by tim_bell | Apr 30, 2022 | Uncategorized
A centenary only comes along when you haven’t had time to get ready for it. Didn’t see it coming. That wasn’t the reason for missing the centenary of the amalgamation of municipal Leith with municipal Edinburgh in 2020. The centenary was in 2020, you...
by tim_bell | Dec 31, 2021 | Uncategorized
Scotland – the state of play on the cusp of 2022 What State? We’re in a poor state. The SNP, always wanting to say things would be better in an “independent” Scotland and in government unbroken since 2007, has no interest in making devolution work well. Beyond its...
by tim_bell | Nov 12, 2021 | Uncategorized
It was Harry Gibson (the play) and Danny Boyle (the film) who took the Trainspotting story away from Leith. Irvine Welsh’s focus was on the collapse of the community of Leith – the demolitions, the dispersals, the diaspora – into which heroin and HIV...
by tim_bell | Nov 3, 2021 | Uncategorized
It’s out, on the streets of Leith, a collection of writings marking the centenary of the amalgamation of Leith and Edinburgh in 1920. OK, we’re a year late, so it’s edition #101 and we’ll hit #200 in November 2120. Fifteen different voices, all...
by tim_bell | Oct 29, 2021 | Uncategorized
It’s not just the Hibs. It’s not just Stella Maris church and the first presbytery house in post-Reformation Scotland. The Irish built a good part of Victorian Leith streets, and they have one of the very few 19th century positive acknowledgements of their...
by tim_bell | Aug 20, 2021 | Uncategorized
See my letter in The Herald or read it here. The “War on Drugs” isn’t a war, it’s big business. Few politicians have the courage to acknowledge this, and none of them is in Scotland. I know little of Afghanistan other than general knowledge and...
by tim_bell | Aug 10, 2021 | Uncategorized
Just too late to join the row about the record-breaking illegal drug deaths in Scotland, here’s a letter I didn’t send to the press. Recent correspondence is quite right to point out that the cause of the scale of the Scottish drug-related deaths is...
by tim_bell | Jun 22, 2021 | Uncategorized
Last week I sent this image of weeds the whole length of the gutter of our street, dense and up to almost 2 feet high, to my MSP and councillors. I asked them for a well-informed opinion on how it has got to this stage. Ben MacPherson MSP (SNP) said it was a Council...
by tim_bell | May 15, 2021 | Uncategorized
I’m very proud to be asked by the Council to make a presentation of 100 years of Leith history. ME! I’ve only been here forty years. Researching it, I was struck again by how much was being lost to the community of Leith in the run-up to the end of the...
by tim_bell | Apr 28, 2021 | Latest News
Dear Ben, I was pleased to see you and the other candidates at the Leith Churches Together hustings last evening. Talking it over with church friends – not party friends – this morning, there is some consensus about the most disgraceful thing said: when you said that...
