­tion cam­paign, the poten­tial for renew­ables, etc. We hope this bid will be suc­cess­ful – pour­ing our ‘spare’ time into this work on top of fam­ily and jobs is demand­ing and it would be great top have some fun­ded work (let alone provid­ing more employ­ment in Portobello).

6. New Members: we have over a hun­dred mem­bers now – if you have joined us recently: WELCOME! If you have been with us for the long haul: WELL DONE!

7. Orchard: The Halloween spe­cial (clearing/ planting/ games) was very suc­cess­ful – a great spread of people through­out the day, and a good num­ber of kids.

8. Pot luck meal that was to be at 6.30 on November 26^th in the Community Centre has had to be post­poned — in the mean­time all wel­come to the Espy Pub from 8.30 instead.

9. Home film – extraordin­ary aer­ial shots of the earth — will be shown at St Philips, Brunstane Road North, at 7.30pm on Saturday November 14^th, and is free. This is part of our build up towards …

10. Portobello and The Wave: Glasgow December 5^th

Portobello Wave — Jump on the Porty Bus on Dec 5^th and head over to join the biggest ever demon­stra­tion against Climate Chaos in Scotland. Tied in to a huge wave of inter­na­tional demon­stra­tions that day, designed to bring pres­sure on Governments in the run up to Copenhagen Climate Change nego­ti­ations. We aim to organ­ise coach(es) from Portobello with FoE/SCCS (Tom Ballantine) and St Philip’s (Stewart Weaver). Transition Scotland Support are organ­ising their annual meet­ing in Glasgow to fol­low on the 5^th/ 6^th and will be pay­ing trans­port and accom­mod­a­tion for any who want to attend – kids and their fam­il­ies very welcome!