Youtube censors Edinburgh tram options !

Under a video by CityMoose channel on the tram expansion, that supports the Roseburn path option, including without local knowledge the total path option at Telford Road, Youtube is utterly banning the following comment. Not even the first sentence on its own, or using 1s and 0s, any comment referring to station siting in any way will not post -

《 You are wrong about Telford Road. Station's site on the path route will be in a park and behind some flats, hence lonely, won't feel safe after dark. I heard that raised in the public drop-in. Its distance from the hospital too, across a housing estate, is not good for infirm or ageing patients who can't walk well. It will be a white elephant.

The road is wide, has a hospital gate straight onto it, has not got homes straight onto it. North side of the road, in Drylaw park's corner, there is a strip of ground behind a substation, gentle gradient, where you can bring the line up from path to road, so no need to build an intrusive ramp. 》

What world geopolitics or radicalism is there in words about a bloody tram line ? Made this point in favour of the Telford Road option in my trams consultation submission. Also

• instead of writing about cross-city services from Balgreen, could reopen as tram the old Corstorphine rail branch, there have often been views on local social media for that, folks who remember it say it has always been slower getting into town by bus without it. Most of the branch route still exists as a park path. Last 1/3 mile does not, so it would take an on-road bit to reach Corstorphine village. That is short enough, and not in town, that it would not slow up the buses like they are saying the Orchard Brae route will do.
• Cockburn Association, that cares about old buildings, has blogged warning of structural doubts in building the southward line over South Bridge. Modern big train-weight trams will stress the structure far more than the bus-sized ones in the historic tram era, and is a load the bridge was not built for. Same concern as for Dean Bridge, but while the Orchard Brae route is one of 3 options, South Bridge is a less known issue because the south line's route straight down the A7 is just getting taken for granted. Clearly there is a responsibility not to take it so.

If the line was diverted down Holyrood Road and near parliament, it would be a bit longer and have more corners, but it offsetting so, it would have an off-road section and avoid trying implausibly to run through the overcrowdedness of South Bridge and Nicolson St. Street widths would allow it to turn from North Bridge eastward into High St, with the northbound track off-road there to avoid the notorious tailbacks into that crossroads. Blackfriars St, Cowgate, Holyrood Road, then it could go off-road on the waste ground that is Holyrood Park's edge behind Dumbiedykes, and rise from the ground at gentle gradient by a ramp to beat the sharp rise in ground level it will eventually meet. Though the same rise prevents the line going up Pleasance because of steep gradient, that is on-road surrounded by streets with no space to beat it by a ramp, while in Holyrood there is that space. The least bumpy course over that hill, just behind the end of Dumbiedykes Road, already has an old wall along it, that obviously was easiest to build there, so the line would go through that, use its ramp to take the hill at gentler gradient than steep Braidwood Gate path up to behind Crags sport centre, Bowmont Place where it will not affect home entrances, St Leonard's St, then for local opinion to choose which street to cross back onto Clerk St via.

Maurice Frank
2 Oct 2025

public be moved to keep bureaucracy off the graves you care for

change.org/p/oppose-removal-of-grave-ironworks #westlothiancouncil #disgustingbureaucrats #bureaucrats #oppression

This type of arrogance where it hurts can move the public to react against bureaucrats as they need to.

A 16 year old boy dead from some road accident, which itself is evil enough and attests the world to be so, his family set up on his grave some honouring structures that are made of iron. 26 years later, out of the blue, arbitrarily without consultation, West Lothian council arbitrarily declares new rules to ban and remove them.

learned of from Nextdoor, 17 Jul 2025

rollout of health hubs: believe that ?

Labour supporting Youtube channel "A Different Bias", Phil Moorhouse, has made a video on a new policy for local health hubs, for the NHS in England. "Revolutionising mental health: the NHS's game changing plan" but it's also about returning some aspects of physical health closer to communities than to overloaded hospitals. So what is it, a kind of cottage hospital able to do more than a surgery ? Surgeries are already a type of hub.

In their best imagined multifunctional form, these hubs could be one stop shops, and the videoer mentions so. He says"if the reality matches the vision, then what we are talking about here is lots of key public services in one one stop shop accessible for everyone"

"although this is a 10 year plan, they are going to need some of it to be very visible before the next election ... in terms of political strategy, what I would be wanting to do is setting up some of these centres in key Red Wall areas, you call them pilots I suppose, set them up in key Red Wall areas really quickly, Now that would not only provide a lot of useful learning opportunities for rolling them out across the rest of England ..."

Scotland's experience with the autistic one stop shops is a cautionary example. It had this rollout aspiration. Oh we will start with a couple of them and roll them out to everywhere. How many olans never get completed, rollouts most of all. More red flag than red wall - if they go this rollout way, they roll down the same rabbit hole as we have seen autism service in Scotland roll down. Regional unfair disparities and long term stuck inertia towards filling in the gaps.

Thus, this comment on the video - "Experience from autistic one-stop shops in Scotland. Pilots leads to a sense of ticked boxes to have done it in some places, leads to deferring to aspiration and never reaching the ideal of serving everywhere, leads to incomplete coverage with negative issues from postcode lottery unfairness. They are still this way 20 years after they began, and in some places outside the big 2 cities, the autistic charities chosen to run them closed them down, either at term ends, or even sooner to replace them with their own simpler services !"

dangerously random ceasing to function by old bus passes

In bus pass renewals, there has continued for years, I found out last time round, an extremely dangerous system for all vulnerable passholder groups. After the renewal application goes in, you don't know in how many days your old pass will stop working, it's supposed to be a few, but happens without any check or confirmation on whether your new pass actually has arrived. Because folks are not alerted to this either, they can be using their old pass in good faith, far from home, when suddenly at any time of day it stops working.

This happened to me, randomly late afternoon in Leith, in my last renewal 3 years ago. That is why at this renewal, to fight this system and not accept this danger I have only put the application in at last minute before my pass expires, meaning I will take some days perhaps a week without a pass. In fact, I was lucky to find out that the council's "One Edinburgh" office, who issue the passes, closes at 3:00 on Fridays, and a decent hub library who would do the renewal by emailing them after that hour. So that it will not yet be seen or acted on during the weekend, hence should not affect my pass until after its expiry. It has still worked this morning - posting this on the bus in for today's ELAS.

Both Transport Scotland and the One Edinburgh office deny any power or say over when old passes stop working, nor do they say or appear to even know exactly who does work it, who there ethically should be public contact details for. According to that council office, the system is even worse now. They are now saying, that from as soon as the application is made, the old pass can stop working at unpredictably any time, and they have encountered cases where it happened immediately. This hammered in with insultingly excessive repeatings of the word "unfortunately" to pass buck and deny having any control over it. But this is while the MyGov site at mygov.scot/disabled-bus-pass/replace still says it takes a few days.

So instead of asserting a worse position than is MyGov's public info, this council office can, and ethically should, hold Transport Scotland or MyGov to that info to be accurate: contest the present unpredictability, on passholders' behalf, and tell passholders also who exactly to challenge as responsible for it. Lobbied to councillor on the transport committee.

Maurice Frank
31 May 2025

Jun 14 -
Councillor Kevin Lang, Almond ward, fine achievement to obtain this more definite info on deactivating old passes 7 days from a renewal application. This is One Edinburgh's answer to him -

NEC bus passes when renewed or replaced trigger de-activation of existing cards as a matter of course. However the timescales vary.

Lost or stolen cards and "hot-listed" as soon as possible after report.

Bus passes that are due to expire and need renewal, are either de-activated 7 days after a new card has been ordered or sooner if the expiry date printed on the card is within the 7 days. New bus passes can take up to 7 days to arrive, but most are delivered within two to three working days after application.

If a cardholder gets in touch about 7- 10 days before the current card expires with the relevant documentation to prove continued eligibility they should not be without free bus during the renewal process.

Bus passes may stop working if they become faulty, this can happen at any time, including during the renewal process.Human error can happen, so for instance if a card requiring renewal was incorrectly recorded as lost, it would cease to work as noted above.

The National Entitlement Card Programme Office in Dundee (NECPO) oversees the issuing authorities on behalf of Transport Scotland. NECPO may be the undisclosed agency referred to. NECPO have a feed back form and information about how to make a formal complaint at https://www.nec.scot/contact