A Parcel of Rogues – Aberdeen City Council Chamber and the Lure of Rich Mens’ Gold

So Aberdeen City Councillors at a special meeting of the full council voted to place politics before commonsense over the proposed obliteration of Union Terrace Gardens. This nightmare of a design could only have been chosen by people of very poor taste. If there was any design more likely to stick out like a sore thumb which will turn the city centre into a depressing series of concrete walkways – this is it.

The press release from ACC says the Web will ‘transform the Victorian Gardens’ but it will not transform them it will eradicate them. Shame someone entrusted to communicate with the public is so casual with words.

There is still an opportunity to stop this hugely costly madness: Councillor McCaig said: “It is absolutely clear that our decision today to put in place the arrangements to progress the scheme depends entirely on the outcome of the referendum on the City Garden Project. If there is a ‘no’ vote, it will not happen.“

Most councillors have been easily swayed by powerful influences (excluding Aberdeen voters) and the vote today confirms its determination to push ahead unless the public referendum returns a ‘no’ vote.

Would you trust this council to manage the transfer of land (Union Terrace Gardens) which is council-owned – that is owned by the people of the city – to allow it come under a part-privately developed scheme? ‘the City Council is prepared to make council-owned land available for the scheme.’

The statement says how there will be ‘no need for direct revenue support from the City Council.’ So if something goes wrong and the anticipated cash through TIF fails to materialise then the council will do what exactly? Nothing? I suppose – the council has done just that for decades in Union Terrace Gardens.

The reliance on the untested TIF scheme makes the funding of this scheme more IF than TIF.

See: Skint Aberdeen Council and TIF http://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/319/

They say ‘the minimum space possible is used for commercial or semi-commercial purposes.’ This is meaningless so couched is it in qualification.

This council has little interest in being careful with public funds. It will carry on spending in the hope of public agreement – £300,000 of public money. What’s that for a maybe cause? Easy come, easy go to the council.

I did notice a reference to ‘provide no direct funding towards design, planning or construction costs for the CGP, other than that generated through TIF, already committed to the referendum, and to cover external fees.’   That phrase, ‘no direct funding’ is a little loose, isn’t it?

There will be the safety net of ACC officers overseeing all these arrangements. Do you have faith in them given how the city has been run over the years? And this is the council which complains about how run down Aberdeen is – what have successive councils and permanent council officers been doing to earn their crusts while this decline has been happening?  If they are not responsible for the decline then who is?  And do you think they know what they are doing now?

I note there still hasn’t been confirmation of the promised £70 million. Assume it’s still there in the post office but let’s face it, £70 million is only the start. The price is going to go up and up. Along with the headline figure of 6,500 jobs – couched in ‘up to’ or ‘as many as’ so a few dozen then – that won’t hit the headlines.  Who have you heard challenging these ridiculous figures? Press? Councillors? Council officers?  Do you get the impression this is what some of them want to hear?

And do you know what this means? ‘that in approving the above recommendations, the City Council is nonetheless taking no view of any proposed development in its capacity as the planning authority.’

But pith and power, till my last hour,
I’ll mak this declaration;
We’re bought and sold for rich mens’ gold-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Thanks to Burns

http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/CouncilNews/ci_cns/pr_UTG_250112.asp

To a Man – Robert Burns

Robert Burns in contemporary literature – chapter 19 Silver Moonlight Eels  Leningrad Sunday 11 August 1991

The older man falls into step with MacHardy. A working barge steams by, all but drowning out the Scot’s words.

‘ … that man to man the warld o’er, shall brothers be for a that.’

‘Ah! Robert Burns.’ The Armenian has his ear close to MacHardy.

‘I’m impressed. You’ve heard o’ Burns here in Leningrad?’ MacHardy is genuinely surprised.

‘Of course we know Robert Burns. He is not just Scottish poet but great poet who speak for all people. Here in Soviet Union every year we celebrate his birthday. Yes, of course, we know of your poet. His ‘Tree of Liberty’ is about poor peasants throwing off chains of tyrant.’

The Armenian’s bowed shoulders straighten as he closes his eyes and carefully recites:

‘Fair freedom, standing by the tree,

Her sons did loudly ca’, man,

She sang a song o’ liberty

Which pleased them ane and a’, man’

 

Tommy MacHardy nods his approval. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard it recited in a Russian accent.’

‘Armenian,’ mutters the older man scarcely audibly, as he shakes his head at a white Volvo accelerating past. ‘There was so much that was good about our country, so much. Now our young people have no sense of past. When history is forgotten, what will become of us? History is future. Our enemies were once outside our great state. Now they are everywhere. Our young people look to West. They are ignorant and greedy. They want everything and give nothing. They do not know what they do but one day they will learn.’

‘We must be careful when we speak.’ He pauses, waiting for the woman to move further away. She lingers while her dog cocks its leg against the railing. The old Armenian embarks on a short circular walk, muttering under his breath as he does.

‘Even people you know. I tell you, in Soviet Union, most people, they spy. In this city, thousands spy on neighbours, on family. Thousands. In work, in metro, in shops, in hospitals, in hotels, here on street. So it is crazy to speak openly. Do you agree?’

‘You seem open enough talkin’ to me,’ remarks Tommy as he hurries to keep up with the older man.

‘You are Scottish. I take my chance with countryman of Robert Burns.’

Extract from Banana Pier by Alex Chisholm  www.alexchisholm.org  Kindle and paperback

Emoholly’s Tweets Week 10 (the sanitised version – oh yes) I just thought.. How sore would it be hit with a cannonball.

So now my hangover decides to kick in right before I start work, lovely.

Come on Liverpool is this a f**king joke

GET YOUR MONEY OUT BEFORE YOU GET ON THE BUS!!

Oh 6oclock why are you so faaaar

Worst mood ever.. Hating this.

Shinnies brothers goal was well dece, he looks pretty hot as well..

Home already, so proud of myself thank god I am off tomorrow..

OH MY GOD I AM SITTING ALONE WITH THE PLASTIC GIRLS AlWAYS IN VODKA BAR. kill me?

If SOPA is passed.. #lifeover #backtoactuallyfacetofacetalking #NOTKEEN

Aw my god. That old man who always walks about with the aberdeen hat just seen him buying food and I feel so bad.

The backs of the Trinity is a terrifying place, especially when you hear foot steps far away.

Really wish I could pull off a pencil skirt

No energy today at all.. Not to worry this time in a week I will be SO excited

Just opened the door on my face. #ouch

My room is actually so cold its a joke.

My room is freezing. SOMEONE COME HUG ME

Cuz I feel like dancin tonight!

Sadly we have an awful lot of fools living in Aberdeen who would happily cover everything in concrete without asking why. #UTG

Sun get out my eyes!

Hate people that don’t get their money ready before they get on the bus. You know its coming, why not do it then?

I just thought.. How sore would it be hit with a cannonball.

Such laughs this weekend. #buzzinforpanicatthedisco

My hotel room is like a wee house with rooms happy
Chris Brown forever is trending why? Come on lassies women beaters are not something to admire no matter who they are. #thug

Arrogant boy love yourself so no one has to

So funny when my dog randomly wags her tail in her sleep, but then she does her devil dog eyes and grunting. So scary

Holy f**k. Waxing is such a bitch

3D Pavement Art

Campbell’s Beef Stew

That ‘wise old man’ of UK politics Menzies Campbell has been nailing his Scottish credentials to the independence referendum mast. It’s clear he has been irritated by the jibes of anti-Scottishness aimed at those Scots politicos who argue vehemently for retention of the Union.

He claims he is a proud Scot but that begs the question does an accident of birth automatically mean that as a Scot you want what is in the best interests of the country?

We are all familiar with the perennial moaners whinging on how everything in Scotland from weather to employment is worse here than anywhere else, as if by saying it separates them from the rest of us in our wee country. They are like those impoverished working class voters who support the Tories in the belief that this will raise their own position in society by association with what they regard as a superior body.

Menzies Campbell belongs to that school of thought. ‘With independence, we will diminish ourselves and Scotland.’ For him and people like him Scotland is a dependency – on the UK – well, let’s be frank, on England.

He tells us how the UK ‘constitutional settlement and system’ has been the envy of the world. This is something we often used to hear and probably believed. However the perception of the rest of the world is not so much of the UK as England. We are already diminished in the eyes of the world. For Campbell this may be good enough but for many other Scots it is not.

Scotland has contributed to the wealth and status of the UK far beyond its size and population but has been the recipient of too little credit and too little development. Why are all those Scots emigrants into England who want a vote in the referendum there for the work? Why are there not sufficient jobs in Scotland if the Union has been so good for this country?

There are developments of the wrong kind – as England’s back yard we are useful to test dangerous substances for chemical warfare such as anthrax on Gruinard off the northwest coast which made the island dangerous for around half a century. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1457035.stm From Polaris to Trident and Dounreay to Dalgety Bay we are expected to live with the hazards because we are remote. Remote? Not where I’m standing but remote, yes, from the south of England. Without Scotland, England would have to contaminate itself.

Along with other pro-Union commentators, Campbell points to the debacle of RBS and HBoS as a measure of how better-off Scotland is within the Union. But surely it was within the Union that the climate emerged which encouraged these banks to gamble in the ways they did? The banking crisis took place under a Labour government in Westminster. It is speculation and opinion but nothing more than that that in an independent Scotland there would have been the same lack of controls over banking as there have been in the UK, so it’s a redundant argument.

Campbell mentions how Scotland has benefited from various intangibles: shared values; mutual respect; friendly rivalry; common responsibility. This is really scraping the bottom of the pro-Unionist barrel of arguments. What do these things add up to? Why would they not still occur post-independence?

Campbell is something of a seer. He tells us that the Union has ‘been infinitely better than anything else we could have achieved on our own.’ Again he gives us nothing more than baseless opinion.

He complains bitterly over the timescale for the referendum, lamenting the amount of media coverage between now and 2014. This is a strange position to take given the immensity of the decision. Were the referendum being held within a few months he would surely have been carping that there was not sufficient time to explore the issues properly.

Campbell appears content with how Scotland is presented within the UK: the news and cultural media which until a couple of weeks ago showed absolutely no interest in Scottish news of any description. It says it all when the BBC – that is the British national broadcaster employs a special correspondent for Scotland but strangely not for England – which has the Home Affairs correspondent.

Unionists like Campbell will say anything, however unsubstantiated, to boost their thin arguments. He makes reference to the Enlightenment as having been an essential aspect of the development of the Scottish people. I will not argue with that but it would be good for that to have wider recognition. Scotland’s contribution to this European movement was immense but it was not the cradle of the Enlightenment, as Campbell states. And to continue his point you might imagine that that by clicking on that fount of all knowledge for the lazy researcher, Wikipedia, Scotland’s men of the Enlightenment would feature in the initial summary but no. It cites John Locke and Isaac Newton ( precursors of but not Enlightenment figures) both English as it happens. There is a section under Scotland, as there is for England below, so Scotland is not credited in the opening synopsis as being integral to the Enlightenment after all.

The point is – how far is the rest of the world aware of Scotland and its contribution to world events? How far does credit for the success of the UK which Campbell is so proud of land at Scotland’s door? Where is recognition of Scotland’s intellectual legacy to the world if not in reference to the Enlightenment? The giants of the movement – Scots David Hume, Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Ferguson, James Watt and so on don’t warrant inclusion in the opening summary in this globally accessed encyclopaedia. So much for recognition of being in the first order of the movement.

On another occasion Campbell takes a moment to deride the idea of a Scottish defence force. Again he has a knee-jerk reaction to deride what is Scottish (except what is in the safety of the past). Better commentators than me have rebuffed this piece of silliness by pointing out that the same is not said about the armed forces of other countries of a comparable size to Scotland such as Denmark.

The vacuous arguments being presented in defence of retaining the obsolete Union only reinforce why the time has come to rid ourselves of this inequitable system with its foolish apologists responsible for diminishing Scotland for too long.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/menzies-campbell-i-am-proud-to-be-scottish-and-british-and-european-6289816.html

Poll on the Granite Web replacing Union Terrace Gardens

Unlike Aberdeen City Council and ACSEF I do not believe it should only be the people of Aberdeen to get a vote over the approval or otherwise of the Granite Web in place of the site of Union Terrace Gardens.

I suspect this decision has been taken because those bodies hope it will provide them with the response they seek.

Think of a number – higher : Union Terrace Gardens V Concrete Walkways

The battle has been hiked up over the proposed removal of Union Terrace Gardens following a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers which is being presented to Aberdeen City Council.

Anyone who has ever drawn up a proposal for funding knows this is an exercise in exaggeration. The number of benefits are exaggerated. The number of jobs likely to be created are exaggerated. The positive impacts are exaggerated.

From Archaeolink to the Olympics.

Think Olympics here. There are lots of huge claims for the impact the Olympics will have on the UK. We know this is pure optimistic speculation based on nothing and the need to have public approval for such huge public expenditure.

From Olympics to small schemes funded by public bodies – creative fiction is employed.

We are told by a Gerry Brough who is said to be a project director that the concrete web development which will replace Union Terrace Gardens will create 3000 industry jobs, 2300 business jobs, 470 retail and leisure jobs and 180 in culture and the arts.

This is preposterous.

Naturally there are no details. The Council presumably will be given these. But whatever the figures the people of Aberdeen know that the numbers have been plucked out of the air.

• Any shops built into the concrete web will draw customers away from existing shops in the city. Just look at the impact of the city’s many malls on Union Street.

• Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire have the highest employment rates in the country.

• Only someone who is unfamiliar with this area could possible believe that anything like 180 jobs will be created in culture and arts in Aberdeen. People involved in culture and the arts in Aberdeen have been fighting for decades for expansion of provision and this will not change – especially over the next years when the recession will be continuing to make its impact on public spending.

• Sticking with culture, can only someone with a vivid imagination could possibly conjure up the figure of 3000 industry and 2300 business jobs.

Hokum.

Perhaps Gerry Brough was not in Aberdeen when it attracted so many oil and gas companies because of its park – joke! No, because of the facilities and situation for the exploitation of the north sea. No-one hesitated to come because they thought – oh, we might want a shop sunk under an immense web of concrete before we decide to make zillions from oil and gas extraction. Not even briefly.

• Employers are attracted to Aberdeen because it has a flexible, educated and reliable workforce (NB employment levels are high here).

Aberdeen has loads in its favour as centre for setting up business – apart from the workforce it has a beautiful coast, mountains and historical associations which go a long way to satisfy people moving into the area. People don’t move for shops or concrete walkways.

(I suppose the NY architects are aware of the impact of ice and frost on raised walkways in this part of the world? Possibility of being closed off for H & S during the winter months?)

He (Brough) added: “Without major investment in the city centre, investors may come to regard Aberdeen as a complacent and backward-looking city that is, consequently, unworthy of further investment.”

Is that what you think of Aberdeen Mr Brough? I’m surprised we’ve detained you.

‘Colin Crosby, director of Aberdeen City Gardens Trust (ACGT), said: “Essentially this means that for every £1 we invest today in the scheme, Aberdeen will on average secure a return on investment of £1.32 year on year.’

Speculation. You have no idea.

‘Campaign group Friends of Union Terrace Gardens have criticised one of Mr Brough’s recommendations to councillors – to set aside up to £300,000 from the council’s contingency budget to cover all council costs associated with drafting and negotiating legal agreements.
Chairman Mike Shepherd said: “Next week’s council meeting is absurd. Councillors are being asked to approve the final City Garden design without the full facts.
“There isn’t even any discussion of what happens if costs massively over-run. They are being sold a ‘vision’, but it’s a blurry vision and the City Garden juggernaut is heading alarmingly towards the cliff-edge. Put the brakes on now before it’s too late.
“They told us no council money would be spent on this project and now councillors are being asked to allocate up to £300,000 of public money for legal fees. At a time when our amenities and services are being drastically cut, this is a shocking abuse of council funds. It is time to call a halt to this wasteful project.”
The Friends of Union Terrace Gardens said they will request to make a deputation at the meeting.’ (STV News report 19 Jan 2012)

People ought to be aware that the people pushing the UTG project will do and say anything to get a vote in its favour.

And I mean anything.

I hope ACC has the interests of its citizens in mind and scrutinises figures lobbed around by officials.

Do you do that Councillors?

Have you always been told the truth by officials or do they sometimes appear massaged?

Are you up to the job or just a sad disappointment to the people you represent?

http://aberdeenvoice.com/2012/01/tree-for-every-citizen-scheme-not-so-cost-neutral-after-all/

Scottish Dykes

Scotland has a long history of drystane dykes. As the name suggests, there is no fixing mortar used to secure boulders in a drystane dyke.

There are thousands of miles of drystane dykes around Scotland’s agricultural and forest lands.

Dykes can topple with the ravages of time and weather (and vehicles ploughing through them) but when well-built they can last for a very long time.

I once came on a wall where some boulders had tumbled off and noticed a very faded photograph of a young woman about to flutter to the ground. It was a tradition of dykers to place the photo of a loved one into a dyke they were building (biggin). I like that.

I pushed the photo back in among the boulders.

A Tangled Granite Web Weaves around Union Terrace Gardens

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

                                     (Sir Walter Scott)

Another kick in the teeth to the people of Aberdeen by the totally undemocratic clique empowered to decide on the preferred option for the development of Union Terrace Gardens.

This clique, presumably selected by ACSEF ( a PPP and undemocratically elected body which is key to current and future developments in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire) is made up of various people who have no obvious talents to be judge and jury over such significant changes to the city’s architecture and changes which will utterly destroy an important and treasured aspect of its heritage (excluding the council and ACSEF from that subjective comment).

Heritage is a moveable feast. Mostly moveable in the case of Aberdeen which has no noble history in recognising what is worthy of preserving and what is not. Very little of Aberdeen’s once distinguished old city is extant. Those public figures who have been instrumental in the eradication of the old and distinctive areas and buildings in the city have created a homogenised urban landscape which leaves no lasting impression on the imagination. It is not stimulating place to be in. It is not a relaxing place to be in. It is the same as so many places up and down the country.

No doubt something along these lines brought Ian Wood, a local multi-millionaire businessman, to conclude that economic expansion would only come (back) to Aberdeen if the city had a square at its heart. I would not disagree had he chosen the area in front of Marischal College. He didn’t.

Aberdeen did have a park in its centre. It does have a park; Victorian gardens. And it is reasonable to see why someone with disposable income measured in millions might want to influence improvements to the centre of his home town (although that in itself calls into question the morality of influencing policy just because you have more money than most) but the motives behind the proposal have shifted since it was first envisaged. I have written about this before and am not going over old ground. Suffice to say that by creating a piazza ( and that was the term in use at the beginning of this whole UTG episode) the city would attract business is specious. I don’t for a moment imagine that Mr Wood ever moved his business into anywhere because of the look of the place, whether or not it had a piazza, but because of the economic returns his company hoped to bank.

People in and around Aberdeen have long recognised Union Terrace Gardens needed revitalising. The fact that the once popular park has been left to degenerate to the extent it has is down to a dereliction of duty by Aberdeen City Council. The touches which could bring this wee gem of an oasis back into popular use are clear and would work out far, far cheaper than the extortionate scheme in hand. It looks like what swung the council in favour of this latest wheeze to bulldoze a unique city landscape is flattery. People (some people) are flattered by men with money.

So two architectural designs were shortlisted and the clique within a clique was given the task of selecting a winner

The undemocratic body knew the public’s favourite. One which preserved aspects of the old gardens and extended them.

The undemocratic body did not select the public favourite but went for a radical design instead.

And who makes up this appointed clique which represents the people of Aberdeen?

Duncan Rice – A former Principal of Aberdeen University
Ian Wood –the millionaire businessman who promised around 1/3 of the cost of the project
John Stewart – a libdem councillor
Tom Smith – who runs a telecommunications company
Charles Landry –bought in as an expert on urban innovation
Lavina Massie – no idea who she is
Malcolm Reading – bought in as a consultant on capital projects

Of the competition winner, this is what I said in an earlier blog on the subject.

The Granite Web
This is incredible. It’s like someone’s idea of a joke. For starters we have raised walkways, streamlined with figures wandering around. Now call me picky but can you see health and safety allowing people to walk at these heights without tall fences along the walkways? And quite right too, I could take a dizzy and topple onto the folk eating below, or if I was less polite I might… well.

Cutting through the turgid descriptions of nature and culture fused into a ‘vital network’ – what ? – ‘an elastic web’ – ‘stretching across the historic river site – ’ which river would that be then? No rivers there. The Denburn. Far fetched calling that a river, ‘multi-tiered archaeology’ has anyone checked what this guy’s been drinking? ‘quiet hang outs to meadows’, ‘the city’s emergent future’.

Cutting though the crap. This design is a mess, misleading in its visualisation and frankly, an eyesore in the making.

And it seems I’m not alone. The Los Angeles Times had a piece on 15th September 2011 about the winning company, Diller, Scofidio and Renfro entitled Culture Monster.

‘The real question is whether this project will prove to be the one where DS+R shows a clear ability to turn smart conceptual ideas into really affecting built space. Too many of its projects — the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and Brown University’s Granoff Center are two examples — have lost something crucial in moving from schematic to completed form; they are often thick with ideas but rather thin emotionally.
This may be because DS+R, which has been hugely prominent in theoretical debates over architecture’s future but has relatively few finished projects to its credit, is still perfecting the slippery art of building well. Or it may simply be because the firm’s strength lies in strategic thinking rather than in the act of making architecture powerfully moving in three dimensions. I think the jury is still out.’

Well the jury of architects may well be still out. Unfortunately the screw has been turned on the removal of Aberdeen’s city centre gardens for this vulgar acreage of concrete, Astroturf and a few potted plants.

People of Aberdeen it is up to you. Are you prepared to let a group of the great unelected stick two fingers up to you – just because they can?

Sunhoney Recumbent Stone Circle

A beautifully sunny 13^th January 2012 found us walking up by Sunhoney Farm near Echt in Aberdeenshire and on along a field to a wooded area where the 4-5000 year old stone circle sits.The situation is not as high up as some but still on a raised area where the rising moon could be watched very easily.

Immediately apparent is the sheer size of the circle, around 25m diameter.

Largely complete, Sunhoney recumbent stone circle is made up of 9 uprights, several very tall of pink granite and gneiss, as well as the grey granite recumbent stone which is very long and lying on its back rather than raised. It is flanked by two tall majestic stones. In front of the recumbent and right flanker lies a large stone which might have once been part of the recumbent which has broken off over time.

The recumbent is decorated by many cup marks – possibly around 30-along its upper surface. There has been a suggestion that they chart the stars. Whatever they meant to the people who carved them from the hard stone we will never know.

If the recumbent was used to catch the ascending moon then the dip in the hills to the south is just that point where a rising moon would first emerge into view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cremated bones have been recovered from the cairn within the circle.

 

 

Recumbent Circle at Sunhoney

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Music on video is from Dieter Weberpals called Just Another Mood