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The Forest is a volunteer-run, collectively-owned, free arts and events space. We provide a dedicated space for people to get involved in any creative activity imaginable, and have also become a vital resource for social, political and environmental groups, providing space and equipment for events, workshops and fundraisers.
Due to the bankruptcy of our landlords, the building that the Forest currently occupies is up for sale. On the 19th of February 2011 we learned that a prospective buyer is currently in the process of closing a deal to buy the building with the estate agents, Graham and Sibbald.
So now, as well as continuing a hugely successful fundraising campaign to secure Forest's future, we're asking our friends and community to show their support: we do not want to see this listed historic building transformed into yet another generic coffee shop or sports pub, and we want to let any prospective buyer or developer know how strongly the community feels we should stay in our home. Please sign this petition to show our strength.
Up-to-date information about the campaign and details of how to donate are available at http://blog.theforest.org.uk/savetheforest and through our Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-the-Forest-Campaign/187769714596278?ref=ts
2. No to Biomass Power Station in Leith 
Forth Energy plan to build a huge biomass power station in Leith, about a mile from the centre of Edinburgh, a world heritage site.
Forth Energy stand to make millions of pounds in public subsidies. But this giant incinerator would be situated just 200 metres from local housing, with a 120m high chimney, burning millions of tonnes of imported wood 24/7 and generating increased lorry traffic in an already congested and polluted area.
On our website www.noleithbiomass.org.uk we outline our objections and provide evidence from research articles showing that cutting down trees and transporting them across the world in order to burn them, is far from 'green', sustainable, or truly renewable.
You can follow the campaign on Facebook
3. Equal Rights for Scooters and Motorbikes in Edinburgh
We believe that scooters and motorbikes should be able to use the same roads as buses, taxis and bicycles in Edinburgh.
Scooters and Motorbikes do not cause congestion and the Carbon Emissions are much lower than cars, buses and taxis.
4. Save Live Music at The Southern
Please visit our facebook group at: http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php#!/group.php?gid=119874308055755&v=wall
5. STOP the Edinburgh Tram Nightmare!
Well another £50million on the trams! I am sure I am not the only person getting incredibly annoyed with the joke that is the tram.
I want rid of it, especially with the rising costs that is starting to tear our once great city to bits.
Join me in my bid to get rid of the tram and sign my petition.
6. Make Moredun park more safe & fun for our children
I and many other parents, grandparents and our children make regular use of the Moredun park, but it has now come to the point where the park is unsafe for our children to play in as the park is over loaded with beer cans & broken glass.
Also as a result of local youths, the park is in dire need of a refurbishment as the old parks apparatus is worn down, rusty, and generally unpleasant for all visitors.
There is also nothing for our younger children to enjoy playing with as they have been removed.
7. Support Balerno Mountain Bike Trails
Scotland is well-known for its World Class mountain bike trails all over the country!
Most of these trails, however, are out of the cities and you have to venture into the countryside to ride them. There are very few places for people young and old to ride their bikes within the cities of Scotland.
We believe the building of mountain bike trails would promote healthy living, encourage young and old to get out and also advertise the sport, getting more people out on their bikes!
Local bus services in Edinburgh have recently suffered a number of cuts. We are campaigning to restore services which have been cut, prevent further cutbacks, and for improvements in existing services.
We are urging government - local, Scottish and UK - to provide the funding and take the decisions necessary to "Bring Back our Buses!"
9. Save Garvald Edinburgh Day Services
Edinburgh Council intends to stop funding people with learning disabilities attending Garvald Edinburgh.
Garvald Edinburgh runs a range of workshops that offer a variety of meaningful work opportunities to around 125 adults with learning disabilities. Garvald Edinburgh is a community of people – members and staff- who support and value each other, and it is the diversity of people and the diversity of their talents and abilities that allows this to happen.
Some members combine working at Garvald Edinburgh with other activities, such as college courses and in some cases, employment. But it is Garvald that gives people the solid base and support to do this. This is evidenced by Scottish Care Commission which gave Garvald Edinburgh the highest possible gradings on all its standards of care when it inspected these services in November 2008. Garvald Edinburgh places high priority on social skills and friendships without which may lead them to living a very sheltered and lonely life. The whole ethos of Garvald Edinburgh is to include rather than exclude and this works by allowing individuals with differing needs to interact and support each other.
Edinburgh Council’s Health and Social Care Department’s intention is to stop funding adults with learning disabilities who go there if they are assessed in the eyes of the council as needing ‘moderate’ or ‘low’ levels of support. This will destroy the outstanding inclusive culture and ethos of Garvald Edinburgh.
http://www.garvaldedinburgh.org.uk
10. Protect historic character of Gillespie Crescent
We think that the attractive character of our street is threatened by insensitive developments. A couple of landlord owners have subdivided their bay windowed living rooms and plasterboarded the ceilings below the cornice, to form more bedrooms.
All the other Victorian Crescents in Edinburgh have Listed protected status which would prevent this from happening - Warrander Park Crescent, Marchmont Crescent, Grosvenor Crescent, Landsdale Crescent are all B Listed and Gardners Cresent, Atholl Crescent, Randoph Crecent are A Listed.
11. Replace Meadowbank Velodrome
Edinburgh Council are soon to sell off the Land on which Meadowbank stadium is located on. The money generated from this will go to refurbish the Commonwealth Games pool for the Commonwealth Games. No provision has been made to replace the Velodrome at Meadowbank, yet all other sports located there have been catered for in the future.
An new Indoor velodrome in Glasgow cannot be seen as a direct replacement. The future of all young East of Scotland cyclists is at stake here as a velodrome provides a safe, traffic free environment for them to train and practice on.
12. Bike Jumps in Buckstone Woods
Mountain biking in all its various forms, is fast becoming a top tier sport in Scotland, and Scotland is now regarded as a world class destination for the sport.
There are many bike trails across the country, all promoted heavily by VisitScotland.
However, on the south side of Edinburgh there are few, if any, dedicated facilities for young people taking up the sport.
We believe that the provision of dirt jump facilities in the Buckstone Wood area would be a small step towards encouraging a healthy and positive support for young people in the area.
13. Urgent amendments required to Edinburgh's controlled parking zones
Edinburgh City Council has recently been implementing extensions to the Controlled Parking Zones, charging residents and visitors for parking during peak hours.
They claim to have carried out a consultation exercise in preparation for this, and state that the zones were introduced for the benefit of (and after approval from) residents.
Unfortunately, instead of maximising the available space, they have obliterated previously legitimate parking spaces by the introduction of unnecessary yellow lines, and they have also failed to reconsider the obstructive placing of many communal rubbish bins.
The densely populated tenement areas of Edinburgh will, of course, never allow for a space per residence; but at the very least the space available should surely be used to its full advantage.
This petition has been set up by a resident of Zone S4, who has received no direct written response to her four letters sent to the Council on this subject in the past year, and who was expressly told by a Council employee on the telephone that they had received too many letters for them to deal with, and would only take any notice of residents if they formed a 'pressure group' rather than acting individually.
14. Edinburgh MBChB Graduation
The University of Edinburgh has shown this year's cohort of Medicine graduates complete disrespect regarding our graduation ceremony.
The ceremony was initially moved from it's own slot in July to one on 28th June, instantly clashing with our shadowing week which we all need to undertake as a requirement for our jobs.
The ceremony was alotted to a time on 28th June when many other graduates of other courses will too be graduating, in the same session, unfairly limiting ticket availability for both those graduates of Medicine and the other graduates from the School of Biomedical Sciences, School of Divinity and School of Health in Social Science in attendance that afternoon. Two tickets per person is simply unacceptable. The event is likely to resemble something of a cattle market with so many graduates in attendance for one ceremony.
To add insult to injury, the university has "special" ceremonies set aside for graduates of Veterinary Medicine and Law. Graduates for these ceremonies get a minimum of 4 tickets per graduand and a ceremony solely for those graduates. We do not believe as graduates of Medicine we are in any way superior to a graduate of any other degree. We believe that graduation from any degree is a signficant achievement. We believe graduates of all courses should be treated the same.
We do not understand why of all degrees undertaken, if Medicine is not to be regarded as a degree that confers signficant acheivment or in need of a "special" ceremony of it's own, why Veterinary Medicine and Law continue to be treated as such. Medicine in Edinburgh has a far greater heriatage than that of any other degree taught at the university - Medicine has been taught in Edinburgh since the early sixteenth century, Veterinary Medicine only since the early nineteenth century.
We believe that two tickets per graduate is simply insufficent in recognising the conferment of a degree. We believe this fact is made more insulting by the moving of our ceremony to an inconvenient date and by the "special" ceremonies set aside for Law and Veterinary Medicine.
15. Save our Trams
Capital cities should have world class transport system.
Please help to ensure that Scotland's capital city has a tram system to reflect and maintain its status as one of the leading financial centres in the world.
Buskers playing the bagpipes on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh are a great
nuisance to people who live and work on or near the Royal Mile. The sound
is incredibly loud and intrusive.
According to the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Section 54), it is
unlawful to play a musical instrument in a way which gives any other
person reasonable cause for annoyance.
We respectfully ask the Police and Local Authorities to enforce this law.
17. Adult inpatient unit for eating disorders in the Lothians
Glasgow and Aberdeen have specialist inpatient services for adults with eating disorders, so why not Edinburgh?
If your life has been affected by an eating disorder, either as sufferer or carer, or you wish to help prevent someone else suffering the misery of this condition without the inpatient support they deserve from a capital city, please add your name to this petition.
With the dramatic increase in eating disorders over the last decade, services have not kept apace with need. Having been raised in Edinburgh, and having graduated as a doctor from Edinburgh university while suffering from anorexia, I feel I have been let down by a lack of inpatient services in my home town. My frustration is such that I now feel compelled to lobby the Scottish Parliament for an inpatient unit for adults with eating disorders in the Edinburgh and Lothians area preferrably attached to either St. John's hospital, Livingston or the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh where psychiatric and medical services could be combined.
For adults in Edinburgh and the Lothians, there is only an outpatients service provided through the Cullen Centre (Royal Edinburgh Hospital). This service is divided into the Anorexia Nervosa Intensive Care Team for those at extremely low body weights (BMI 13 or below), and a team for general help with eating disorders. This is good as far as it goes, but waiting times for general help can be up to nine months, and the length of a course of therapy is woefully inadequate due to the inability for existing resources to meet demand.
I've suffered from an eating disorder for twenty years, and I have twice had to be hospitalised for treatment. Both these times have involved leaving my home and family to stay in specialist units in either York and Glasgow as there were no specialist inpatient services in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland! These services were good, but continuity of care in the outpatient setting was impossible to deliver due to the distances involved. As relapse is most likely to occur in the immediate period after discharge, there is a wasted opportunity for recovery as the lack of continuity leads to unnecessary suffering.
Although now there is a small unit in West Lothian, this only caters for a tiny porportion of sufferers and only people up to the age of 35
18. Unite the Clubs Petition to City of Edinburgh Council
For more than 60 years, Edinburgh’s community-based facilities for football and other traditionally low-entry cost sports have been allowed to deteriorate to a truly shocking level.
Changing facilities are typically out of date, substandard, neglected, damp, unhygienic and at times hazardous.
Many pitches are badly drained, rutted and verge on unplayable for large parts of the year as a result of poor maintenance. Goal posts are often bent or broken.
Despite their shortcomings, pitches and facilities are also expensive to hire. Facilities based on school premises are costly to hire too, and at times difficult for community-based clubs to gain access to.
A number of community-based clubs, run entirely by volunteers, would be keen to develop their own facilities in return for long-term leases, but have been unable to do so. Many of our clubs are simply struggling to survive.
For this situation to be allowed to continue at a time when Edinburgh is trying to assert itself as one of Europe’s most active cities is insupportable.
Clubs across the Capital and throughout the Eastern Region have finally decided that enough is enough and that it's time to do something to stop the rot.
This petition will be delivered to the City of Edinburgh Council, City Chambers during the course of the Unite the Clubs march through Edinburgh City Centre at 1:30pm on 14th February 2007.
19. Safe and useful bicycle storage for West Ferryfield
The factors have sent various letters requesting that bicycles aren't stored in stairwells.
But there is no other alternative for people who do not want to lock their bikes outside on the limited number of lamposts to rust, other than carrying them up the stairs to the flat, using up precious space.
Most shows on the Edinburgh Fringe Festival lose money, or are completely out of reach financially for the performers and companies that make up the bulk of the attractions for the month of August.
Corporate sponsorship is rapidly replacing grassroots efforts to bring fresh talent to Edinburgh stages.
This proposal provides a few simple goals that would eradicate the cost-prohibition to the very talent the festival needs to perpetually attract.
