Latest news with #Moffat
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Business
- Scotsman
New 109-bedroom hotel approval for prominent Edinburgh site next to shopping centre in 'vote of confidence'
A new hotel has been approved for Cameron Toll in Edinburgh. Sign up to the weekly Cost Of Living newsletter. Saving tips, deals and money hacks. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The approval of plans for a new hotel next to Edinburgh's Cameron Toll has been hailed as a clear vote of confidence in the future of the shopping centre. The 109-bedroom hotel on Liberton Road was given the go-ahead by the city council's development management sub-committee on Wednesday. Members of the sub-committee voted six to three to grant the planning application. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad supplied The hotel is intended to cater for business and leisure tourists, but also people visiting the nearby Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and Sick Kids Hospital. And the developers say the development has been designed to blend in with the proposed North-South tramline between Granton and the BioQuarter, which would run close by. The hotel would also have a direct pathway to the shopping centre. The committee asked for a minor change to reduce oversight of the neighbouring Dunedin School by using frosted glass in the windows of the restaurant, which the developers said they were happy to support. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The development is seen as the first part of a masterplan for Cameron Toll to give it more of a 'town centre' feel with shopping and leisure and even new housing. Impression of the new hotel proposed for the site. Andrew Moffat, managing director of Hunter REIM, which is behind the development, said: 'We're obviously delighted that the proposals were approved. 'This is a very clear vote of confidence in Cameron Toll and in its future. We see these proposals as the first step in much more substantial investment in Cameron Toll, which has a much brighter future because of today's decision. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'We look forward to bringing forward those proposals in due course as part of a wider public consultation on the future vision for improving Cameron Toll, following discussions with local partners, including Dunedin School. 'We will move forward with the appointment of a contractor to deliver the new hotel, which when open will boost tourism and encourage tourists to travel beyond the city centre to enjoy much more of what Edinburgh has to offer.' Mr Moffat thanked the committee for its careful consideration of the proposals. 'I'd also like to say that we'll happily accept the condition to reduce the oversight of our neighbour Dunedin School,' he said. 'We will continue to work in partnership with Dunedin School and all of our neighbours to minimise any negative impacts that the construction work may cause.' Cameron Toll Shopping Centre opened in 1984 and was often referred to by the name of the anchor store at that time, Savacentre. Sainsbury's is now the anchor tenant at Cameron Toll. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The centre has operated successfully since 1984, but with changes in shopping trends and the growth on online shopping it is facing an increasingly challenging trading environment. The plans brought forward by Hunter REIM and their partners Franklin Templeton are described as seeking to invest and raise the quality of Cameron Toll to create a vibrant and sustainable centre and facilities. The centre has invested heavily in sustainability, with 330 rooftop solar panels providing renewable energy to the centre year-round.
The Courier
7 days ago
- The Courier
Wednesday court round-up — Flipping the bird and stealing from a sex worker
A Fife oil and gas worker lost his temper after another driver gave him the middle finger during an overtake on the A92. , 41, got out of his car in front of the other vehicle near West Kirkcaldy Roundabout and walked aggressively towards it before the motorist drove off. Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court heard, according to Moffat, 'one or two' others have 'flipped him the bird' since he bought a Range Rover-type vehicle. Moffat, of Kirkcaldy, was pleading guilty to an amended charge of committing a breach of the peace on October 3 last year. He had originally faced an allegation of dangerous driving. Prosecutor Brogan Moffat told the court it was around 1pm when the other male driver saw Moffat travelling in the outside lane. The accused moved his vehicle into the inside lane in front of the other car and stopped in the middle of the carriageway, left the vehicle and walked towards the other car vehicle in an aggressive manner, the fiscal said. The other driver then reversed and drove off. Defence lawyer David Cranston said Moffat had been in Dunfermline shopping and was returning home on the A92 when he overtook the other car. Mr Cranston said: 'As he passed the vehicle, the driver flicked him the middle finger and gesticulated in a way internationally acknowledged to be offensive. 'Mr Moffat was somewhat taken aback by that and pulled into the slow lane and the car passed him'. The lawyer said Moffat travelled behind the other vehicle and was 'fizzing and upset' about what happened, eventually stopping in front with the 'intention of remonstrating'. The lawyer said Moffat told him 'one or two other people have flipped him the bird' since he bought the vehicle. Mr Cranston said Moffat has worked in the oil and gas industry since he left school and is in the middle of a four-year contract working in Iraq. Sheriff Steven Borthwick fined Moffat £200, reduced from £300 due to his early guilty plea. A volunteer at a major international scouting event has been placed on the sex offenders register for repeated attacks on a fellow adult supervisor. laughed in his victim's face after groping her at a pub during the 2024 Blair Atholl Jamborette, then turned up at her tent uninvited and started stroking her leg. A Glenrothes man left his four-year-old victim bruised after biting him to teach him a lesson. appeared at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court to be sentenced after admitting the assault in November 2024. Prosecutor Catherine Stevenson explained a member of staff at the boy's school was made aware of the attack and resulting thigh injury. 'He's disclosed to her that he has ben bitten by the accused and had a bruise as a result,' Ms Stevenson said. The disclosure was reported to social work and Blair, 32, was interviewed. Ms Stevenson said: 'During the inquiry, a phone call was made to the accused. 'During this call, the accused admitted that he was responsible but didn't mean to harm him as much as he did.' The accused went on to say the boy had bitten his little brother and he 'wanted to teach him a lesson and let him know what it felt like.' His solicitor Martin McGuire said: 'It's quite an unfortunate incident and Mr Blair regrets it.' Sheriff Mark Allan placed Blair under supervision for six months and ordered him to complete 100 hours of unpaid work in that time. A 60-year-old man convicted of a 'sustained' attack on his ex-wife's partner with a knuckle duster in Dundee has been sentenced. also bit the man on the head during the vicious assault. A Fife man who stole hundreds of pounds from a sex worker has been told to do 180 hours of unpaid work and pay his victim £500 in compensation. , 20, had been boozing at a friend's house in Methil and paid for an Uber to bring the escort to the address. After sexual contact took place, McNeil became 'unhappy' and took money – estimated to be around £500 or £600 – from the woman's handbag before she left in a 'distressed state'. Dunfermline Sheriff Court heard previously the woman's phone was damaged during the incident and she needed a replacement. She went to the home of a neighbour unknown to her and police were contacted. McNeil, of Castle Crescent, Kennoway, earlier pled guilty to removing a handbag from the woman and stealing money from her at an address in Methil on November 6 2023. It had previously been alleged McNeil assaulted the woman, including brandishing an axe at her but prosecutors accepted the deletions in the charge. Speaking in mitigation this week, defence lawyer David McLaughlin said his client described having feelings of shame and disgust about the incident. Mr McLaughlin pointed out McNeil was 18 at the time and had lost his job and partner. Sentencing, Sheriff Susan Duff said: 'You are right to feel ashamed of your behaviour. 'This was a very frightening experience for a vulnerable young woman whose phone was damaged, leaving her having to run to the home of a stranger for help. 'She was extremely distressed by your conduct'. A man who paid £20,000 to come illegally to Britain became a key player in a £6.5 million cannabis farm brazenly located on busy Kirkcaldy High Street. ,24, was arrested after police caught him at a former branch of WH Smith in Kirkcaldy in 2022.
Metro
17-05-2025
- Business
- Metro
The £1 pension trick that could save you losing thousands to emergency tax
Those looking to withdraw from their pension but avoid pesky emergency taxes could have a new method to avoid superfluous charges. Since January, an estimated £44,000,000 has been reclaimed by pensioners withdrawing money from HMRC. But for some who need to make larger withdrawals, an emergency tax is charged and can take a lengthy amount of time to get back. To avoid this, an expert has revealed a unique way you could avoid a hefty tax on a withdrawal, dubbed a '£1 pension hack'. When you make a large withdrawal from your pension, it's not seen as normal by HMRC – so they place an emergency tax on it. Those above 55 are currently able to make flexible withdrawals from their pension – the first 25% of withdrawals are tax-free, but anything over that is taxed at the highest rate. How can you avoid this tax? Pensions expert Clare Moffat explained that you could avoid this by taking a smaller amount out of your pension to get a tax code generated, then, withdraw the amount you actually need to avoid the emergency tax. This method is called '£1 pension hack' because the small amount you initially withdraw could be as little as just a pound. But Ms Moffat added: 'How much you would need to take out would depend on your provider, so you need to check with them first. 'But even if you can't take £1 out, taking out £100 may still be enough to generate a tax code from HMRC that the provider can apply.' Though the trick does work, you may have to submit a tax reclaim form if you are still taxed a high amount – which can be reclaimed later if needed. Last year, it was revealed that the UK trails behind much of Europe when it comes to the generosity of our pensions, compared to the salaries pensioners made while they were working. Statistics show Brits make an average of 54.4% of what they earned as a worker once they start withdrawing their pension. More Trending By contrast, pensioners in Portugal make close to 100% of their previous earnings, according to research from the OECD, and the EU average is 68.1%. The OECD's statistics show that the UK pension 'replacement rate' – meaning the percentage of an average working salary that a person can expect to receive as a pension – is roughly similar to that of Norway and Germany. People from Turkey, the Netherlands and Greece could expect to receive 90% or more of their previous earnings when they take out their pension. Want to see how your pension compares to the rest of Europe? Take a look here. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Thousands of households could get up to £500 in cost of living support – check if you qualify MORE: The 'unusual' way you can build your credit score as a renter — and make your money work harder MORE: What the wealthy do differently with their money — and how you can do it too
Irish Daily Mirror
14-05-2025
- Irish Daily Mirror
Aspiring jockey dies at racing yard as he becomes 3rd tragedy there in 4 years
The body of an aspiring jockey has been found at a famous racing yard, in what is the third tragedy there in the space of just four years. Stable lad Billy Moffat was found dead in his room at the Warren Greatrex stables on May 10. Horrified colleagues discovered Moffat, 21, when he was absent from work. He had been training horses for Greatrex for the best part of a year before his death. He becomes the third person who is connected to the stables to die in four years. Staff member Michael Pitt was found dead, aged 19, at a petrol station after taking his life in July 2021. While David Thompson, 25, was a missing person before his body was discovered in February 2022. The racing community is reeling from this latest sorrow. Warren, a trainer at Greatrex, expressed profound grief when he said: "He was a great member of the team with a great sense of humour." Jockey Jack Wilmot also expressed his shock, saying: "Billy, words can't describe the way I'm feeling. I'm absolutely heartbroken, I'll love you forever mate and will always carry you with me whatever I do. "Please, please, if you're struggling with something, please talk to someone. Love you mate. Gone far too soon." SJD Racing joined the chorus of condolences with a statement that said: "So sad to hear of the passing of Billy Moffatt. Gone far too soon. "We had the pleasure of helping him in his career as he wanted to learn to jump. Our thoughts are with his family. Please check in on your friends." Over £10,000 has been fundraised through a GoFundMe campaign to support bringing Moffat home from Berkshire to the North East and financing funeral expenses. James Moffat shared: "I've been asked to set up a go fund me to help get our boy and all his belongings back home to the North East and help towards his funeral. "It's not something we would even think of doing as a family but his mam has asked rather than flowers, a small donation no matter how much would be greatly appreciated towards helping cover all the costs to get him home and buried, the target is just a number set, anything at all will help, thanks for reading." Back in 2022, Greatrex released a statement about the death of Thompson, following the passing of Pitt the year before. He said: "He didn't ride out but he loved his horses. We heard on Saturday morning that he had died and it was really hard to take, especially in the circumstances that we lost Michael Pitt last summer who was another person that was the life and soul of the yard and was a great part of the team. "With neither lad you would ever imagine this would happen. There was no real signs. David's childhood had been a bit broken and he hit low at times but in the yard you would never see any signs of that. "We are a big family here and to lose a member of the team is not easy to take. Everyone does get on well here from the top down but it has been very tough but we will get through it."
Scotsman
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Landmarks - Border Voices: Alexander Moffat, Ruth Nicol, Alan Riach, Hawick Museum ★★★★ Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, various venues, Hawick ★★★★ Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Hawick can seem a long way from anywhere to the driver stuck behind a tractor on the A698. But the importance of the Borders in Scotland's cultural development is strongly argued in Landmarks - Border Voices, the new iteration of the three-way collaboration between artist Alexander Moffat, poet Alan Riach and contemporary landscape painter Ruth Nicol. Central to this show is a trio of figures, Hugh MacDiarmid, who grew up in Langholm and spent his closing years at Brownsbank near Biggar, Hawick-born songwriter and composer Francis George Scott, who taught MacDiarmid at Langholm Academy, and painter William Johnstone, Scott's cousin, who grew up on a farm near Selkirk. All three, together and separately, were important figures in the Scottish cultural renaissance of the 1930s which was intertwined with the stirrings of the movement for Scottish independence. Courtesy of the artist In paintings and poems, Moffat and Riach call them 'the Border Guards': 'three on the line,' Riach writes, 'defending the border', shoring up Scotland's own version of modernism which made its own independent links with the rest of the world. In Moffat's paintings, Border Guards I and II, they seem to merge into (or emerge from) the mountainous landscape, taking their place in the nation's mythology. This is Moffat's wider project, which continues with portraits of MacDiarmid at home in Brownsbank, and with Scott and Norman MacCaig, and in works like his monumental group portrait, Scotland's Voices, bringing together those most associated with the folk revival. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Riach's poems, which accompany the paintings, add more detail: MacDiarmid, living in a cottage with no indoor running water, corresponding with Yevtushenko and Ginsberg. Nicol's paintings add another dimension as she explores in her own way landscapes around Langholm, Hawick, Selkirk and Ancrum. Nicol works in a particular way, painting expressively, then drawing over it using strong, graphic lines. Her work is strongest when she's able to work at scale and explore textures; the largest work here is a huge diptych, Minto Hills and Farmland form Ancrum to Denholm. In other large paintings like From Denholm to Ancrum and Summer - The Roman Road to Brownsbank Farm from Brownsbank Cottage, she describes a patchwork of richly coloured fields and narrow roads, rising to hills in the distance. It's particularly interesting to see two paintings by Johnstone himself: Ploughed Field (c. 1963) and his portrait of MacDiarmid, as fresh and alive as anything here. Working in a style akin to abstract expressionism decades before Jackson Pollock, he is one of the most interesting Scottish artists of the 20th century, who lived and taught in London and in the US, though his visual world was shaped by the landscape of the Borders. A larger exhibition of his work - if any gallery could rise to such a thing - would be well worth seeing. A still from Kamal Aljafari's A Fidai Film | Courtesy of the Alchemy Festival Meanwhile, in early May, the town of Hawick briefly becomes the epicentre of the world of artists' film, as it hosts the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival. Now in its 15th iteration, Alchemy, under the direction of Michael Pattison and Rachael Disbury, offers thoughtfully curated programmes of short films, selected features and an impressive group of film-related exhibitions over a long weekend. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Alchemy has an egalitarian approach which doesn't hold much truck with premieres, but one of this year's hot tickets was the world premiere of On Weaving, a festival commission by Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn, surely the closest Scotland has to an artists'-film power couple. They focus on High Sunderland, the modernist house designed by Peter Womersley for fashion designer Bernat Klein and his wife Margaret in the hills above Selkirk, now home to architecture and design historians Juliet Kinchin and Paul Stirton. As the 16mm camera captures gorgeous light filtering through its floor-to-ceiling windows, blurring the boundaries of inside and outside, we see Juliet and Paul working, learning Hungarian, setting the table, talking about the Bauhaus. These gentle, free-associative sections are juxtaposed with footage shot in one of Hawick's remaining knitwear factories, all mechanised buzzing and clacking. While part of its work supports films made locally (this year's festival began with a preview of Mark Lyken's Rum an Milk, a feature about Hawick's Common Riding) Alchemy is also determinedly international. Venezuela was a focus this year, with a selection of works by Adrian Vila Guevara and a screening of Margot Benacerraf's 1959 film Araya, about workers in the country's salt mines. Kamal Aljafari's A Fidai Film is a reconstruction of Palestine's film archive after PLO headquarters in Beirut was plundered by the Israel army in 1982. Meditating on the loss of an archive, Aljafari began to collect and stitch together fragments of found film through the lens of what he called 'the camera of the dispossessed'. It's a moving, at times harrowing, watch, written through with anger in its edgy soundtrack and blood red redactions of captioning added by the Israelis. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the exhibitions programme, Lawrence Abu Hamdan's The Diary of A Sky reflects on how the airspace above Beirut has been regularly violated by Israeli drones and aircraft. During the pandemic, when skies fell silent around the world, the roar of jets over the city became so commonplace it became part of ordinary life. His film essay reflects on this noise pollution, documents flight hours and tries to sift the truth from the conspiracy theories: all the metaphorical noise about the subject. When relative silence arrived in 2023, he points out, it was only because the same aircraft were now bombing Gaza. Several of the short films capture vividly the sense of another country: Weipeng Huang's Happy New Year contrasts the large-scale state-run celebrations for Chinese New year with the modest festivities of his own family; Jolene Mok offers a fresh vision of her home city of Hong Kong in black and white, and Arjuna Keshvani-Ham's Radicle City offers an impressively nuanced exploration of the colonial legacy in Bangalore through the story of its gardens. Hope Strickland's film, A River Holds A Perfect Memory, shifts between Lancashire and Jamaica, taking a remarkably poignant look at the histories of industrialisation and enslavement. A still from A River Holds a Perfect Memory | Courtesy of the Alchemy Festival Finding ways to relate to or explore one's ancestral homeland, family or cultural history was a recurring theme. Cumha, by Elena Horgan, is a beautiful exploration in words and images of the artist's shifting relationship to the Irish language. In Adura Baba Mi (My Father's Prayer) Juliana Kasumu started off exploring her parents' connection to their native Nigeria through their church, The Celestial Church of Christ, and ended up with a more intimate story than she expected. Jules Leaño's Inheritance is a letter to her Filipina mother exploring the difficulty of putting together the puzzle of the past, particularly across different languages and Lithuanian artist Martyna Ratnik takes a gently surreal approach to a similar theme in She's Waiting for the Sunset. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In a piece titled for the first words of a dream world, Scottish filmmaker Bobbi Cameron brings together elements of her own Celtic shamanic practice with landscapes from the beautiful Isle of Seil and her experience of caring for her elderly grandparents. Her film was shown at last year's Glasgow International, as was Owain Train McGilvray's Seeing Red, a psychedelic tribute to a now-vanished queer bar in North Wales. Michael Hanna's Once A Blue Always A Red, based on conversations with Merseyside taxi drivers about football, was both telling and funny, as was Beth Fox's 12 Lemons, about being a Deliveroo courier during the pandemic. Isabel Barfod's How Much Air Lungs Can Hold is a thoughtful deep-dive (no pun intended) into Blackness and swimming. Other films linger in the memory: Yuyan Wong's Green Grey Black Brown, about the construction of worlds and the destruction of environments accompanied by a mesmerising slowed-down version of Yes's prog-rock hit, Owner of A Lonely Heart; Crimson D M Lily's trippy Tai a Mynyddeodd, made entirely in Welsh, with Welsh-speaking band Adwaith; Louise Scantlebury's charming sock puppet in Seek Beyond; Olive Jones's See and Don't See, a vulnerable exploration of young single motherhood. From carefully narrated film-poems to the wordless and abstract, digital, analogue and mixed format, from a tale of Algerian mountain spirits to a nine-minute single shot of parrots in flight, Alchemy celebrates film which pushes at edges of content and form - with not a little magic along the way.
