Tuesday 22 April 2008

Busy busy Friday

If the rest of the week was busy, Friday was manic.

At 10am, I attended the latest announcement of money in the CashBack for Communities at the East End Healthy Living Centre in my ward.

This scheme takes money from the proceeds of crime and returns it, in this case through rugby, to keep young people out of trouble.

This latest phase of the scheme will:

"..use over £1.4 million seized from serious o
rganised criminals to provide free rugby coaching and playing activities for over 32,000 young people throughout the country by 2011.

The Scottish Government has brokered agreement with Scottish Rugby (the SRU) to deliver a comprehensive three year programme across Scotland to encourage participation by young people in rugby."

I'll be asking the SRU what money is heading to Glasgow, and I hope it will be possible for some to come to my ward.

The unexpected surprise from the announcement for me was the presence of several rugby players, and the very beautiful Calcutta Cup. Not sure if it was the real one or the replica, but I felt lucky to get to stand near it - I say stand near, because there was no way I would have been allowed to touch it! The Cup is pretty fragile partly due to age and some shenanigans on Princes Street.

After the brief brush with sporting glamour, it was back to the reality of Council with the fortnightly Executive Committee. My mum and my cousin had come to sit in, and there was certainly plenty to hear, including A response to the Scottish Government consultation on elected health boards and the Scottish Climate Change bill, papers on the future of LES trading operations and Direct and Care Services, and a paper on the funding of Area Committees.

After lunch, we went to finally put down a deposit on the wedding venue and to look at shoes and tiaras. It's been tricky to get a date when we could all get together, so it was nice to finally start looking at putting the wedding together. It's pretty weird to have it going from a far-off concept to realising that (according to my bebo countdown clock) we get married in a hundred and eight days!

I couldn't look round the shops for long, as I had to rush off to Edinburgh to catch the end of the SNP Councillors conference. It seems to have been a very useful event, with lots of workshops. We're all so busy getting on with being Councillors, it's not really been possible to catch up with what's been going on in other groups across the country. It was also good to geek out with a different set of people purely about our different experiences and swap stories and tips. It was a good kick-off for Spring Conference too, more of which later.

2 comments:

RfS said...

It would have been the real one. Don't think there are any replicas in existence and the SRU likes to tour the silverware when they get it. I went on a tour of Twickers after a family wedding a couple of years ago and seen the "World Cup". Turns out that was an RFU replica as the real one was on its way round all the grounds in England on a recruiting drive. Sadly the English do rugby publicity much better than the SRU.

Looking hot by the way.

Anonymous said...

Well I got my photo taken with Gordon Smith at a conference in Murrayfield... so there!