Why on earth should the RCP be renovated for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow ? They've got a perfectly adequate 50m pool themselves.

And if they want to use it, shouldn't they be paying for the refurb.

And for cleaning oot the mess left by a bunch of soap shy weegies.

The Meadowbank solution may be simple , but it's short sighted.

Sell Meadowbank to the housing developers and lose the availabity of the venue forever. Don't forget that Edinburgh has already hosted two Commonwealth Games here. Does this mean that we are never to bid for the Games again?

A 10,000 seat stadium at Sighthill, or anywhere else wouldn't be large enough for any major sporting events and would ultimately mean the demise of more open and green space, never to be replaced.

I admit that from a financial perspective the Meadowbank sale appears attractive, but coucils of whatever colour have to come up with another answer .

We cannot simply sell to the highest bidder and build somewhere else every 30 or 40 years. They'd eventually be building in Princes Street Gardens!

The Scotsman has backed the demolition of Meadowbank since its staff gym opened (maybe).

#1 It is the diving area in the Commonwealth pool that they need for the games.

'Dawe has yet to answer the crucial question'

How closely is she related to Sir Les Patterson, Australian Cultural Attache??

The dishonesty of this paper never fails to amaze.

Amongst the nonsense above,

"This newspaper has always supported the Meadowbank [sell-off] solution, which has since been backed by an independent review group.”

Back in the real world, the review group opposed that "solution".

The report you refer to was that of the 'independent' chair, handpicked by Council officials to get the 'right' result.

The report makes it clear that the Working Group disagreed with his opinion, but hey, who cares about democracy.

Given its proposed use in the Games, the RCP funding must come from the Scottish Govt, it is never the responsibility of Edinburgh Counciltaxpayers to fund the Games for Scotland.

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/70

It must be time for the EN to be reported to some body for its level of misrepresentation and outright lies.

Surely, it can't be legal to mislead in this way.

Anybody know which body to write to?

By the way, the above link should be:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/70...

Here we go again EN peddling lies and deceit as the truth. They know full well that the report they speak opf did not recommend demolition or sell off of Meadowbank land. In fact the council has committed to scrapping the Sighthill project, too ambitious and costly. It has currently removed the sale of Meadownbank from the local plan and has committed to be guided by the current working committee on how best to upgrade and refurbish Meadowbank.

This committee meets today, surprise surprise the EN peddles an editorial pre-empting the findings which will be presented to the Full Council next Thursday. Grow up, the public do not want the sale of land, they want an upgraded, refurbished Meadowbank on the full site with facilities fit for purpose and affordable, what is wrong with that?

Furthermore, the pledge of £50 millions would not cover what the council orginally planned in the Sighthill plan, there was a funding shortfall even with the planned Meadowbank sale. Government funding amounted to a grand total of £11 million of a conservative budget of £120 million. Seems sensible to have cancelled it really. Lets gets oemthing affordable and fit for purpose. Let Glasgow have their facilities for the Commonwealth Games, we should provide the training facilities for all the athletes who aspire to compete in the Games.

No mention in this sell-off “solution” of the”£30m funding black hole” then.
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1580&...

The editor probably just forgot that this same paper wrote that "12 members of the 19-strong group set up to investigate Meadowbank's future had disagreed with chairman Terry Christie's view that renovating the stadium would be a "waste of money". "
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1310502007

An innocent mistake of course.

" it is about time politicians stopped pandering to them".
I assume by "them" they mean the majority of Edinburgh citizens, who have overwhelmingly backed the retention and refurbishment of Meadowbank.
Meadowbank is already an excellent facility for training top-class athletes which is a much greater priority than funding a stadium that might attract a world-class event perhaps once every 6 years.

#8 & #9
Totally agree. Yet again this article is the view of one narrow minded individual who is too much of a coward to even put name to his opinion. As such it isn't worth the pixels on my monitor :o)

And yes, the report from the Review Group found, by a clear majority, that Meadowbank should be kept and upgraded in full (without any selloff of land). I guess the report leaked to EN was another version Councillors didn't see. Care to show us Mr annonymous? Or do you choose to remain in hiding?

This paper carried out two surveys.
One found 87% support for saving Meadowbank, while the other only 83%:

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1580&...

Good to see that this paper cares about the views of its readership.

How can the majority of Edinburgh be in favour when as far as I know we have never all been asked how we feel on the matter.I would even point out that the majority of us dont care one way or the other.Once again the small minority with a vested interest use the word "majority" because it suits their argument to make it seem as though there is any interest in the matter.

Who is the stranger to the truth that won't put his or her name to this piece of pre-peristroika propaganda?
Perhaps we should look into the financial dealings of the peddlars of these untruths and establish how much they will profit from selling the city's sports facilites from underneath the feet of its citizens to the builders of legoland developments?
The Independent group did not support the plan with the big black £30m hole in it. The 'independent' chairman did. Of course he was not independent at all - merely a marionette of the Council who misprepresented the views of the mojority view of the group. Another example of how the Council 'includes' stakeholders in the democratic process.
"Pandering" to the public is what elected officals are supposed to do. Thats how democracy works dimwit.
The EEN in collusion with fellow dimwits in the Councila dministration forgot to include field event facilites for the likes of javelin in the Sighthill proposal.
Selling off assets is not a solution - it ultimately leaves the city with no assets. Thats the EEN suggestion? Sell everything off? What baout next year..? I can only hope the EEN practices what it preaches and starts elling off its own assets so that, in time, nothing will be left of this comic.
In the meantime the EEN should rebrand itself more accurately as The Edinburgh Annual Pravda.
It peddles untruths, disseminates leaks from the Council designed to undermine open and democratic debate with people who care about the Common Good assets of Edinburgh and care nothing for dodgy deals done behind close doors.

The EN (like the Labour Party) is in very real danger of losing the support of its readers in east/central Edinburgh as a result of its continued obsession with the closure of Meadowbank Sports Stadium to be replaced with high density luxury flats. It should remember that the Sun newspaper has never recovered from sales lost in Liverpool as a result of the disgusting lies printed in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster (1989).
THE EN simply refuses to acknowledge the strengh of feeling for retaining - REFURBISHING - Meadowbank and is completely out of step with the vast majority of its readers. To report that the independent review group favoured selling off Meadowbank when it knows full well that this was the view only of an "independent" chairman who is clearly a stranger to democracy is not only disingenuous it is frankly libellous.

Meadowbank is a dump!!! Knock it down and build a new one!

If the Edinburgh Pravda is so confident teh superiority of the 'solution' it supports, why does it not come out from underneath its rock and sponsor an open public debate on the issue?
Answer: it would never do so because:
1/ The current 'plan' is not sustainable;
2/ Just like the furry hats on the Lenin mausoleum, the EP is too chicken to face those who know the truth about the 'plan'.

This is a pity because I'd really like to witness the EP trying to punt a plan that means Edinburgh loses its biggest public sports facility and Edinburgh Counicl Tax payers will be forking out to pay for the RCP refurbushment in order to make the Glasgow 2014 bid feasible while Glasgow council tax payers won't have to pay a penny.

Buck-buck-bu-u-uck. Cockle-a-doodle-dooo!!!

#15

Please remember to quote who you are replying to.

Just some points:
1) CEC spent almost £15,000 to get the opinion of about 500 people. That's a price of £30 per head. At that rate it would cost many £millions to ask for everyone's opinion. Not that CEC are incompitent or anything when it comes to costing.

2) To date, the Save Meadowbank has contacted over 22,000 people, at a cost of a few £100's. A clear majority support keeping the facilities at Meadowbank and developing them further. But we are only volunteers and don't have the resources that CEC regulary p!ss down the toilet.

3) What we've found is that the people who actually use the facilities (which number in the thousands every week) do care and want to keep them. The one or two who I have met who aren't in support base their opinion of the current facilities staying unchanged or that CEC will come in on a white horse to give everyone the facilities they need (so why are SMC trying cause it's "already saved").

4) I would ask one thing though? If you don't care, then why are you wasting everyones time commenting to this article? Don't you have something better to do?

Mind you the only think I'm incompetent in is my spelling. Damn my spellchecker for abandoning me!

#18

Looks like we've got another campaigner to Save Meadowbank (or at least use it for sports). You do realise you are against EN and CEC's wishes to sell off the land for flats? You radical!

Also, do you realise that new builds cost many £millions more that refurbs? Do you by any chance want to make a donation of, lets say, £10m, just for starters?

Having been a user of Meadowbank for several years it is easy to see that the centre needs massive investment.

There are a lot of emotive arguments for ‘saving’ the centre but I’m not sure how it will be paid for, or what quality the centre will be when ‘saved’. How economical is a refurbished stadium, in comparison to a new one?

What we can’t be left with is an ailing Meadowbank, spruced up with a lick of paint and some new equipment.

Meadowbank needs some real investment, that's true.

But the city, the country, and the people deserve it.

We have no chance of any Games success if athletes etc can't train, or more importantly, if youngsters don't get involved in sport in the first place.

Only New Labour said "vote for me and we'll sell Meadowbank", and we all know what happened to them.
The Lib Dems and the SNP said they were against the sell-off.
We, the people, pay the taxes; we should have a say in how those taxes are spent.

#23

There are many answers to your question that tackle that issue, e.g.

1) £m's investment will pay for more that just paint.

2) You won't have to deal with the £30m black hole from Sighthill (which included selling Meadowbank).

3) It's not going to happen over night. It will be phased over several years. The CEC sports budget is more than enough.

4) If we always shy away from maintaining our facilities because it's not economical then we'll end up with no facilities all, especially if they keep getting lost to housing projects.

5) Lets make it more economical by using the profit Meadowbank makes to maintain it (and not just fill CEC coffers). Why not build services that cover the running costs (like cafes etc).

Cmon! It's not rocket science. All it takes is a little vision and the will to make it happen.

EEN you should be ashamed of yourself. You have consistently tried for the best part of a year to undermine a campaign to save a public building (key word here: public, i.e. belonging to the people, not you) by telling false truths and by blatantly distorting the facts.

This paper gives journalists a bad name.

Vanesa (#8), complaints over EN misinformation should go to the

PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION:

http://www.pcc.org.uk/index.html

The vast majority of these comments focus solely on Meadowbank and ignore the bigger picture. Edinburgh needs improved sporting facilities, and for the 2014 games has committed to delivering diving facilities (#1 check your facts before spouting). A costed plan was in place to deliver all of this. Of course there was local opposition where the impact was negative, but it is the council's responsibility to act in the interests of the whole city.

Yet another legacy of the polarised politicking of May is that this bigger picture has been lost and the local fights have managed to scupper the well-laid plans. If we don't sell of Meadowbank then Sighthill loses regeneration opportunities, the RCP continues to languish, we fail to deliver our commitment to Glasgow, and we fail in our need to deliver high quality sports facilities to the people of Edinburgh.

Quite frankly, it's time for the council to show leadership and push forward with the Sighthill plan. Demolish and sell off Meadowbank, invest the money in facilities fit for the city.

#28, your post would make more sense if it too used facts to back it up.

Commenters focus on MB because it is not an insignificant issue to be brushed aside because the EN editor wants it to be.

The "well-laid... costed plan" included a black hole of at least £30m and was to have seen the loss of Edinburgh's only Velodrome. (One of the reasons the majority of the working group did not agree with the report produced by the chair, but accredited to them in this editorial.)

Chris Hoy etc are amongst Scotland's most celebrated athletes. Surely they too are part of the bigger picture. Is it a coincidence that when we have the training facilities, we have the gold-medal winners?
So you are right--we need to focus on the bigger picture, not just some ‘vision’ that has nothing to do with the needs and wants of the ordinary people or elite athletes of Edinburgh and Scotland.

Sighthill needs and deserves investment, but not of a kind that removes the only green space they still have, against the wishes of the people who live there.

#29 You are interested in Meadowbank because you live there. You are finding arguments to support your stance because you live there. My point is that the council needs to ignore people like you. Sorry. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.