Dear members and friends,
Last week I’d never heard of Usain Bolt, the Olympic Sprint Champion – Wow! Awesome! My pal, a sports physio, says that folk who originate from West Africa have a genetic advantage in sprinting, which has to do with muscle tissue. Europeans have around 2% `fast twitch` muscle fibre – West Africans have around 25% – it’s no contest. Similarly with distance running – Kenyans and Ethiopians win everything – as though they’re made for it – I’ll never forget the barefoot Abebe Bikela in Rome. If we leave politics aside, it’s obvious from the stats that black athletes dominate world sports. But this is a big taboo subject – we’re afraid to talk about why – it’s PC to pretend that there are no inherited racial differences – which is nonsense.
Genetically, I’m full-blooded Italian – all 4 grandparents from the same mountain tribe. Unusually, the Italians had two shots at `greatness` – the Roman empire and then the Renaissance – though I don’t think my forebears had much to do with either. Our remote valley was settled by Saracens, Normans, Spanish and, finally, Bourbons. I like to imagine I contain all these varieties – a mongrel. I can remember Dec. 1992 – the march for Democracy – 30,000 of us in Edinburgh’s Meadows – William McIlvanney’s proud words: “Scottishness is not some pedigree lineage – this is a mongrel tradition.” For some reason, this proclamation released great joy – the crowd cheered on and on.
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Senscot has submitted an application, currently being considered by the Lottery under its DINC funding stream. We have repeatedly expressed unease at the proposal to create a new ‘ad hoc’ body to assess and prioritise the DINC applications and advise the Lottery which ones should be funded. It took a bit of investigation – but it transpires that there is such a group – called the DINC Forum. Remit and membership attached (most of them). It is of course appropriate that the three partners of the ‘Supporting Voluntary Action’ programme (Lottery, Scottish Government and SCVO) should be aligned in their aims for SVA. But it is not appropriate that they should seek to impose, from above, their masterplan for the rest of the Third Sector infrastructure. Voluntary Action by definition should not be under the direction of the authority of the state. http://www.senscot.net/view_news.php?viewid=7454
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The rhetoric of our SNP administration supports an extended role for the Third Sector – but in reality the concordat leaves it very much to the discretion of local councils whether or not this happens. Those of us who campaign for local decision-making can’t have it both ways – if councils have more power, that’s a step forward – that’s where we need to organise our influence. Single Outcome Agreements (SOA’s) are now the main (some say only) channel for Central Government influence on councils. At this link you can read your council’s SOA. http://www.senscot.net/view_news.php?viewid=7448 SCVO have produced a very interesting briefing on how (29 of the 32) councils are engaging with the Third Sector in relation to the preparation of SOA. The findings are not encouraging. http://www.senscot.net/view_news.php?viewid=7464
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The Local People Leading campaign (LPL) – of which Senscot is one of the founder members – wants to see a fundamental shift in the way Regeneration is delivered in Scotland. In place of top down Partnerships, run by civic officials, we want to see the spread of independent, community-owned regeneration vehicles led by local people – we call these Anchor Organisations. The ‘one-off` windfall of £40m from dormant bank accounts offers a rare opportunity to do something different. LPL has produced a 2 page position statement proposing that the money should be endowed to Scotland’s 20 poorest communities – (£2m each) – to provide them with an independent income in perpetuity. http://www.senscot.net/view_news.php?viewid=7455
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The Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) developed Scotland’s National Standards for Community Engagement and continues to work for their adoption by Community Planning Partnerships. Stuart Hashegan, Director of the Centre, writes to say that our opinion last week, that the Standards don’t set the bar high enough, is both dismissive and misleading: “Criticising the Standards, rather than the culture and practice of partnerships, gives the officers accountable at local level for effective engagement, an excuse…..” http://www.senscot.net/view_news.php?viewid=7458
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Senscot Network member, Madge Bray, a social entrepreneur of vision and energy, writes of her work with orphaned children in Georgia. Their village project “Mamasti Guli” has been caught up in the current crisis – “deluge of babies – shortage of food and staff.” They have set up a charity bank account in Tblisi. For more, see http://www.senscot.net/view_news.php?viewid=7465
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NOTICES: We can’t flag all notices here, but submit jobs and events and we’ll post them on our site. See http://www.senscot.net/index.php?W21ID=86&W21SUBID=0. This week:
JOBS: incl. posts with: The Ecology Centre, Station House Media Unit, Tender specification from SCVO, The Scottish Government, EKOS, Homeless World Cup, Fife Society for the Blind
EVENTS: Attitudes to Learning Within The BME Communities Conference, 9 Sep, Glasgow; Learning Without Limits, 12 Sep, Angus; Study tour (Community Food and Health (Scotland)), 17Sep, Aberdeen; The Community Right to Buy – how the Land Reform Act can benefit your community, 23 Sep, Granton-on-Spey; Sustainable Development Research Centre Annual Conference, 12-13Nov, Inverness
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NETWORKS 1st News: News this week about the first topic of the 3 Social Enterprise Fringe events on 4th of September (http://www.senscot.net/networks1st/downloads/thefringeforum.pdf). Momentum appears to be growing behind the Social Enterprise Kite Mark being developed by RISE with plans afoot to combine Social Firms UK’s ’star mark’ with the Kite Mark brand. This is obviously going to be an important issue with social enterprises becoming an ever more popular way of doing business. If you’d like to hear more about the Kite Mark from Lucy Findlay of RISE or attend the Common Ground event later in the afternoon make sure you book a place! Contact anna@senscot.net For more NETWORKS News, see http://www.senscot.net/networks1st/showart.php?articleid=45
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News this week from our friends at Re-Union Canal Boats. They are launching their new widebeam boat and are taking bookings for corporate, community and social events. Based at Edinburgh Quay, Fountainbridge in the heart of Edinburgh, the new widebeam boat offers space for up to 35 people which can be used for corporate events, team building sessions or product launches and provides an ideal venue to get away from it all and focus on the job in hand. For more, see http://www.senscot.net/view_news.php?viewid=7459
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This week`s bulletin profiles a new social enterprise based in Glenrothes, Fife. Investors In Youth Ltd aims to provide a way of engaging disadvantaged and ‘at risk’ young people between the ages of 12-15 and improve their self-esteem and confidence through a variety of specially designed programmes. Their programmes include pre-learner driver training and young people’s leadership training. Although based in Fife, their programmes can be taken anywhere in the UK and adapted and modified to suit personal requirements. For more info, see http://www.senscot.net/view_prof.php?viewid=7457
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The novelist Graham Greene held that writers owe two specific duties to society – to tell the truth, and to accept no special privileges from the State. Quoting Browning, Greene saw the artist as one who stood `on the dangerous edge of things`, and should never commit his soul to any establishment or institution. In a letter Greene wrote: “I would emphasis once again the importance of the virtue of disloyalty. If only writers could maintain that one virtue… unspotted from the world. Honours, State patronage, success, the praise of their fellows all tend to sap their disloyalty…Loyalty confines us to accepted opinions: loyalty forbids us to comprehend sympathetically our dissident fellows; but disloyalty encourages us to roam experimentally through any human mind; it gives to the novelist the extra dimension of sympathy.”
I pinched this from a speech by Richard Holloway – here’s an extract http://www.senscot.net/view_prof.php?viewid=7456
That’s all for this week. Good luck with your adventures
Best wishes,
Laurence
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