The Edinburgh Minute ⏰: Weekend edition 5-7 January 2023
Locavore closes, a challenger for Lothian Buses, ‘hard gangsterism’ exposed, Hogmanay future ‘uncertain’, last day of markets + the weekend guide
🌥 Good morning Edinburgh. Here’s Friday’s Edinburgh Minute followed by the weekend guide for paying subscribers.
Social enterprise Locavore on Dalry Road has announced it will close down on 21 January. The 6,000sqft shop was Scotland’s largest local, organic and zero-waste supermarket. Staff said: “Fundamentally, our shop just has not been busy enough to support all the costs that come with running such a large operation. Our sales were much lower than we had hoped and despite growing support and our best efforts with very limited resources, we’ve just not been able to build custom to a sustainable level quick enough. We’re sorry to everyone we let down and we’re grateful to everyone who helped us give it our best shot.” - Read more from the shop team in this Instagram post. (Thanks to subscribers Kay and Wiebke for sharing this)
🚍 A new airport bus service has been launched by McGills Group, claiming to be Edinburgh's "fastest and cheapest" airport link. It’s the first competition to Lothian Buses’ Airlink after 25 years. - Jolene Campbell, Evening News.
🚔 ‘Hard gangsterism bubbles away beneath the surface of Edinburgh society’, writes John McLellan in his Evening News opinion column. “The shooting of gangster Marc Webley on Hogmanay, as sharp a reminder as is possible that for all the many virtues extolled about life in Edinburgh, some people live lives that are unimaginable for the vast majority.”
⮑ Police are still appealing for information after Webley’s death on Hogmanay in Granton.
⮑ A ‘gangland source’ claims that £20,000 was offered to take down Webley. It’s also reported that police now have CCTV images of the gunman without a balaclava on. - Alan McEwan, Daily Record.
🚔 Two men suffered head and facial injuries in what police described as ‘a brutal attack’ on Rose Street at 3.30am on Monday 1 January. They were set-upon by ‘a group of men and women’. - Matthew Fulton, STV News.
🎡 This weekend is your last chance to go on the Edinburgh’s Christmas big wheel or ice rink, as the event comes to an end on Saturday at 10pm, when the markets also close.
🎆 Where did this year’s Hogmanay events rank for you? The Scotsman Arts Correspondent Brian Ferguson shares his verdict here, saying it ‘felt like one of the best’. But he warns ‘the Hogmanay festival’s future is far from certain’:
“Edinburgh does, however, get its Hogmanay festival remarkably cheaply given its estimated £50m economic spin-off, in return for a combined £1m investment government and council investment, around £500,000 less than a decade ago.” - Brian Ferguson, The Scotsman.
👩⚕️ An Edinburgh-based midwife quit the NHS after 10 years to set up her own life-saving business. - Logan Walker, Edinburgh Live.
🏗 The empty former Scottish Law Commission building on Causewayside could be demolished to be replaced by student flats. - Logan Walker, Edinburgh Live.
🏛 Royal High School Preservation Trust, the charity behind the transformation of Edinburgh’s Royal High School into a multi-million-pound National Centre for Music, is searching for a chair and trustees to help lead the project. - Project Scotland.
🏗 The Queensferry Street and Shandwick Place hotel project is still with planners. Some proposed changes have been lodged, including increasing the number of bedrooms from 115 to 129. - There are images of the plans shared by SSC Edinburgh on Twitter.
🤔 Winners and solutions to the Broughton Spurtle’s month-long daily Christmas Puzzle are revealed here.
✨ The new edition of The Skinny is out now, including the team’s picks for the year ahead in music and comedy.
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👨🌾 The Edinburgh Garden Partners charity is hiring a Volunteering Development Coordinator. More details here.
🌱 The Water of Leith Conservation Trust is hiring a new Conservation Officer. - More info here.
⛰ “Prospects for an ambitious nature enhancement project across half of the Pentland Hills Regional Park have received a major funding boost – and the public is being asked to contribute their views on the initiative. Project L-AND is a partnership between nature recovery consultants Ecosulis and the Pentland Land Managers Association (PLMA), a group of farmers and land managers who have come together to collaborate on improving the environment and biodiversity in the Pentlands. The potential for habitat creation, carbon sequestration, flood management and water quality improvements will be explored by Project L-AND. To have your say, the Project L-and survey can be accessed here.”
📆 Things to do this weekend
Despite being the first weekend in January, there is a surprising amount happening!
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