Politics of Edinburgh
The politics of Edinburgh are expressed in the deliberations and decisions of the City of Edinburgh Council, in elections to the council, the Scottish Parliament, the House of Commons and the European Parliament. As Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh is host to the Scottish Parliament and the main offices of the Scottish Government; the City of Edinburgh became a unitary council area under the Local Government etc.. Act 1994, with the boundaries of the post-1975 City of Edinburgh district of the Lothian region; as one of the unitary local government areas of Scotland, the City of Edinburgh has a defined structure of governance under the Local Government etc. Act 1994, with The City of Edinburgh Council governing on matters of local administration such as housing, local transport and local economic development and regeneration. For such purposes the City of Edinburgh is divided into 17 wards; the next tier of government is that of the Scottish Parliament, which legislates on matters of Scottish "national interest", such as healthcare, the environment and agriculture, devolved to it by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
For elections to the Scottish Parliament, the city area is divided among six Scottish Parliament constituencies, each returning one Member of the Scottish Parliament, is within the Lothians electoral region. The Parliament of the United Kingdom legislates on matters such as taxation, foreign policy, defence and trade. For elections to the House of Commons of this parliament, the city area is divided among five United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies, with each constituency returning one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election. Scotland constitutes a single constituency of the European Parliament, in which the electorate of the City of Edinburgh participate in electing six Members of the European Parliament using the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation. On 18 September 2014, Edinburgh voted "No" in the Scottish Independence Referendum by 61.1% to 38.9% with an 84.4% turnout rate. The current Lord Provost of Edinburgh is Frank Ross, who replaced Donald Wilson in 2017.
In Scotland the Lord Provost fulfils many similar roles to that of a Mayor in some other countries. Elections to the Council are held every four/five years electing 63 councillors; the most recent elections took place in May 2017 and the next election is in May 2022. Prior to May 2017, the Council was controlled by a Labour/Scottish National Party coalition which continues following the 2017 election except that the SNP is now the largest party; the Council is the second highest employer in Edinburgh, with a total of 18,617 employees. Prior to the Local Government Act 1973 Edinburgh was administered by the single tier "Edinburgh Corporation", which covered the "City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh"; as such, the Edinburgh Corporation was responsible for local government services, such as the Edinburgh Corporation Transport Department. The Edinburgh Corporation had the power to make'Burgess' of the City of Edinburgh and to grant "Seals of Cause" to Guilds and trade organisations; the Edinburgh Corporation awarded Burgess Ticket through the Lord Dean of Guild, an office in the Corporation.
Like the Corporation of the City of London, Burgess Tickets were awarded along with a'Freedom Casket' – a container to hold the ticket. Bodies such as the Merchant Company of Edinburgh, the Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh and The High Constables of Edinburgh formed part of the corporation, contributing councilors and law enforcement officers; the Edinburgh Corporation had the power to institute these organisations via the granting of a "Seal of Cause". This empowered the societies as "a legal corporation with power to hold property, make its own by-laws and regulations". Other organisations to receive the "Seal of Cause" include The Royal Burgess Golfing Society of Edinburgh, who received their seal on the 2nd July 1800; the history of the corporation lives on elsewhere around the city, for example in the name of the members of Muirfield golf club, who were granted a charter by the corporation in 1800 becoming "The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers". Many of Edinburgh's ceremonies and traditions date back to the days of the Edinburgh Corporation, such as the Edinburgh Ceremony of the Keys, where the Lord Provost symbolically hands the keys to the City of Edinburgh to the monarch, who hands them back to the Lord Provost proclaiming "that they cannot be placed in better hands than those of the Lord Provost and Councillors of my good City of Edinburgh".
In 1975, Edinburgh Corporation was abolished. The new two-tier system consisted of Lothian Regional Council and the City of Edinburgh District Council; the City of Edinburgh became a single-tier council area under the Local Government etc.. Act 1994, with the boundaries of the City of Edinburgh district of the Lothian region; the district had been created in 1975, under the Local Government Act 1973, to include the former county of city of Edinburgh. For elections to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the city is divided among five constituencies, each of which elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election
David Henry (businessman)
Sir David Henry, KBE was a Scottish-born New Zealand industrialist, company director, philanthropist. Henry was born at Juniper Green, Scotland, his father, Robert Henry, was a sawmiller and on leaving school, David worked as a clerk in the Mossy Paper Mill at Colinton while attending night classes in Edinburgh at Heriot-Watt College. Indifferent health prompted him to emigrate to New Zealand in 1907, he worked for the Government Printer in Wellington for a brief time before moving to Christchurch, where he founded an engineering business. When the business failed he shifted to Auckland to start afresh, he married Mary Castleton Osborne on 28 April 1915 and began working for another engineering and patents company owned by S. Oldfield and D. B. Hutton. By August of the same year, he had bought into the firm, it was renamed Oldfield & Henry. Within four years he owned the organisation outright and it became known as D. Henry & Co. Henry expanded the business into a profitable small-scale plumbing manufacturer and supplier.
Henry's New Zealand cousins had been involved in the fledgingly timbermilling industry since their arrival in New Zealand in the 1870s and in 1936 he was to play a pivotal role in the consolidation of the New Zealand timber industry through his involvement in the merger of his extended family's milling business with the afforestation company, New Zealand Perpetual Forests. Henry struck a hard bargain in purchasing the New Zealand Perpetual Forests assets and was made the chairman and managing director of the new company for his efforts; this new company was New Zealand Forest Products, which remained New Zealand's largest industrial concern and largest company until the privatisation of Telecom New Zealand in the 1990s. In assuming the role of New Zealand's pre-eminent industrialist, Henry was concerned with developing the future utilisation of the company's forests. Sawmill technology for handling Pinus radiata, the commercial manufacture of pulp and paper from this species, was reasonably undeveloped worldwide.
He travelled extensively throughout the United States and Europe to find the newest processing technology and fought a protracted battle with the New Zealand Government to overcome bureaucracy. He was successful in convincing the government of the benefits of the company's industrialisation and in 1941 opened the first large-scale sawmill and insulating board plant at Penrose, Auckland. Henry clashed with the government over its plans to nationalise the New Zealand timber industry to create an integrated state sector forest and timber manufacturing company; this battle continued until the election of a National Government in 1949. In 1943 Sir David chose a mill site near the company's forest plantations, he built Kinleith Mill, to become famous as New Zealand's largest industrial processing complex. Kinleith manufactured the first commercially produced kraft pulp in New Zealand in 1953, it was the culmination of 17 years of effort by Henry. In 1954 he was made a KBE for his services to the New Zealand exotic timber industry.
Henry was involved in the community. He used his business success in Auckland to become involved with a wide range of organisations, including the Rotary Club of Auckland, the Boy Scouts' Association, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Auckland Manufacturers' Association, he sat as an elected councillor on the Auckland City Council, he was well known for his philanthropy, endowing a forestry scholarship bearing his name in 1956 to provide overseas training for employees of New Zealand Forest Products. He established a substantial trust for the Auckland Presbyterian Orphanages and Social Service Association, his wife died in 1954, but the next year, Sir David married Dorothy May Osborne, the younger sister of his first wife. At the age of 67, Sir David showed no interest in retiring as Chairman of New Zealand Forest Products, he continued to battle the government over industry licensing, but alarmingly began to display erratic behaviour. This is evidenced by his conduct in 1958 when he encouraged the British pulp and paper giant Bowater Paper Corporation to make an unsuccessful takeover for New Zealand Forest Products, he began to make uncharacteristically rash statements to the national press.
Despite being ill with a heart condition, Henry continued to be active at the company, holding many meetings at his Remuera residence, during which he was known to lash out verbally. In his history of New Zealand Forest Products, titled "A Hundred Million Trees", Brian Healy said "Sir David Henry lacked warmth and humour in his working relations and tended to be abrupt and demanding with his subordinates, yet he was a fluent and persuasive speaker whose self-assurance, business acumen and tenacity were vital in enabling New Zealand Forest Products to overcome enormous barriers and to develop into one of the country's largest industrial enterprises." Healy, B. A Hundred Million Trees. Auckland, 1982 Obit. New Zealand Herald. 21 August 1963: 5 Obit. New Zealand Timber Journal 10, No 1: 27, 35 Sir David Henry by Bernard John Foster, 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
Fire services in the United Kingdom
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty agencies; these are known as a fire and rescue service, the term used in modern legislation and by government departments. The older terms of fire brigade and fire service survive in informal usage and in the names of a few organisations. England and Wales have local fire services which are each overseen by a fire authority, made up of representatives of local governments. Fire authorities have the power to raise a Council Tax levy for funding, with the remainder coming from the government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire services, so their authorities are committees of the devolved parliaments; the total budget for fire services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. Central government maintains national standards and a body of independent advisers through the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, created in 2007, while Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services provides direct oversight.
The devolved government in Scotland has HMFSI Scotland. Firefighters in the United Kingdom are allowed to join unions, the main one being the Fire Brigades Union, while chief fire officers are members of the National Fire Chiefs Council, which has some role in national co-ordination; the fire services have undergone significant changes since the beginning of the 21st century, a process, propelled by a devolution of central government powers, new legislation and a change to operational procedures in the light of terrorism attacks and threats. See separate article History of fire safety legislation in the United Kingdom Comprehensive list of recent UK fire and rescue service legislation: Fire services are established and granted their powers under new legislation which has replaced a number of Acts of Parliament dating back more than 60 years, but is still undergoing change. 1938: Fire Brigades Act 1938. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain and made it mandatory for local authorities to arrange an effective fire service.
1947: Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. 1959: Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act. It was repealed in Wales along with the 1947 Act. 1999: Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of national fire strikes, with much of the discontent caused by the aforementioned report into the fire service conducted by Prof Sir George Bain. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the industrial action still ongoing. Bain's report led to a change in the laws relating to firefighting. 2002: Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004: Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 only applying to England and Wales. 2006: The Regulatory Reform Order 2005 This piece of secondary legislation or statutory instrument replaces several other acts that dealt with fire precautions and fire safety in premises, including the now defunct process of issuing fire certificates.
It came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises: 2006: The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on "Fire and rescue services. Promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation." But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries. There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association, its website outlines future changes, specific projects: "The aim of the Fire Modernisation Programme is to adopt modern work practices within the Fire & Rescue Service to become more efficient and effective, while strengthening the contingency and resilience of the Service to react to incidents. " The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee. In June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report.
Committee report The committee's brief is described on its website: The Communities and Local Government Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure and policy of the Department for Communities and Local Government and its associated bodies. Government response This document, the subsequent government response in September 2006, are important as they outlined progress on the FiReControl, efforts to address diversity and the planned closure of HMFSI in 2007 among many issues. Both documents are interesting as they refer back to Professor Bain's report and the many recommendations it made and continue to put forward the notion that there is an ongoing need to modernise FRSs. For example, where FRSs were inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office. Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Governm
Scottish Ambulance Service
The Scottish Ambulance Service is the NHS Ambulance Services Trust, part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. Uniquely, the Scottish Ambulance Service is considered a special health board and is funded directly by the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government, it is the sole public emergency medical service covering Scotland's mainland and islands. In 1948, the newly formed National Health Service contracted two voluntary organisations, the St Andrew's Ambulance Association and the British Red Cross, to jointly provide a national ambulance provision for Scotland, known as the St Andrew's and Red Cross Scottish Ambulance Service; the British Red Cross withdrew from the service in 1967. In 1974, with the reorganisation of the National Health Service, ambulance provision in Scotland was taken over by the NHS, with the organisational title being shortened to the now-current Scottish Ambulance Service. St. Andrew's First Aid, the trading name of St. Andrew's Ambulance Association, continues as a voluntary organisation and provides first aid training and provision in a private capacity.
The Scottish Ambulance Service now continues in its current form as one of the largest emergency medical providers in the UK, employing more than 4,000 staff in a variety of roles and responding to 740,631 emergency incidents in 2015/2016 alone. The service, like the rest of the National Health Service is free at point of access and is utilised by the public and healthcare professionals alike. Employing 1,300 paramedic staff, a further 1,200 technicians, the accident and emergency service is accessed through the public 999 system. Ambulance responses are now prioritised on patient requirement; the Scottish Ambulance Service maintains three command and control centres in Scotland, which facilitate handling of 999 calls and dispatch of ambulances. These three centres have handle over 800,000 calls per year; the AMPDS system is used for call prioritisation, provides post-dispatch instructions to callers allowing for medical advice to be given over the phone, prior to ambulance arrival. Clinical staff are present to provide tertiary triage.
Co-located with the Ambulance Control Centres are patient transport booking and control services, which handle 1 million patient journeys per year. The Scottish Ambulance Service maintains a varied fleet of around 1,500 vehicles; this includes Accident and Emergency ambulances single-response vehicles such as cars and small vans for paramedics, patient-transport ambulances which come in the form of adapted minibuses and support vehicles for major incidents and events, specialist vehicles such as 4x4s and tracked vehicles for difficult access. The unique geography of Scotland, which includes urban centres such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, areas of low-population such as Grampian and the Highlands, the Island communities mean that fleet provision has to be flexible and include different approaches to vehicle construction. In the past, 4x4-build ambulances on van chassis have been used in more rural areas, traditional van-conversions in more urban. With a large fleet upgrade project being commissioned in 2016, the business case was made to move to a box-body on chassis build, to provide some flexibility and more resilient parts procurement.
Most of these replacement ambulances have been based on either Mercedes or Volkswagen chassis, with a mixture of automatic or manual transmissions. The equipment used on board Scottish Ambulance Service vehicles broadly falls in line with NHS Scotland and allows for intraoperability in most cases. Equipment is replaced at regular service intervals; the uniform falls in line with the NHS Scotland National Uniform standard, in keeping with the uniform standard described by the National Ambulance Uniform Procurement group in 2016. Amongst cost and comfort considerations, all Scottish Ambulance Service Staff now wear the national uniform which comprises a dark green trouser / shirt combination. Personal Protective Equipment are issued to all staff and denote rank / clinical rank by way of epaulette and helmet markings; the national headquarters are in west side of Edinburgh and there are five divisions within the Service, namely: The Patient Transport Service carries over 1.3 million patients every year.
This service is provided to patients who are physically or medically unfit to travel to hospital out-patient appointments by any other means can still make their appointments. The service handles non-emergency admissions, transport of palliative care patients and a variety of other specialised roles. Patient Transport Vehicles come in a variety of forms and are staffed by Ambulance Care Assistants, whom work
Michael Woodruff
Sir Michael Francis Addison Woodruff, FRS, FRCS was an English surgeon and scientist principally remembered for his research into organ transplantation. Though born in London, Woodruff spent his youth in Australia, where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and medicine. Having completed his studies shortly after the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Australian Army Medical Corps, but was soon captured by Japanese forces and imprisoned in the Changi Prison Camp. While there, he devised an ingenious method of extracting nutrients from agricultural wastes to prevent malnutrition among his fellow POWs. At the conclusion of the war, Woodruff returned to England and began a long career as an academic surgeon, mixing clinical work and research. Woodruff principally studied transplant immunosuppression, his work in these areas of transplantation biology led Woodruff to perform the first kidney transplant in the United Kingdom, on 30 October 1960. For this and his other scientific contributions, Woodruff was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1968 and made a Knight Bachelor in 1969.
Although retiring from surgical work in 1976, he remained an active figure in the scientific community, researching cancer and serving on the boards of various medical and scientific organizations. Michael Woodruff was born on 3 April 1911 in Mill Hill, England. In 1913, his father, Harold Woodruff, a professor of veterinary medicine at the Royal Veterinary College in London, moved the family to Australia so he could take up the post of Professor of Veterinary Pathology and Director of the Veterinary Institute at the University of Melbourne; the elder Woodruff became the Professor of Bacteriology. The family's new life in Australia was interrupted by World War I, which prompted Harold to enlist in the armed services, he was sent to Egypt. The remainder of the Woodruffs returned to London, the two boys lived with their mother and paternal grandmother in the latter's residence in Finchley; however and his brother went back to Australia in 1917 after their mother, died of a staphylococcal septicaemia.
The two spent a short time under the care of an aunt before being rejoined by their father in 1917. In 1919, Harold remarried and his new wife raised the children from his first marriage; the two boys did their early schooling at Trinity Grammar School in Melbourne. From on he spent all of his youth in Australia except for a year in Europe in 1924 when his father went on sabbatical leave at Paris's Pasteur Institute. During this time and his brother boarded at Queen's College in Taunton, Somerset on the south coast of England; the headmaster at the school derogatorily regarded Australians as "colonials" who were "backward" and put Woodruff in a year level one year lower than appropriate. Upon returning to Australia, Woodruff attended the private Methodist Wesley College, where he enjoyed mathematics and rowing, he won a government scholarship to the University of Melbourne and Queen's College, a university residential college. Woodruff studied electrical engineering and mathematics, receiving some instruction from the influential physicist Harrie Massey a tutor.
Despite success in engineering, Woodruff decided that he would have weak prospects as an engineer in Australia because of the Great Depression. He decided to take up medical studies at the end of his third year of undergraduate study, but his parents wanted him to finish his degree first. Despite his fears regarding his ability to succeed as an engineer, Woodruff placed first in his graduating class with first-class honours, he completed two years of the maths program with first-class honours. After graduating in 1933, he entered the medical program at the University of Melbourne, his mentors included Anatomy Professor Frederic Wood Jones. While at the University, he passed the primary exam for the Royal College of Surgeons in 1934, one of only four successful candidates who sat the examination in Melbourne that year, he received an MBBS with honours as well as two prizes in surgery. After graduation, he studied internal medicine for one more year, served as a house surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Woodruff started his surgical training. At the outbreak of World War II, Woodruff joined the Australian Army Medical Corps, he stayed in Melbourne until he finished his Master of Surgery Degree in 1941. At that time, he was assigned to the Tenth Australian Army General Hospital in Malaya as a captain in the Medical Corps. According to Woodruff, his time in Malaya was quiet and leisurely as the war in the Pacific was yet to begin in earnest. However, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed the situation and he was posted to a casualty clearing station where he worked as an anaesthetist, before being transferred into the Singapore General Hospital. A Japanese offensive resulted in the fall of Singapore and Woodruff was taken prisoner along with thousands of other Australian and British personnel. After being captured, Woodruff was imprisoned in the Changi Prison Camp. In the camp, Woodruff realized that his fellow prisoners were at great risk from vitamin deficiencies due to the poor quality of the rations they were issued by the Japanese.
To help fight this threat, Woodruff asked for permission from the Japanese to allow him to take responsibility for the matter, granted. He devised a method for extracting important nutrients from grass, soya beans, rice polishings, agricultural wastes using old machinery that he found at the camp. Woodruff published an account of his methods through the Medical Research Council titled "Deficiency Diseases in Japanese Prison Camps". Woodruff remained a POW for t
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Part of the county of Midlothian, it is located in Lothian on the Firth of Forth's southern shore. Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is the seat of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the supreme courts of Scotland; the city's Palace of Holyroodhouse is the official residence of the monarch in Scotland. The city has long been a centre of education in the fields of medicine, Scots law, philosophy, the sciences and engineering, it is the second largest financial centre in the United Kingdom and the city's historical and cultural attractions have made it the United Kingdom's second most popular tourist destination, attracting over one million overseas visitors each year. Edinburgh is Scotland's second most populous city and the seventh most populous in the United Kingdom; the official population estimates are 488,050 for the Locality of Edinburgh, 513,210 for the City of Edinburgh, 1,339,380 for the city region.
Edinburgh lies at the heart of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland city region comprising East Lothian, Fife, Scottish Borders and West Lothian. The city is the annual venue of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, it is home to national institutions such as the National Museum of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery. The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582 and now one of four in the city, is placed 18th in the QS World University Rankings for 2019; the city is famous for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe, the latter being the world's largest annual international arts festival. Historic sites in Edinburgh include Edinburgh Castle, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the churches of St. Giles and the Canongate, the extensive Georgian New Town, built in the 18th/19th centuries. Edinburgh's Old Town and New Town together are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, managed by Edinburgh World Heritage since 1999. "Edin", the root of the city's name, derives from Eidyn, the name for this region in Cumbric, the Brittonic Celtic language spoken there.
The name's meaning is unknown. The district of Eidyn centred on the dun or hillfort of Eidyn; this stronghold is believed to have been located at Castle Rock, now the site of Edinburgh Castle. Eidyn was conquered by the Angles of Bernicia in the 7th century and by the Scots in the 10th century; as the language shifted to Old English, subsequently to modern English and Scots, The Brittonic din in Din Eidyn was replaced by burh, producing Edinburgh. Din became dùn in Scottish Gaelic, producing Dùn Èideann; the city is affectionately nicknamed Auld Reekie, Scots for Old Smoky, for the views from the country of the smoke-covered Old Town. Allan Ramsay said. A name the country people give Edinburgh from the cloud of smoke or reek, always impending over it."Thomas Carlyle said, "Smoke cloud hangs over old Edinburgh,—for since Aeneas Silvius's time and earlier, the people have the art strange to Aeneas, of burning a certain sort of black stones, Edinburgh with its chimneys is called'Auld Reekie' by the country people."A character in Walter Scott's The Abbot says "... yonder stands Auld Reekie--you may see the smoke hover over her at twenty miles' distance."Robert Chambers who said that the sobriquet could not be traced before the reign of Charles II attributed the name to a Fife laird, Durham of Largo, who regulated the bedtime of his children by the smoke rising above Edinburgh from the fires of the tenements.
"It's time now bairns, to tak' the beuks, gang to our beds, for yonder's Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht -cap!"Some have called Edinburgh the Athens of the North for a variety of reasons. The earliest comparison between the two cities showed that they had a similar topography, with the Castle Rock of Edinburgh performing a similar role to the Athenian Acropolis. Both of them had fertile agricultural land sloping down to a port several miles away. Although this arrangement is common in Southern Europe, it is rare in Northern Europe; the 18th-century intellectual life, referred to as the Scottish Enlightenment, was a key influence in gaining the name. Such luminaries as David Hume and Adam Smith shone during this period. Having lost most of its political importance after the Union, some hoped that Edinburgh could gain a similar influence on London as Athens had on Rome. A contributing factor was the neoclassical architecture that of William Henry Playfair, the National Monument. Tom Stoppard's character Archie, of Jumpers, said playing on Reykjavík meaning "smoky bay", that the "Reykjavík of the South" would be more appropriate.
The city has been known by several Latin names, such as Aneda or Edina. The adjectival form of the latter, can be seen inscribed on educational buildings; the Scots poets Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns used Edina in their poems. Ben Jonson described it as "Britaine's other eye", Sir Walter Scott referred to it as "yon Empress of the North". Robert Louis Stevenson a son of the city, wrote, "Edinburgh is what Paris ought to be"; the colloquial pronunciation "Embra" or "Embro" has been used, as in Robert Garioch's Embro to the Ploy. The earliest known human habitation in the Edinburgh area was at Cramond, where evidence was found of a Mesolithi
Pentland Hills
The Pentland Hills are a range of hills to the south-west of Edinburgh, Scotland. The range is around 20 miles in length, runs south west from Edinburgh towards Biggar and the upper Clydesdale; some of the peaks include: Scald Law Carnethy Hill East Cairn Hill West Cairn Hill West Kip Byrehope Mount East Kip Allermuir Hill Castlelaw Hill The hills span a number of council regions: from the City of Edinburgh and Midlothian in the north, south-west through West Lothian to the Scottish Borders and South Lanarkshire. The Pentland Hills Regional Park was designated in 1986, it covers an area of 90 km² at the northern end of the hills. The park, together with the rest of the hills, are used for a variety of recreational activities including hillwalking, mountain biking, horse riding and skiing at the artificial ski slope at the Midlothian Snowsports Centre. Today most of the land is upland pasture, along with a few forestry plantations; the Ministry of Defence have a rifle range at Castlelaw. A number of rivers rise in the hills, including the Water of Leith and the North Esk, there are several reservoirs, including Threipmuir, Clubbiedean, Torduff and Loganlea.
In the southern part of the hills is Little Sparta, the garden of the late artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay. Settlements in or near the Pentlands include: Edinburgh suburbs - Balerno, Juniper Green, Currie, Fairmilehead, Swanston Midlothian - Glencorse, Nine Mile Burn, Eight Mile Burn, Silverburn, West Lothian - Kirknewton, Livingston is near. Scottish Borders - Carlops, West Linton South Lanarkshire - Biggar, Carnwath, Dunsyre, Tarbrax There is ample evidence of prehistoric settlement in the area, e.g. the hillfort and souterrain at Castle Law, another at Caerketton. The hills were most settled and defended in the pre-Roman and Roman era by the local Celtic people known to the Romans as the Votadini. About 20 m into Glencorse Reservoir lie the submerged ruins of the chapel of St Katherine's in the Hope; the founding of the chapel is connected with the story of a mediaeval royal deer hunt. According to the story, King Robert the Bruce staked the Pentland Estate against the life of Sir William St Clair, with the outcome of the hunt of a white deer by the knight and his two hounds,'Help' and'Hold', being the deciding factor.
The dogs managed to bring down the deer, in gratitude, to mark the spot, Sir William had a chapel built in the glen. The hills were the scene of an incident in 1666 following the Restoration of King Charles II when an outbreak of armed rebellion amongst Covenanters led to a small force of badly armed conventiclers being defeated at the battle of Rullion Green, after which the whole tragic episode was named the Pentland Rising; the incident is commemorated by the "Covenanter's Grave", a cairn after which one of the drove roads across the hills is known. There is a residence hall at the University of California, Riverside, named after Pentland Hills; the Pentland Hills Residence Hall houses first-year students at the university in a suite style environment. List of places in the Scottish Borders List of places in South Lanarkshire List of places in Edinburgh List of places in Midlothian List of places in West Lothian Pentland Hills Regional Park Midlothian Council, Pentland Hills walks Friends of the Pentlands Pentland Hills Webcam
