Choose Life: Edinburgh's Battle Against AIDS

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Originally Posted by lord bunberry

I took it to mean the conditions people were living in. When you saw the clips from the area’s featured in the documentary I couldn’t believe that such a short time ago people were living in places like that. The whole area was so run down it was unbelievable. Even the woman in the film made comments about how much it had changed since then.

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You're probably correct, I think I just jumped in with both feet on Hibrandenburgs post as I'm a little frustrated with politics just now (who can blame me?) and like today, I think it's too easy to lay the responsibility on the lap of the governing party.
As for change, yes, there has been a lot of change since, one of the most notable was razing the high flats to the ground as they didn't lend themselves very well to social interaction. Whilst a lot of families may argue different and have fond memories, there were a lot of families & individuals isolated on those high floors.
Even today, there are local authority housing in shocking levels of disrepair. My brother was one of the last out of Sighthill high risers (Glenalmond) and now stays in Murrayburn. He's a middle flat, has damp coming through his walls and after heavy rain, there's a drip from his light fittings. The council, with the resource stress they're under have been very slow to remedy repairs. Couple that with half the tenants in his stair regular visitors to the local food Bank and the other half popping Zanex like smarties, you can imagine it not being the most brilliant place to reside.
Again, in 30 years time, we'll look back and wonder how this went on for so long.

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Originally Posted by lord bunberry

I took it to mean the conditions people were living in. When you saw the clips from the area’s featured in the documentary I couldn’t believe that such a short time ago people were living in places like that. The whole area was so run down it was unbelievable. Even the woman in the film made comments about how much it had changed since then.

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I lived in Drylaw and went to St. David’s school in 1975 and it wasn’t as bad then as it was about 5 years later. The drugs epidemic made it massively worse. All the ground floor houses were getting broken into all the time to the point that people just moved out and then they had to start boarding up the windows. At that point they were broken into again and used for shooting up or dealing. It wasn’t til about 1983/4 that the council spent millions on the area putting pitch roofs on everything and then started selling them off to owner occupiers. It got a lot better again after that.


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Originally Posted by speedy_gonzales

You're probably correct, I think I just jumped in with both feet on Hibrandenburgs post as I'm a little frustrated with politics just now (who can blame me?) and like today, I think it's too easy to lay the responsibility on the lap of the governing party.
As for change, yes, there has been a lot of change since, one of the most notable was razing the high flats to the ground as they didn't lend themselves very well to social interaction. Whilst a lot of families may argue different and have fond memories, there were a lot of families & individuals isolated on those high floors.
Even today, there are local authority housing in shocking levels of disrepair. My brother was one of the last out of Sighthill high risers (Glenalmond) and now stays in Murrayburn. He's a middle flat, has damp coming through his walls and after heavy rain, there's a drip from his light fittings. The council, with the resource stress they're under have been very slow to remedy repairs. Couple that with half the tenants in his stair regular visitors to the local food Bank and the other half popping Zanex like smarties, you can imagine it not being the most brilliant place to reside.
Again, in 30 years time, we'll look back and wonder how this went on for so long.

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I sincerely hope you’re last sentence is correct.

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Originally Posted by speedy_gonzales

Maybe it's the pre-christmas sherry I might have had last night but I took "Thatcher's Scotland" as being the catalyst or driver for the then social issues that created the wildfire like spread of infection.
If you were simply using the name to highlight a period of time as we do with the Royal family of the day (Victorian/Georgian) then I hold my hand up and apologise for misinterpreting your post.

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Fair dos and no harm done. I spent the most part of Thatcher's reign abroad and thus the changes were less gradual for me and more apparent as I only visited twice a year. Although Thatcher obviously can't be held to account for the spread of the epidemic, her government set the tone on how the authorities went about dealing with it. Some of the footage of Edinburgh in the documentary were downright depressing but that's how large parts of the city looked after years of neglect. We've got a lot to thank devolution for.

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Originally Posted by Ozyhibby

I lived in Drylaw and went to St. David’s school in 1975 and it wasn’t as bad then as it was about 5 years later. The drugs epidemic made it massively worse. All the ground floor houses were getting broken into all the time to the point that people just moved out and then they had to start boarding up the windows. At that point they were broken into again and used for shooting up or dealing. It wasn’t til about 1983/4 that the council spent millions on the area putting pitch roofs on everything and then started selling them off to owner occupiers. It got a lot better again after that.


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I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but I suppose it makes sense when you describe it like that. If people were moving out because of break ins and then drug users breaking in again and using the houses as drug dens it stands to reason that it’s going to have a massive effect on the area.

Just watched this. Scary to think this was all going round about me while I was growing up in Leith, I was oblivious to it all. The first I became aware of it was reading trainspotting.