Have you heard about the latest diet craze to sweep the nation? It's called the Fife Diet and no, it isn't about pizza suppers, and Irn-Bru - who would think such a thing?

There's a meeting at the wrong end of Leith Walk about it this Thursday, at the quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace. The originator of the Fife Diet, Mike Small, will give the curious an insight into what he's been eating and why. Here's how he describes it:

"We’ve had whole foods and slow food, fast food and organics. We’ve had road-food, and freeganism, Masterchefs and Naked Chefs, the F Word and the Atkins, Meals on Wheels and Free School Meals. The difference about the Fife Diet is, it’s not actually about you any more.

"Acting under the motto ‘Think Global, Eat Local’ the Fife Diet aims toreduce not your waist line but your carbon footprint, by eating only food from Fife for a year. "

Did you know that 95% of the fruit and half of the vegetables in the UK are imported? The amount of food being flown into the UK doubled in the1990s and is predicted to rise further each year. As we know, air freighthas a far bigger impact on the environment than sea or road travel has.

Another reason for mounting food miles is comparative labour costs. Forexample, some British fish is now sent to China (where labour costs aremuch lower) for processing, then sent back to the UK to be sold. This is crazy. "Come and hear about bioregionalist solutions to restoring and repairing our ruptured food culture."

The talk is hosted by Friends of the Earth Scotland, and starts at 7.30pm.

June seems to have bought a huge rush of activity and we've been struggling a bit to keep up with all the meetings we feel we should be going to. However, we're pleased to post a couple of meeting summaries below to keep you informed of what's been going on.

Leith Neighbourhood Partnership Meeting 

Public Consultation on Draft Bonnington / Jane Street Development Briefs

An exhibition of the detailed design of the tram route between the Foot of Leith Walk and Picardy Place, will be held on the 19th of June between 4pm and 7.30pm in St Mary's Cathedral Hall at 61, York Place. Representatives from a whole host of organisations involved in the project will be on hand to answer questions.

Greener Leith is pleased to confirm that this years AGM will be on the 17th of June at 7.30pm in our usual venue, the Persevere Room of the Leith Kirkgate Community Centre.

This year has been the best year yet for Greener Leith, so you'll be able to hear about what we've achieved and discuss proposals for the future. We'd love to expand our committee, and so if you're interested in joining the management committee please contact us.

We're also keen to grow our membership, and to encourage people to join, we're please to announce an exclusive membership deal with the City Car Club. It costs just £5 per year to join Greener Leith. New members are now entitled to a massive 30% discount on the joining fee of the City Car Club, as well as 5 hours of free motoring. In total, a discount worth around £50 in total.

Gary Bell for the City Car Club, will be at the AGM with a car so that he can demonstrate how the service works. There are 6 dedicated City Car Club bays within the EH6 area: Elbe Street, Dock Street, Pitt Street, Madeira Street, Casselbank Street and Newhaven Road . Two more bays open soon in Cables Wynd and Tower Street.

We hope this offer will encourage more people to sign up for the City Car Club, as the scheme could play an important role in reducing local traffic congestion.
 
You can join both Greener Leith and the City Car Club on-line. When you join Greener Leith we will email you a special discount code you can use on the City Car Club website to receive your membership discount.  

Members of Greener Leith attended a planning meeting at St Mary’s Primary School last week, to find out more about the design proposals for the Leith Links Seaward Extension. Members of the Planning Department as well as Landscape Architects, the Paul Hogart Company, were on hand to explain the design proposals. Sadly, there were only about 15 members of the public and 2 councillors present.

A number of people we spoke to felt that the meeting was poorly attended because the council did not promote the meeting well enough. Whilst the council did contact us with details of the meeting which we then promoted on this site, it is perhaps telling that the city of Edinburgh council neglected to inform the Leith Links Allotment Site Rep of the meeting. Given the impact the proposals will have on the allotments, we're in no doubt that some of the allotment holders would have liked to have attended this meeting.

At the meeting, a key issue that emerged was the subject of the total amount of green space in the Leith Docks Regeneration Plans. It seemed that people in the audience felt that it was hard to judge the value of the Leith Docks Design Framework without more information on the proposed designs and uses of other  open spaces in Leith Docks.

One fact that we did glean from the officials was that the only new playing fields that are proposed in the whole Leith Docks redevelopment proposals will be the ones in the Leith Links Seaward Extension. Furthermore, these playing fields will also be required for use by the new secondary school planned for the development. No guarantees were given over the management arrangements for the new proposed playing fields, so there is a chance that these pitches could be fenced off from the public and only available to the public for restricted use outside school hours. Given the shortage of free public sports facilities in the docks development this is a situation that appeared unacceptable to Greener Leith volunteers and many of the others in the room.  

However, Greener Leith volunteers felt that many of the points we raised were taken seriously by both the landscape architects and the planners, in particular the points we made about 'designing out' anti-social behavior. We hope now that the planning committee will also heed them, and ensure that the design proposals are reviewed accordingly.

Interestingly, the proposals do hold out some hope for improvements to the cycle path links to the east of Leith Links. The construction of a new fire station that will border the South East end of the extension, could see the replacement of the steps up to the cycle path with a ramp into the first stage of the extension. As Greener Leith has previously campaigned for ramp access to this path, this is a  component of the proposal we are particularly keen to see completed.

Much of  this development will not take place for another 10-15 years, and the area on which this park is to be built is currently industrial land. However, it is important to raise any concerns you may have now about the design, as you may not get another chance!

You can download the consultation document and read Greener Leith's submission to the consultation here.