CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
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'This is just a start': states announce police reforms as protests enter second weekend
Minneapolis and California take steps against dangerous tactics
Momentum continues but demonstrations grow more peaceful
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/george-floyd-protests-police-reform
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anti-racism protesters urged to be 'very careful' to prevent spread of infection - latest updates
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Black Lives Matter protests: Sydney rally given green light as court ruling overturned
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Plenty of social distancing evident in London at the moment.......
the demo organisers have just posted some maps and instructions. they are using the field behind the palace. there is a speakers area demarcated, with dots for people / households spread out at appropriate distance and paths through so that people aren't barging through your space.
Polices around Abbeyhill. Various incipient demonstrators heading vaguely Holyroodwards on our walk in to the dental hospital with the big one to get the tooth he cracked yesterday patched. Police barrier on Royal Terrace at Regent Road end (American consulate?) and lots of tooting cars with hazards on heading up Montrose Terrace. Cadzow Place rammed in both directions.
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The long defence of the figure and Colston’s reputation was overt and shameless, but not unique. In other British cities other men who grew rich through the trafficking of human beings or who defended the “respectable trade” are venerated in bronze and marble. In Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square, on a pedestal 150 feet high, stands Viscount Melville, Henry Dundas, another of history’s guilty men. His great contribution to civilisation was to water down and delay attempts to pass an act abolishing the slave trade. Historians struggle to estimate how many thousands died or were transported into slavery because of his actions. Already social media is ablaze with calls for Dundas to be thrown into the Forth.
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Sir Geoff just wants the words on the info graphic to reflect the actions of the man. Dundas also acquired his money and Castle from wife no 1 whom he divorced. Melville Castle Hotel I think
From wikipedia:
Lord Melville's first marriage was to Elizabeth, daughter of David Rannie, of Melville Castle, in 1765. Almost all of his wealth (£10,000), as well as the castle, came to him through this marriage but he left Elizabeth in their country residence while he remained in Edinburgh, and she committed adultery (then known as "criminal conversation") with a Captain Faukener in 1778. Within days she had confessed by letter to her husband, and approximately a month later they were divorced. She never saw her children again, dying in 1843. Henry Dundas, as was the law of the time, kept all of the money and property.
65 years without seeing your kids...
Michael Fry who is an apologist for Dundas or his pals are preventing the wording being changed.
James Gillespie made his money from plantations
Rabbie Burns considered being an Overseerin Jamaica
Dundas the top mason too I believe. Though that is secret.
Dundas was the power behind the transportation of Thomas Muir and the Edinburgh martyrs. He had a special law invented and retrospectively applied by his mate Lord Braxfield. They had had the temerity to ask for annual parliaments elected by universal male suffrage.
Last man to be impeached in public office in Great Britain after his corruption got out of hand even for those days.
I like to think that history's ultimate revenge on Dundas is that, despite having a statue of himself on a huge column in the centre of the city, very few people know or care who that is.
@AKen, yes he was put so very high up so he could command all he surveyed but strangely as no one apart from some masons and Michael Fry Liked him we have largely ignored him. The issue now is that we must not ignore what he did. Not think that Scotland wasn’t racist then and is still racist now (Sir Geoff often asked if he is chauffeur or why he has come to the Royal Society building, err to give a lecture?)
Cannot remember who said it but I like the idea that you can tell how much families love their deceased by how much stone they pile on top of their graves to prevent any possibility of return.
Same for statue plinth heights?
Anti-Irish racism is rife in Scotland and we call it 'football' or 'banter'. This is on top of the other stuff.
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Johnson added: “You are right, we are all right, to say Black Lives Matter; and to all those who have chosen to protest peacefully and who have insisted on social distancing – I say, yes of course I hear you, and I understand.
“But I must also say that we are in a time of national trial, when for months this whole country has come together to fight a deadly plague. After such sacrifice, we cannot now let it get out of control.”
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Like most Edinburgh citizens I don't even notice the statues particularly. They're part of the street scene. A Malaysian flatmate asked me about the funny writing on a statue in Shandwick Place and I had to go and look at it and saw it was Gladstone and Greek. In most cases statues lose their meaning over time. It's usually violent political upheavals that pull them down eg the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. There's a terrific museum of Communist sculpture at the edge of Budapest.
The noticeable statues are the new ones, like the Polish bear in Princes Street gardens - a very good choice, as children like being photographed sitting on it.
The worst placed statue is the one of Alan Breck and David Balfour on Corstorphine Road, which is mostly seen from buses and cars - and let's hope cycles in the future.
For more literary characters, we could have a sculpture of RentBoy and his chums from Trainspotting running along Princes Street.
The finest, in my opinion, is the World War I relief at the west end of Princes Street gardens.
@AKen - indeed. I can't say I'd ever heard of the guy.
The Melville Monument in St Andrew Square has 'always just been there' for me, a landmark to help me tell north from south. I have lived in or near Edinburgh for all my life and I never actually knew who the figure on the top of the column was. I suppose I supposed it was either Nelson or Saint Andrew.
I can't say with any certainty that, in 30 years of living in Edinburgh, I've even noticed there was a figure at the top! I know money talks but what about him are we meant to admire so much that he merits so huge a monument? Leave the pillar, haul him off it, put up a wee plaque explaining the history of it and stick someone/thing else up there.
Another voice for the statues are just decoration for me. Never really noticed who was on the plinths or who they were off, only one I half remember is the new one on the end of George Street was a mathematician or engineer.
I guess the biggest problem is the perception of visitors or people who have actually paid attention, is that this the sort of person we revere? But then if we remove them are we trying to deny that part of the cities and our history.
@steveo, see also the cultural 'sanitisation' of Tom and Jerry cartoons. Explosion? Blackface. Mammy Two Shoes? Maid (although later, home owner and SWMBO). Removing all non-PC references by modern standards vs recognising and teaching – but not promoting or celebrating – the cultural background of a distant time, however unpalatable it may be, is tricky.
I didn't know about the Alan Breck and David Balfour statues but this one is nice - and in a spot that favours contemplation without a mass of traffic roaring past:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Robert_Louis_Stevenson_as_a_child.JPG
What?! I've cycled past there many a time and never knew that was there. I'll have to go and look for it sometime (possibly on foot rather than by bike).
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@Reuters
London's Robert Milligan statue is removed
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