Category: General (Page 3 of 37)

A new exhibition of the work of Strathbungo’s own Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson – he designed and lived at 1 Moray Place – is currently on at The Lighthouse.

Organised by The Alexander Thomson Society, the GIA and the Mitchell Library, it focuses on Thomson’s drawings of some of his key projects and includes 17 of his rare original drawings.

The exhibition is part of the city-wide celebrations of the bicentenary of Thomson’s birth.  It runs until 8 October 2017 and entrance is free.

For more information about The Alexander Thomson Society see –  http://www.alexanderthomsonsociety.org.uk

An ex-Strathbungo resident, Kevin, is looking to return to the neighbourhood. Kevin’s asked if anyone thinking of moving away and selling their property could contact him please? You can email him at schirnk@gmail.com.

Come to our Christmas extravaganza with food, shopping and entertainment in one perfect evening! We’d love to see you there.

Stalls selling crafts, cards, art, unique gifts and hampers, with live entertainment and much, much more! Christmas shopping evening cafes serving meals, teas, coffees and cake.

Entrance (including arrival canapes): £2.50

All proceeds will go to the Cosy for Christmas appeal from The Space, Govanhill

#QPChristmas

Queen’s Park Baptist Church

Address: 20 Balvicar Dr, Glasgow, G42 8QS

Email: office@qpbc.org

Phone: 0141 4233962

Website: www.qpbc.org

Facebook: Queens Park Baptist Church

Twitter: @QPBC

Following the “Make Your Mark” consultation earlier in 2016, proposals have now been published for developing the old Gasworks plot in East Pollokshields, with an open consultation being held by developers at the Tramway on 8th November between 2-7.30pm.

Although Pollokshields Community Council welcomes new development, they are concerned about the lack of consultation about what is to be developed and have asked the Society to help publicise the development proposals. Here’s what they say:

“We welcome new housing development in our area but only when there is full community consultation and consideration of the effect on Pollokshields – schooling, public transport, traffic implications, additional leisure & green space requirements. The developers of the first social-rented phase have declined our invitation to provide detailed plans in advance so we can circulate their proposals. Instead they have committed only to the minimum necessary under planning law by holding the ‘exhibition’ at the Tramway next week [on November 8th]. This is the sole statutory requirement to ‘consult’ under existing planning laws.

We urge you to attend the Tramway event where we will record your comments and ensure they are conveyed to the planning authority. A community council member will be on hand throughout but if you have some spare time to help us keep a record of your views, please get in touch.

Because we regard the 8^th November event as inadequate for meaningful consultation we intend to repeat the exercise at a planned Public Meeting on 24^th November. The venue is SoulRiders in Forth St from 6-9pm – however the Home Group management has not yet committed to attend. This is part of a more detailed event to present the results of the MakeYourMark charrette earlier this year. We will include a vote on how to best organise community empowerment. A buffet will be offered from 6pm as well as an exhibition. Full details very soon.”

You can download the leaflet about the Tramway consultation here.

Further to the ongoing Network Rail saga, Network Rail has contacted The Strathbungo Society with revised plans to erect a boundary fence along the length of Moray Place.  In response to sustained community pressure from Strathbungo – and particularly Moray Place – residents, Network Rail seem to have reconsidered their plans in a number of regards, which is welcome.

The Society has been pressing Network Rail to meet with The Strathbungo Society and local elected representatives – at the City Chambers – to discuss their proposals in full.  All local elected representatives – councillors, MSP and MP – have backed the Society’s position and Network Rail have committed to meet soon.  Cllr Norman Macleod has offered to arrange the meeting, which we hope will be held later in August or early September 2016.

We’ll aim to keep you posted, and the Society will push for an community-based consultation once Network Rail’s wider plans are known – and agreed.

Kevin Kane

Chair, The Strathbungo Society

Ian Stark of Vennard Gardens is waging a one-man war on obesity and welcomes feedback or debate on his perhaps provocative theories. Here, with a nod to Sir Isaac Newton, he observes the blackbirds who feed on his apple tree.

[This article has been posted by a blog admin on behalf of Ian Stark.]

A proper Eureka Moment!

I have a very small apple tree in my back garden which each year gets loaded (usually around 1,000) with cooking apples. I distribute with difficulty most of the apples, but this year there were well over 1,000 and I left over 100 on the tree and on the ground. While eating my breakfast one morning, I watched a blackbird eating from one of the apples on the ground. It just ate what it wanted then flew away.

Most of us have heard of the last apple that fell to the ground and, according to legend, led to a Eureka Moment that changed science in respect of gravity. Well – the bird on the ground was a very real eureka moment for me. One thought led to another and an especially good feeling went through my body. Think of all birds, light, thin with their little hearts beating 19 to the dozen. Except that is, the birds that walk on the ground – turkeys and hens to name but two.

You see, (or I hope you soon will) for the past four years I have been writing a book that goes slightly askew from current advice. I completed the book, checked all the facts and science, found definitive proof and arranged for the book’s publication. I had written in my book that 90% of the nutrients in apples are sugars! (Check nutrients online.) Also, that sugars are the fuel most used in fast exercise – without the food being stored as body fats before use. This is a key!

Sorry about that, it was such a pleasant little story and I’ve just turned most of you off, but please bear with me and keep an open mind if you can. This leads to better lives for all of us and hugely better for some of us!

So what happens to birds that stay on the ground? They can’t do fast movements and they get heavy therefore can barely fly. Cheetahs and greyhounds burst with fast energy but strangely are never heavy or fat! Elephants and Hippos don’t often use fast movements, grazing’s their way and heavy they stay.

Wrongly, I’d guess, this triggered my brain. I had completed a book that I had been writing as a hobby. However I had based my original conclusion that fast exercise (not food or lack of food) was the key to reducing weight gain and therefore obesity and Type 2 diabetes. I arrived at this by observation and the science of how the body works (my idea had formed over 40 years) and I was happy that my book showed this.

However, I had found no science that could verify completely that obesity would be reduced by people taking fast exercise in any given population (although my belief was that it would reduce obesity). Until, that is, I found a relatively new study of 132,793 British women which looked at how they had been living and this proved conclusively that sufficient fast exercise does make a population thinner! Look up – http://jech.bmj.com/content/68/Suppl_1/A23.1.abstract (“Physical activity in relation to body size and composition in women in UK Biobank”) and argue with it if you can!

My conclusion is that if anyone takes a lot of fast exercise – they won’t get fat. Those who take a moderate but very regular amount of fast exercise will need to keep an eye on when they eat and what they eat—and watch that they don’t take very large amounts at one sitting. Those who only take minimum exercise will be extraordinarily lucky not to put on gradually increasing amounts of weight, as well as watching when, what, and how they eat. So there you are:

A bird on the ground,
not looking around.
Has led to a thought,
that hasn’t been taught.

Fast Exercise is the primary means of avoiding obesity!

I got this from latest Scottish Community Alliance mailing and its inviting participation from anyone who is interested, Nick Kempe

Invite to U.Lab Scotland

by Kenneth Hogg, Scottish Government

When the First Minister laid out her Programme for Government, she made great play of the fact that this would be the most open and accessible government yet. Participation and civic engagement were to be at its heart. Nice ideas but notoriously difficult to deliver. It’s now becoming apparent that some serious thinking has been going on in the background and plans are starting to emerge. Working with the world renowned MIT on a bespoke Scottish programme to facilitate change at all levels, Scottish Government is now inviting the country to get involved.

20/5/2015

Dear Colleague

I am writing to invite you to participate in and help lead a unique and innovative opportunity to transform communities, organisations and businesses across Scotland. Our world is changing rapidly around us. In mobilising change to deliver the outcomes we want to see, I believe we need to align ourselves with a sense of the emerging future as well as learning lessons from the past. We want to put participation and engagement at the heart of public policy in Scotland and across communities. U.Lab is an exciting new programme which stimulates and facilitates change in a way that values these goals. It offers a highly participative, future-focussed learning journey, designed to generate new approaches to delivering results and to accelerate the translation of ideas into action. U.Lab will run over September and October 2015 and will be open to anyone to participate, at no financial cost. I hope that participants from across Scotland’s communities will join us, along with colleagues from across the public, private and third sectors. A few of us from Scotland participated in a trial version of U.Lab earlier this year: we all found it a uniquely powerful and inspirational experience, and wanted to widen this opportunity to others.

U.Lab Scotland

You can find out more here In summary, U.Lab is a global programme run by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and led by Otto Scharmer, one of the world’s most respected thinkers and change practitioners. U.Lab will run from 10 September until end-October 2015, and will be delivered partly online and partly through local groups meeting together (physically or online). Participation will involve a commitment of a few hours (at least 3) each week, primarily through online learning materials which can be accessed 24/7 – whenever it suits participants. U.Lab provides world-leading expertise on how to accelerate change; participants themselves will bring the particular issues that are important to them. Given the potential we believe U.Lab has to support communities and improve outcomes the Scottish Government is working with Otto Scharmer to deliver additional bespoke Scottish elements of the global programme, including developing a supporting local infrastructure of hubs across Scotland.

Invitation

The invitation to you is twofold. The first is to participate yourself in U.Lab Scotland, and to invite others in your organisations, communities and networks to participate too. The more the merrier, and the formal online sign up facility will be available in a few weeks’ time. The second invitation, and the main reason for writing to you now, is to ask you to consider becoming a hub host and to encourage others to consider this role. Although it will be possible for any participant to engage with U.Lab entirely online and on their own, we are keen that where possible participants also meet in local coaching groups where they can provide and receive support from others in developing their ideas. Some hubs might be convening places for people who live in a particular geographical community and wish to focus on the needs of that community. Other hubs could support a more geographically widespread community of interest. The particular model developed would be up to those involved in each case. Although the Scottish Government is working hard to support U.Lab in Scotland we will not be influencing the specific work done within the hubs – that will be determined by the participants. In addition to hub hosts’ willingness to devote a few hours each week to U.Lab over the 2 month period and to facilitate hub discussions, the only other requirement would be that hosts were able to secure access to a physical space (usually a suitable room) or create an online space where participants could meet to discuss, display and develop their ideas. In the trial version of U.Lab, hubs were often hosted in workplaces

including local authorities, businesses, social enterprises and shared community spaces like cafés or community centres, and even in hosts’ own homes.

Hub host training and support.

We would like to invite anyone interested in participating in U.Lab Scotland, and particularly if they are interested in becoming a hub host, to attend some of the following preparatory events in Edinburgh:

1 June: 11am to 4pm – open to anyone wishing to learn more about U.Lab and how we might use it to lead transformational change in Scotland. Please book your space here

3 July: 9.30am to 5pm – strongly recommended training event for all hub hosts. We will be joined by Otto Scharmer and his colleagues to provide support and training to everyone taking on the role of hub host. Please book your space here

1 September: 9.30am to 5pm – strongly recommended preparatory event for all hub hosts. Please book your space here

Please contact Angie.Meffan-Main@scotland.gsi.gov.uk (0131 244 0545) if you have any queries.

At our last Committee Meeting (21st April) we agreed to review all of the communication systems currently used by the Strathbungo Society. As it is such a wide topic, we are going to have a single item meeting to fully discuss it.

Please come along and help us with this and if you have particular skills and knowledge in this area, we’d love to have your input. Attached is the agenda. The meeting will be held on Wednesday 13th May 2015 7.30 – 9.00pm at McMillan’s, corner of Pollokshaws Road and Titwood Road. If you can’t make the meeting but want to contribute, please get in touch at chair@strathbungo.com See you there!

LibraryTalks2015HS