Old Susannah’s Journal No. 119 – Nudge, Nudge

 Opinion, Satire and Humour  3 Responses »
May 022013
 

Voice’s Old Susannah takes a look over the past week’s events in the ‘Deen and beyond. By Suzanne Kelly.

dictionary Tally Ho!  This past week there was an astonishingly great fashion show by Gray’s School of Art second and third year fashion students, held in The Seven Incorporated Trades of Aberdeen.
It was professionally organised, smoothly and elegantly run (with a great reception), and the work on show was by any standard advanced beyond the expected level.  More on that elsewhere in Aberdeen Voice.

Let’s take a bit of a break from Mr Trump this week I think.  Besides which, he’s about to issue writs to the Scottish Government and I’m really scared!  If Donald doesn’t want windfarms, Donald will take us to court!

When a law abiding man like that takes legal action, you know he’s not doing it frivolously.  I’m sure he’s got a point:  hardly anyone’s signing up for golf at Balmedie, and it’s almost as if the 6,000 jobs that were created might be in peril. 

This lack of golfers could be due to the sandstorms, hailstorms, rain and cold weather, but far more likely people are staying away in case they’d have to see a wind farm offshore.  If I’m going to spend £195 for a round of golf, then have a £100 lunch for two consisting of a few burgers, fries and coffees, I don’t want to be looking at windfarms, either.  For that kind of money, I want Led Zeppelin performing live.

I hear the Mayday march might be cancelled this year.  Since all of the labour force is now doing so very well under the Coalition Government, the unions decided there is no need for any display.  Things are almost as great as when the entire town marched against Kate Dean.

There is also to be a party and events in Union Terrace Gardens that afternoon, but since it is so full of criminals and drug smugglers, I’m sure we’ll all be too afraid to go there.  If only we could have had the granite web.

The beautiful granite-clad concrete web may be toast now, but then again, we look set to get some very fetching, brand new glass-box office buildings soon.  Really, how do these trendy architects come up with these great designs?

These happening, nearly modern buildings will replace St Nicholas’ House.  The complex will blend right into the local architecture of Marischal College and won’t stick out like a dated pastiche predictable cheap sore thumb whatsoever.  No doubt these glass box office buildings will look absolutely state-of-the art near the Milne Triple Kirks glass box office buildings and won’t seem old dated and dirty in 3 years or less.

Given the seagull and pigeon populations, this may be a good time to open a window cleaning business.

Norwich decided to encourage some peregrines to nest in their city centre

Speaking of Triple Kirks, poor Stewart certainly has had his difficulties lately.  He may have failed to get Scottish football teams to vote with him despite his use of reasoned debate, but at least he showed the city centre wildlife he was boss.

You may remember how Stewart Milne, saviour of Scottish Football and tasteful developer arranged to have the long-settled peregrine falcons ‘discouraged’ from nesting in the Triple Kirks site when he took it over.  Well done Stewart.

Unlike clever, business-orientated Aberdeen, Norwich decided to encourage some peregrines to nest in their city centre.  The people of Norwich surprisingly find their rare peregrines and the newly-hatched chicks a source of interest, tourism, pride and education as they and the wider world watch the birds on cctv.  More info here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-22368516 .

The RSBP believes there are fewer than 1400 breeding pairs in the UK.  With as many as that around, it is no wonder the previous Aberdeen City Council administration didn’t discourage Milne from discouraging the birds.  We need more office buildings you see.

As there is clearly not enough building work going on to placate important local contractors, some still cling to the possibility of turning Union Terrace Gardens into a parking lot/shopping mall, which we so desperately need.  What other explanation is there for the continued existence of the limited company which is the Aberdeen City Gardens Trust?

They’re still listed as an active company at Companies House, with directors Tom Smith, Lavinia Massie and of course Colin Crosby.  (I wonder how they managed to get so much positive Granite Web coverage in Chamber of Commerce publications?  Perhaps as a board member, Colin could help field the answer to this mystery.)  Then again, Colin is also on the Aberdeen Harbour Board, which now seeks to expand into the remaining coastal greenbelt.

An ambitious man, Colin; he’ll make us all rich yet.  Well, some of us rich anyway.

Between the ACGT, ACSEF, the Harbour Board, the Chamber of Commerce, Brewin Dolphin, and the board of Robert Gordon’s College, it’s a wonder Crosby hasn’t dropped any balls.

 we are all so weak-willed we’ll do whatever is made easy for us to do

For some reason I’m reminded of an episode of Dr Who in which invading aliens try to build monstrosities all over any green space they could all in the name of profit, although I can’t think why that should spring to mind just now.

Yes, it’s men like Colin who disprove the otherwise sound, logical government experiment in Nudge Theory.  I’m sure we all know what this important Nudge Theory is, but I’ll get onto it with a definition or two anyway.

Nudge Theory: (modern English jargon phrase) Behavioural theory that people are inherently lazy and need to be pushed into doing what is best for them.

The Nanny State lives on, and thank goodness for that.

It’s like this:  only the Colin Crosbys, Stewart Milnes and other rich businessmen aren’t lazy – the rest of us are.  Worse, we are all so weak-willed we’ll do whatever is made easy for us to do.  This highly-scientific theory is now a government triumph!  Result!  Not only is it part of the reason the country’s doing so well, but it’s also going to  be launched as an initiative!

And you thought there was no good news around.

The BBC covers this marvellous development, and supplies examples of what might otherwise sound like idiotic psychobabble.  For instance, if manufacturers put a label on a bottle of wine to the effect that the average person drinks one glass of wine a day, we’ll all follow suit and do just that.

School children will start eating healthier at lunchtimes too.  Why?  Because we’re going to put the tastier junk food items in locations that are more difficult to reach than healthier options.  This logic is brilliant!  You can see examples of how this works in the shops today.  Since lad’s mags, fags and booze are kept out of reach no one buys them because they’re too lazy to do so.

It’s clear this Nudge Theory is going to take off; it’s so easy to understand.

This scheme is going to make the government millions as well as make all of us safer and less stressed by having to think for ourselves.  I personally look forward to having my laziness used to steer me into good behaviour in this subtle manner.  It’s not at all Kafkaesque or Orwellian for the government to spend our time and our money on getting us to fall into line and be good.

But the really good news is that this will be a ….

Partnership Model: (modern English jargon) A business entity or company formed by government and private enterprise.

Well, since forming in 2010 the brains behind this great Nudge Theory scheme have really come together to ambitiously turn this scientific theory into a money-spinner.  Old Susannah has to wonder if people are inherently lazy, then what sets the people behind this Nudge Theory Partnership Model and their work to go into business with their scheme apart from the rest of us lazy, weak-willed populace.

I guess that they’re just smarter, better, brighter than we are.  Only to the worst kind of lazy cynic would this great humanitarian scheme look like a brazen wheeze and ploy to earn money for old and unnecessary rope.

Here’s what the BBC, lazy as they are, were able to find out:-

“It could become the first of “dozens” of elements of Whitehall to be spun out, as Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude plans to shake-up the Civil Service.

“A spokesman for Mr Maude said: ‘We are in a global race for the jobs and opportunities of the future. To get Britain back on the rise we must find innovative ways to deliver better services more efficiently’. [Old Susannah wonders if Mr Maude was too lazy to make his own statement to the press, and had to be ‘nudged’ into releasing a statement by this spokesman]

“’It’s great news that the world-renowned ‘nudge’ unit is spinning out from central government. As a mutual they will combine the benefits of private sector experience and investment with the innovation and commitment from staff leadership.  This accelerates our drive to make public assets pay their way. We hope to support dozens more new spin outs over the next few years. This is a whole new growth area and Britain is leading the way.”

Well, I’m impressed.  We’re going to make money out of exploiting people’s natural fecklessness.

The government will join with a private company (no doubt one completely unrelated to any government ministers, tax avoiders or big business interests or lobbyists.  Then, they’ll sell the scheme back to the government, which will demand government offices buy into it.

Lazy?  I guess you could say fecklessness is off and running as a way to make profits.  Or something like that.

Group Four changed to G4S, and did a splendid job running the Olympics

I wonder what this great wheeze will wind up earning for the taxpayer over the years?  Undoubtedly we’ll all be better off.  Otherwise, they’ll just tell us we’ll be better off, and we’ll be too lazy and/or too stupefied by our one glass of wine a day to bother to find out the real story.

If I could only motivate myself to do some work, or even to open another BrewDog.

Ages ago the Government started privatising everything, and look how well that’s turned out.  For instance, Group Four security started running various prison services.  These went so well, Group Four changed to G4S, and did a splendid job running the Olympics without any problems at all.  Could the government complain if things went wrong?

Not really – the contracts were sewn up very well, government and private sector overlaps tended to help each other out or at least look the other way if problems arose, and lobbyists were always on hand with sweeteners to keep the cogs well oiled.  And so it will be with the private/public money-spinning Partnership Model, which will industriously make money out of the fact we the people are lazy.

Nudge Nudge wink wink indeed.

With the Mayday march about to take place, I think we should extend an invitation to the brave, pioneering, hard-working men and women behind Nudge Theory and the Partnership Model to come and join in.  I have no doubt that if our teachers, carers, volunteers, firemen, etc. could meet the Nudge professionals, they’d understand just what real hard work is.

I was going to write about the latest in relation to the standoff between the press and the government over press regulation.  I was going to write something about Trump, windfarms, and golf, but I realise that I’m just too lazy to do so.

So it’s off to watch some television until I fall asleep, and hope the government will give me some clear pointers on what to do and what not to do, but without me having to even know I’m being steered to do the right thing, as decided by the Nudge Theory think-tank.  As long as I don’t have to think too much, or do much, that’ll suit me fine.

Time for my one glass of wine.

Next week – more fecklessness, or possibly some recklessness.

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Old Susannah No 109: Koots & Co.

 Opinion, Satire and Humour  5 Responses »
Jan 242013
 

Voice’s Old Susannah takes a look over the past week’s events in the ‘Deen and beyond. By Suzanne Kelly.

dictionary Another busy week in Aberdeen passed in a flurry of activity, culminating in the excellent BrewDog party celebrating the new factory opening. Live band Little Kicks were great, and so were the BrewDog crew.
A team assigned to the outdoor barbeque were positively heroic; hundreds were fed delicious food irrespective of the raging snow. A good time was had by all.

In the news this week are several stories involving common sense. Firstly, the elegant, ladylike, cerebral polymath Helen Flanagan, celebrated Coronation Street actress and model, told the press she is unhappy at being thought of as being a brainless, big-breasted airhead.

She has illustrated her intelligence and sensitivity with acts such as posing with a gun to her head days after a US gun spree left dozens dead. 

Also supporting the view of her as an intellectual, the article in which she claims to be a misunderstood genius is accompanied by a photo of her half-dressed. Brains, and talent, too.

Like most of us, I’ve been watching the ACSEF website with great anticipation for the the latest meeting minutes just as eagerly as I wait for the next episode of Coronation Street. I’m sure that when I last looked about a fortnight ago, there were only the June 2012 minutes out. But to my great joy and excitement, I see that the September AND October Minutes are out! Result!

These minutes, recently added to the hallowed ACSEF website, serve as a reminder to our elected officials to not step out of line. It is important they understand power structures and their place in the system.

ACSEF is, quite rightly, calling Barney Crocket to in effect ‘explain to the class’ how it will be possible to renew our city centre if we don’t turn our only green space into a concrete – sorry granite-clad concrete – web. He and Gordon McIntosh must do so at the December ACSEF board meeting.

Just to clarify, Barney is the leader of the duly-elected majority in local government, and ACSEF are quango hangers-on, some from self-promoting business backgrounds and others from yet more quangos, paid for by city and shire taxpayers.   I guess Barney better learn his place. This is what the minutes said (but no doubt you’ll rush off to read them, too):

“Councillor Crockett… confirmed Aberdeen City Council’s alignment with the ACSEF Action Plan and vision [what is that?], but highlighted the need for the ACSEF Board to take account of the City Garden Project decision.

“The Board questioned how the desired outcome of regenerating and improving the attractiveness of the city centre, which the City Garden Project had sought to deliver, might be achieved without this and other key linked projects.

“The critical importance of anchoring the oil and gas supply chain in the area for the long term and role city centre regeneration could play to support this was stressed.   It was suggested and agreed that a presentation and paper be provided to the December Board meeting outlining how the City Council planned to address the aim of city centre regeneration.”

I am very pleased our elected representative has to explain to ACSEF, including Stewart Milne, why Milne won’t be getting the web he relies on to make his beautiful glass box Triple Kirks offices a huge success (with parking). I might not be clever enough to be able to see how a granite web will anchor the oil business here (where it needs to be logistically anyway) – perhaps I should ask Helen Flanagan to explain?

Elsewhere the minutes show that ACSEF plans to dictate policy to the city and shire councils whether on housing or education. We can all sleep easily.

By the way, I’d actually love to stop writing about the web, or The Thing That Wouldn’t Die as it is more affectionately known.

Trouble is, the Press and Journal, and the other ugly sister, the Evening Express, won’t let me. They are going to try to print an article every other day forever on why the web will fix the problem of the changing face of retail. And all it will cost us is our Common Good land, fresh air, environment and our only city centre free recreation ground.

Yes, people around the world will stop going to visit Niagara Falls, the Taj Mahal and the Louvre and come instead to Aberdeen’s web, where they can shop in brand new, multinational shops. It is always a joy to see those acid-pastel coloured fantasy web sketches showing floating giant children over flowerbeds in a landscape free from any litter, graffiti or crime.

Makes my day. Keep running those beautiful photos and comments from leading businessmen, and I’ll keep praising them as they deserve. Today, it’s Mr Koot’s turn to be singled out for my admiration).

Multi-tasking: (modern English gerund) ability to competently do several things simultaneously.

You really have to hand it to Mr Koot, Taqa company’s supremo in Aberdeen. He’s found the time to tell the P&J this week how embarrassed he is by our city centre, and how the granite web is the answer to all our prayers. He told us this a few times now, but somehow it’s still newsworthy.

I conclude he must be a socio-economic whizz able to predict future marketing trends, concluding that internet retail is not the way to go, and shop-building is where it will be at. I am grateful, as we all are, for his relevant input into the web debate (even if some of us wish it would finally just go away).

He even generously wrote to his employees at the time of the referendum, telling them in a nice paternal way to vote for the web. Some people might equate getting an email telling them how to vote as taking serious liberties, coercion, intimidation, and using employment as a platform for propaganda.

I’m certain, however, he had nothing but the employee’s democratic rights and best interests at heart. This is what he wrote to staff in February before the vote:

“From a business point of view, this project is very important to economic and employment prospects in Aberdeen. It will help attract new energy industries and new companies to the City, and will provide a new city heart with significant garden, recreation and cultural amenities, with no additional cost to the Council Tax payer.”

Wow – you get something worth £140 million for free!  Why didn’t we do that again? Not only does he have the time to analyse what’s wrong with Aberdeen and tell people who depend on him for their livelihoods how to vote, he successfully runs Taqa, the Abu Dhabi oil firm.

Why do promotional web articles keep appearing with giant photos in my Press and Journal?

I guess anyone can drop the ball. As you might have noted in the news, Taqa had a wee problem this week when hydrocarbons escaping from one of its platforms in the North Sea caused an evacuation and a shut-down of the North Sea Brent pipelines. This was rather large in the news from 13-15 January.

Still, this talented master of multi-tasking found time to run the oil firm and campaign strenuously for the granite web since at least 2010. In fact, less than one week after the financially disastrous Taqa North Sea incident, Koot still found time to get into the P&J to say how embarrassed he was by our city centre, and the web was the answer. I guess you have to decide where your priorities lie – a huge North Sea oil problem and its aftermath, or the web.

Taqa is sending Koot to Iraq.

Just one more thing: you could ask yourself: “Why do promotional web articles keep appearing with giant photos in my P&J?” Is there perhaps a public relations agency, toiling away with no thought of monetary reward but interested in getting a web built?

Is there a PR agency writing these releases getting paid from somewhere, perhaps the unelected group Vote for the City Gardens Project (aka Stewart Milne and mates)?

I personally hope we find out that ACSEF is paying for all this, using our taxpayer money where it will do the most good. Perhaps we should ask our elected officials to look into this? We could ask ACSEF, of course. I’m sure they’ll be happy to clarify.

Gross misconduct: (Eng. compound noun, legal) severe negligence in the course of one’s given duties.

We have seen in our area nurses struck off for drug offences, abusing patients, stealing, even having inappropriate relationships with psychiatric patients. Two stories of nurses were in this week’s local papers.  One was a nurse who found a child wandering around, presumably after being left alone in a car.

Details are unclear; she should have called the police and stayed with the child it seems. She did, however, ensure the child’s safety.

Elsewhere, a convicted wife killer, suspected of also killing his first wife is fighting for his nursing license (should he ever get out of jail). Proven to be a mercenary, cold-blooded killer and pathological liar, he thinks he should be allowed to continue in the caring profession.

One of these has been struck off permanently; one will have some form of hearing from the Royal College of Nursing.

The Nursing body wants to remind everyone how seriously it takes striking a nurse off like it has done in this case, and told the press such action is never taken lightly. Can you guess which nurse’s career is over?  That’s right, the murderer may remain, for now, a nurse; the other person has been struck off. Great system we’re running here.

Time for me to get back to the ACSEF website! More next week, perhaps a look at the serious mistake Glasgow’s made by rejecting designs for George Square. Have they ever considered the benefits of a granite web, I wonder?

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Old Susannah No. 107 – Natural Heritage 101

 Aberdeen City, Satire and Humour  1 Response »
Jan 032013
 

Voice’s Old Susannah takes a look over the past week’s events in the ‘Deen and beyond. By Suzanne Kelly.

dictionary Happy 2013 and Tally Ho! Revellers gathered in Stonehaven for the annual fire festival to ward off evil spirits; in related news, it is thought developer Stewart Milne was not in attendance.

Sadly, it seems his companies were unable to provide a Christmas tree for their Stonehaven development. No doubt schools and infrastructure will prove easier to deliver.

Crowds also gathered in Aberdeen for a fireworks display (which was not great for the wildlife by the way) around Union Terrace Gardens.

The masked ball, the Jubilee tea party, the previous year’s Christmas party and fireworks…  you could be forgiven for thinking UTG is able to be a focal point without even having a granite web.

Christmas is the season to be grateful for what you have and for performing acts of charity.  It might have been blowing a gale, but Feed the Deen managed to hand out warm clothes and serve a hot lunch at Café 52 before Christmas. 

Some generous people who didn’t know about the event in advance promptly went to the shops and returned with brand new goods for Aberdeen’s poor and homeless.

Still, a solution to local poverty seems to be at hand. No, not any local billionaire philanthropists helping out, but instead a sympathetic plan to make begging illegal.

As ever, in order to punish one or two ‘professional’ beggars, the idea seems to be to outlaw begging altogether. Aside from the professionals, other people go into the begging line of fundraising for the glamour and excitement. Alcoholics, runaway children, people with mental health issues, people who have been made poor should all be penalised.

Surely we have plenty of easy-to-access support programmes? Look at how well ATOS is treating people with special needs and abilities.

New estimates suggest that over 400 Scots could face bankruptcy each week in 2013 (but not bankers, obviously).  We’ve done a great job of hiding child poverty – no doubt we can make half the population invisible as well when homelessness increases. However, we can’t have poor people spoiling a day’s shopping for the rich, who might have to think about poverty when they see begging.

I like this idea of penalising beggars; we could get them to pay fines if caught – another revenue source for us. Result!

Speaking of charity, there is no word yet on when Africa will receive its £50,000,000 from the Wood Family Trust

Not only is this a great ploy which goes hand-in-hand with the season of giving, but this mentality of penalising all in order to stop a minority of wrongdoers has some other great applications elsewhere. For instance, intrepid police officer David Hamilton, (secretary of the Tayside branch of the Scottish Police Federation), has suggested callers pay 50p to report emergencies to stop misuse of the service.

I can’t think of any problem with that scheme, can you?  We could give it a trial for a bit, and then introduce a specific tariff for the kind of crime being reported – £0.50 for suspected burglaries, £1.00 for street robbery, £3.00 per assault and so on.

Old Susannah had to make a 999 call just before Christmas  concerning a car incident (details can’t be disclosed as yet). Clearly I should have been charged for helping the person(s) involved. Next time I’ll ask the victim I’m trying to help for some money first. I’m no businessperson – I should have asked them to refund the cost of the mobile phone calls I made, too.

Speaking of charity, there is no word yet on when Africa will receive its £50,000,000 from the Wood Family Trust.   However, the last WFT accounts show the Trust had an income of £29,000,000.  Their expenditure was some £2,355,000.

Old Susannah is still trying to get her head around how getting Rwanda’s plantation owners to grow more tea adds up to a charitable act. Is taking more land away from the very limited agricultural land available an act of charity? Are rainforests cleared to grow this charity tea? Are the people actually going to benefit and not the land owners once this scheme lifts off?

Perhaps some of the WFT staff, paid over £400,000 last year could enlighten me.  When they do, I’ll share the good news with you. However, it’s a little too complex for me to understand just now, just as I can’t understand why the Trustees (i.e. the Wood Family) seem to believe that it would

“…be operationally sensitive to disclose any further remuneration information in respect of these individuals [people getting pensions from the WFT, that is].”  

Well, charity does begin at home. I’m sure it’s all for the betterment of Africa’s poor, and if it involves the destruction of unique, crucial wildlife habitat, then we’re just exporting the Aberdeen philosophy of green space management to Rwanda.

Concerning our remaining green spaces and animals, anti-deer, pro-forest lobby (aka Scottish Natural Heritage) have put out a new report on the evils of deer.

They believe shooting and culling are the answers, or deer might eat trees

It has a great big list of reference documents, so it must be accurate (even if there are no footnotes so you can’t tell what sources support which claims). They give guesses for the number of deer/car incidents in Europe (very high indeed); and they believe that eco-tourism is overestimated especially when it comes to deer.

They believe shooting and culling are the answers, or deer might eat trees. How Scotland ever managed without SNH and these reports is anyone’s guess. Obviously every tree seedling should always reach maturity and not be part of the food chain whatsoever – like it’s always been.

I’ll read this great report and will let you know what I think of it later. It is clear SNH loves forests. It is not clear how it feels about less important issues such as meadows, SSSIs, SACs and so on.

Judging from comments on the last Old Susannah column and comments made about SSSIs, it seems that a little refresher course on Scotland’s natural heritage is in order. Some people think these are empty terms, and how right they are. We have things in Scotland which are not found anywhere else, and I don’t just mean Aileen Malone and shopping malls.

We have great landscapes, marine environments and forests – all ripe for making lots of dosh right now.

The SNH, guardians of our Natural Heritage and of our right to blast animals with guns, are responsible for our natural landscapes. Let’s see what protection is given to our environment, built and natural, and what it means in practice by way of a few definitions.

SSSI (Examples:  Menie, Nigg Bay): (Eng. Abbreviation) A Site of Special Scientific Interest, a recognised designation with legal implications.

In the words of England’s Friends of Richmond Park,

“Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) are the country’s very best wildlife and geological sites. They support plants and animals that find it more difficult to survive in the wider countryside where they are often under pressure from development, pollution, climate change and unsustainable land management.

“SSSIs need active management to maintain their conservation interest, and it is illegal to carry out certain potentially damaging operations on a SSSI without consent from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or reasonable excuse” – Marilyn Mason.
SSSIs,_NNR,_SAC_-_what_do_they_mean

One of many deer allowed to thrive in major London parks as a highly popluar visitor attraction. Richmond Park is arguably London’s largest parkland. It is vastly underused, of course. People come from around the world to look at the famous Richmond deer herd which lives in it, and they don’t even want to shoot them.

There is no web. Ancient trees which could be used for outdoor theatre seating or just cut down to plant new trees are left to stand doing nothing more than cleaning the air. I will suggest the Friends of Richmond Park contact Aileen Malone and Ian Tallboys for suggestions on making Richmond Park more like Tullos Hill.

Balmedie was a SSSI. It had this island’s one and only moving sand dune system and associated flora and fauna. This was not to be changed or damaged per the law covering this highest of all environmental designations.

Therefore, Alex Salmond over-rode Aberdeenshire’s sovereignty, and told his (then) pal Donald Trump to do as he pleased. No doubt those promised 6,000 jobs for local area residents will be advertised in a day or two. Still, Trump is helping to feed the poor. A sandwich and a few drinks can be had at the course for less than £100! (£85).

Bad news: it seems Mother Nature is not as keen on the golf course as she is on the former ancient SSSI. The weather seems to be undoing some of Mr Trump’s great work, and that would be a shame.

Likewise there are two SSSIs at Nigg Bay. Naturally this means the Harbour Board should be allowed to extend into it for industrial marine purposes. Torry’s old fishermen’s cottages were sacrificed for the current harbour many years ago.

Kate Dean later gave us the lovely sewage plant. Torry was later coaxed into selling coastal lands it owned to help ACC out. Let’s just get rid of the only remaining unspoilt Torry coast and its SSI status (which in part was to do with some boring old geology unique to us with historical importance, not to mention the wildlife).

Once green space is given over to industry, it is virtually lost as green space forever

Benefits will include increased lorries through Torry, more pollution, and no doubt ‘jobs creation’ (even though we don’t have bad unemployment figures). I for one am getting bored of living in a suburban area with a nice coastline – I want more industry.

Air pollution levels near the existing harbour are, by the Council’s own reporting, below European standards for clean air and have been for some time. This is due in part to the road traffic (much of which is directly connected to the harbour).

There is also the lovely pollution from the ships themselves; if you don’t believe me, take a stroll near the Moorings next time a ship is belching black, oily smoke into the air. It will save you the expense of buying cigarettes.

Once green space is given over to industry, it is virtually lost as green space forever, so you don’t have to worry about environmentalists and evil tree-chomping deer any more. Green space might be good for our lungs, our health in general, our wildlife, absorption of excess rainwater, and so on. Still, economic prosperity trumps all. Let’s keep building.

SAC (Examples:  Loirston Loch, Dee River area): (Eng. Abbreviation) A Special Area of Conservation, legally protected status attached to an area.

Here is what Ms Mason has to say about SACs:

“SACs have been given special protection under the European Union’s Habitats Directive in order to provide increased protection to a variety of wild animals, plants and habitats, as part of global efforts to conserve the world’s biodiversity.  The effect of all these impressive designations on visitors is that they must not do anything that would damage the Park’s wildlife… Despite the restrictions, it should be a matter for local pride that we have such an important and beautiful natural habitat here on our doorstep.”

Proud to have important and beautiful natural habitats on our doorstep? Clearly Ms Mason’s not from around here.

The best use for SACs is development, which the previous Aberdeen City Council’s Kate Dean was pleased to approve left, right and centre. She saw no reason to prevent Stewart Milne from building a 21,000 seat stadium for his club (where the average attendance is ever so slightly lower than 21,000 – about 50% lower) over an under-used bit of land.

We might have lost a few endangered species and some more fresh air in the process of increasing our urban sprawl, but we would have had another football pitch. The new stadium supporters said that they were creating wildlife corridors. If you count taking a vast wildlife area and turning it into a small corridor surrounded by industrial area, then indeed they were.

As you might  recall, 100% of the fans were in favour of going out-of-town to watch AFC play, even if there was not going to be enough parking for them.  My favourite part was the fleet of 80 buses which were going to take fans from the town centre to Loirston in fifteen minutes’ time. Sure, that was always going to work. Hopefully we can put up a factory or something there soon.

Clean air, clean water, enough green space for people and wildlife to enjoy – best leave that sort of thing for the next generation to work out. We have concrete to pour, identikit houses to stick up, and money to make.

Common Good Land: (compound Eng. noun) an area of ground owned jointly by the population of an area, often left in trust or deeded to the public.

No less a person than Robert the Bruce left common good land to us in the form of  Union Terrace Gardens. This was an amazing example of foresight. He must have known that ACSEF could have made some money out of it, and that Ian Wood’s statue could have stood proudly and deservedly alongside statues of The Bruce. Why build on boring brown field sites and bring them back into use, when VAT-free land is ripe for the taking?

SSSIs, SACs – clearly all these designations are protected by our national bastion of environmental soundness, the SNH, operating free from any politics or special interest group pressures. SNH said yes to Loirston, they said yes to Trump at Balmedie and they said yes to changing Tullos from a meadow into the luxurious forest we now have. Let’s see how else they plan to protect us in the future.

Next week – more definitions, and a 2012 review

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Old Susannah No. 105: Season’s Greetings!

 Opinion, Satire and Humour  3 Responses »
Dec 102012
 

Old Susannah casts her beady eye once more on the goings-on of the great, the good and the downright ugly! By Suzanne Kelly.

dictionary The chill in the air, a few days of snow, children behaving better than usual; this can only mean one thing.
Yes, it’s Christmas shopping time again. Seasonal goodwill is evidenced in every fight over a shopping mall parking space. The bon accord is clearly evident as women fight over the last sweater in the sale in the Bon Accord Mall.

Peace on earth is demonstrated as people elbow each other out of the way in each crowded shopping mall, or the strong nudge the weak away from the Apple Store’s latest product display, which will of course be replaced by a newer product the following week.

Christmas cheer is not very much on display for the residents of Hillside near Portlethen. It seems there will be no communal Christmas tree, as getting electricity to the site is beyond the technical nous of the local builder, one Mr S Milne.

The local authority, not at all resembling small-minded control freaks, have a policy where normally only one tree is permitted per area.

This year though, in a magnanimous gesture, they graciously allowed Hillside to have a tree as well as Porlethen! It is far too technically difficult to get electricity to the Hillside tree, however. Likewise there will be no lighting on the Hillside street lamps.

The lamps are made of a material which simply breaks up if hit by a car or truck – a safety feature, so I’m told (although how shattering lamp posts would stop a car careening into a house or person, or stop the streetlight itself from crashing down and injuring someone is a mystery to me).  So – no lights and no tree.

This tale reminds me how Common Good Aberdeen ensured their jubilee garden party in Union Terrace Gardens would have a thing called a generator to run the show, in case they had any electricity problems.

I guess Hillside residents have bigger things to think about than the tree, such as the infrastructure initially promised which hasn’t exactly been made manifest yet, either. Despite early promises and assurances, the unlit Christmas tree would have increased amenities available to residents by 100%. As Councillor Mollison put it back in September:

“I know residents are eager to get started so that there can be a social heart to Hillside, something that is missing at present. At the moment there are houses, houses and more houses.”

We shall see if many new amenities spring up with alongside the new developments coming our way in city and shire; I am sure the developers will continue their joined-up, philanthropic, community-focused, environmentally sound philosophies in all things they do. The worst part, of course, is seeing the hopes dashed of all the children who dreamed of seeing Stewart throw the switch on their Christmas tree.

Old Susannah had a pleasant week with Christmas drinks and dinner parties starting a bit earlier than usual. Perhaps most fun was an event held by Shelagh at Torry’s Oil and Glass art and craft business.

Children of all ages were able to make either a glass Christmas star or glass ornament for a £5 donation; a pound from each ornament or star went to the VSA. Shelagh raised over £50 for this worthwhile charity (well done, and thanks for the mince pie as well).

It must be time for some seasonal definitions.

Pantomime (noun) ancient entertainment form normally adhering to certain formulas, such as telling a fairy tale, having a heroine, a hero, a villain and a pantomime ‘dame,’ commonly held close to Christmas time.

His Majesty’s Theatre will hold its annual pantomime this year but it may be outshone by a bigger pantomime taking place over on Twitter: two comic characters slugging it out in traditional Punch and Judy form, rivalling anything ever done by the ugly sisters.

Donald Trump and Alan Sugar are having their own little show with an enthralled audience laughing along. Donald tweets that a grateful Alan Sugar should ‘drop to his knees’ (‘oh myyy!’) and thank him. Sugar says Scotland doesn’t want Trump – how cruel! (Accurate, but cruel).

Without a trace of irony, Trump demanded Sugar tell the public his real financial worth. No doubt The Donald will make a similar disclosure. Things escalated, and surely Sugar was worried when no less a figure of moral probity than Piers Morgan has sided with The Donald.Sugar has some wild idea that wind farms are not necessarily a bad thing.

Let’s just hope Sir Alan doesn’t mention the Glenfiddich, or things could get even uglier (although that is hard to imagine).

Glenfiddich (proper noun) a brand name of whisky, originating with the Scottish Grant family.

One Christmas day back in 1887 a terrible tragedy-in-waiting occurred, and the first ever Glenfiddich whisky came forth from the still. No doubt if its distillers realised this brand would one day be an affront to Scotland’s main benefactor Donald Trump, the still would have been smashed and the project scuppered.

This upstart brand of whisky insulted the Donald by allowing the Scottish people to pick their Top Scot of the year – and no doubt by a hoax or an ‘orchestrated campaign’, this year’s winner is someone Donald doesn’t like. Glenfiddich hasn’t been reasonable on this point at all. Firstly, letting the people decide what they want isn’t something you’d catch our local or national governments doing.

Secondly, the award surely should have gone to Donald himself, for all the good he’s done to our area by creating millions of jobs, stabilising our movable sand dune system, and bringing us much-needed popularity and publicity we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Previous Top Scot winner J K Rowling was once a Lone Parent, and we remember what a bad bunch these can be, according to a former government in Downing Street. Thankfully, David Cameron will be harking back to that earlier appraisal of lone parents. He’s sticking it to these feckless individuals in the new budget, quite right, too.

It also looks like that nice Mr Osborne will open up Scotland for business – by allowing gas companies to search for gas on the mainland. Why waste time with renewable energy when we can pump chemicals, untold reserves of water, and even explosives into our countryside. What are a few earthquakes or contaminated water compared to being ‘open for business?’

Anyway, the Scottish public were told by Trump not to buy Glenfiddich, and that he was banning it from his classy golf courses and hotels forthwith. The makers of the single malt tried to shirk their responsibility by saying that people choose the award winner, but clearly that’s just not good enough. The people of Scotland have since rallied to Trump’s call. They are buying Glenfiddich and Grant whiskies as fast as they can.

Old Susannah has no doubt the motivation for these sales is not to drink a toast to Forbes with Glenfiddich, but rather so people can empty the alcohol down the drains, showing their esteem for the poor, slighted Trump. And so it should be.

If you see me leaving the shops with bags full of Grants and Glenfiddich, it will be so I can dispose of them, not so that I can enjoy one of the most delicious single malts our area has to offer, created in a lovely distillery which still uses water power in production in a very environmentally sound manner. Heaven forbid.

Many people contacted Trump’s golf course to offer to take the offending booze off Trump’s hands, but alas – all such philanthropic requests were turned down.

Practical Joke (compound noun) a gag or hoax designed to embarrass or otherwise humiliate the object of the exercise.

We all love a good practical joke, don’t we? What could be nicer, particularly at this time of year, than making a fool of another person? Where’s the harm in setting up someone for, let’s say, a telephone prank? It’s not really illegal, so that means there are no problems (unless you let something like ethics get in the way).

A nurse committed suicide over such a prank lately. The ladies receiving the hilarious joke phone call probably panicked, thinking that they were going to get in a lot of trouble if they didn’t do what the pranksters wanted, believing for some reason that no one would call a hospital for laughs, thereby deterring nurses from taking care of people.

Then, realising they were made to look idiots, probably fearing for their future careers and dreading the onslaught of inevitable media intrusion, one of those involved took their own life.

But let’s remember, the radio station involved ran all this through their legal department, which didn’t see any legal reason not to interrupt nurses from hospital work (work which is probably usually kind of dull, and not at all of life and death importance like being a DJ), impersonate the most powerful people in the country, and in the process intimidate an immigrant to the UK.

The two DJs involved said they couldn’t have foreseen anything like this. I’m sure they spent lots of time working out the possible outcomes and permutations of their actions, as all practical jokers do in advance. It’s also fine because after the fact, the radio station in question is going to review some of its procedures – can’t say fairer than that.

Our laws might have something different to say about the situation, but as long as the station manager and station legal team are fine, who are we to nit-pick?

Finally, the DJs are each receiving counselling and medical care. Let’s hope no one calls their doctors or nurses with innocent, cute prank calls, now.

Next week: perhaps a story on Stewart Milne saving the day at Hillside and springing for a generator? Or, more likely, more local and national definitions.

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Paying Through The Nose: Part 2

 Aberdeen City, News  15 Responses »
Dec 032012
 

Local authorities in Scotland must allow the public to look at their unaudited accounts, and Aberdeen City Council is no exception to this rule. In August 2012 this annual statutory period of time was granted for interested people to examine the city council’s financial year documents from 2011.
Paying Through The Nose: Part 1 looked at invoices Aberdeen City Council paid to Stewart Milne-related companies, the Wood Family Trust and the BiG Partnership. In the second and final part, Suzanne Kelly examines finances for the 2011 financial year relating to ACSEF, the Tree for Every Citizen scheme, foreign trips by city officials and more.

invoices Tree for Every Citizen: A scheme and a half

In this allegedly environmentally-sound tree-planting scheme, the slogan A Tree for Every Citizen came first, and the science, economics and location for said saplings was a secondary concern. Tullos Hill was once a meadow filled with birds, plants, small mammals and deer.

Thanks to the interventions of a minority, the hill is now largely a scarred, haphazard wasteland.

Pete Leonard (Housing) and Aileen Malone (Lib Dem former convener, Housing & Environment Committee) promised councillor and citizen alike that their pet scheme was totally cost neutral. Who could object to a beautification project designed to combat Aberdeen’s large carbon footprint? Who could object to a scheme that wasn’t going to cost anyone anything?

More to the point – who actually believed a polluted, windswept hill which had thus far failed to sustain many trees was going to become a lumber-producing, cost-neutral success story?

The figures below were prepared by the city in answer to my query on the scheme’s 2011 finances: 

Expenditure £
Deer Management 6,748.54
Tree Planting including clearing 33,128.00
Fencing 13,812.97
 Total Expenditure 53,689.51
Income
Grant Income (13,891.10)
Net Expenditure 2011/12 39,798.41

 

This net expenditure was then broken down as follows:

Date Amount (note – these seem to be the net figures without VAT) Description (note – text was not complete on spread sheet I was given)   Supplier
15/6/11 (13,891.10) Grant – tree for every citizen
9/11/11 7,125.00 Unknown – tree for every citizen   Bryan Massie
19/3/12 3,840.00 Unknown – tree for every citizen   Highland estate services
20/3/12 7,500.00 Unknown – deer fencing for tre [sic]   Bryan Massie
23/3/12 16,150.00 Unknown – project management C   C J Piper & Co
23/3/12 6,221.31 Aberdeen City Council
28/3/12 6,273.00 unknown – application of kerb   Bryan Massie
31/3/12 (260.00) Date of supply 28th march 2012   Forestry Commission
31/3/12 6,312.97 Unknown – Tullos hill – tree for   Bryan Massie
05/4/12 527.23 Aberdeen city council
TOTAL 39,798.41

 

It seems just a little amiss that the word ‘unknown’ should appear so many times on a summary of expenditure. It also seems amiss that the breakdown includes only one of the two C J Piper invoices I was supplied. The Hazlehead costs seem to be left out of this equation – and yet cutting these trees at Hazlehead down was, according to sources, one of the ways in which the Tree for Every Citizen scheme was paid for.

Is the meagre £527.23 from Aberdeen City Council to the TFEC scheme related to the Hazlehead tree felling which earned Piper £1,422? If it is unrelated, then which city budget did this sum come from and what does it represent?

Like so many things under our previous council and under Leonard and Chief Executive Watts, these ‘cost-neutral’ claims were a far cry from reality. The total costs to December 2011 had already been released by the FOI office, and they were damning.

After a great deal of coaxing, Watts conceded that £43,800 had been repaid to the Forestry Commission for the dismal failure of Phase I of the scheme. All who wanted Phase 2 to go ahead blamed the deer for the failure, even though the FC said the soil and weeds were largely to blame. Still, no one would have kept making money had the scheme been scrapped. Least of all Chris Piper.

We Who Pay The Piper

Apparently a sole trader under the name C J Piper & Company, Chris Piper was the principal architect of this sorry scheme. I had asked for sight of Piper invoices ACC paid in the 2011 financial year; this is what was made available:

Invoice No Date Description   Gross Amount
ACC/0312/300 6 March 2012 PO A139378 – Implementation of the Tree For Every Citizen scheme, design and plant Ph II, prepare and submit relevant applications, liaison with Forestry Commission and other agencies and ACC officers; preparation of bills of quantity, commissioning of contract works on behalf of ACC, on site supervision, submission to woodland carbon code certification, PR/media strategy (mileage 2,778 miles £1,250), VAT £3,230   19,380,00
ACC/1111/298 30 November 2011 Woodland consultancy (No PO number quoted) as per finances & Resources  Committee Report December 2010 – thinning at Hazlehead Golf Course, preparation and submission of Forestry commission felling license, drawing up of standing sale particulars and circulation to the timber market, taking and assessing bids   £1,422.00

 

Getting sight of the Piper invoices was a long process; the FOI officers protected Piper’s identity at all costs for over a year, despite this being a person writing city reports which justified his further fees on this scheme, and receiving taxpayer money.

Piper, a Forres-based tree expert, is invited to come forward and explain his determination the scheme would work, and how he produced a report jointly with the city which recommended the TFEC scheme (calling the many opponents ‘a vociferous minority’).

How someone with a vested interest in a scheme proceeding can be allowed to author or co-author a report (no one at ACC put their name on the joint submission made to the FC) should be a matter for further investigation.

The soil (or lack thereof), the wind, the weeds and use of herbicides alone should have stopped the scheme. (Note: at present nothing like 89,000 trees have been planted on Tullos despite this being the plan. Originally, some 20 deer were going to be culled in the first year – we now know it was closer to 36: which we paid some £6,000 to eliminate).

No wonder the city and Piper were so keen to keep things quiet.

As a footnote to those who believe the tree scheme will eventually be a successful carbon capture system of some sort, there are a few points to consider. Firstly, tearing out the existing vegetation ruined what carbon capture had been in place, and the earth moving vehicles used assuredly had a carbon footprint.

Surprisingly formidable in terms of carbon footprint is the astonishing figure of 2,778 miles travelled by C J Piper, billed to the taxpayer at £0.45 per mile for a staggering £1,250. This appears on an invoice from May 2011 to 6 March 2012, totalling £19,380 inclusive of VAT. As green carbon capture schemes go, this scheme has a great deal to make up for (providing any of the trees, currently surrounded by weeds) manage to grow.

Odds and Ends

Bryan Massie Woodland Management Ltd did quite nicely out of the scheme as well, spraying herbicides. Anyone can see the chemicals did not exactly save the Phase 1 trees, and Phase 2 growth is already surrounded by high weeds.

Astute council observers will recall the blackmail deal offered by Malone: give us £225,000 for fencing, or we kill the deer. She insisted we had no money for fencing. The public were urged by all interested animal charities not to give into this blackmail and the precedent it would set. Somehow, money for fencing was found anyway – yet the deer were still exterminated.

Invoice No Date Description Gross Amount
483 27/10/2011 Spraying, planting and  tubing various sites 8550
520 09/03/2012 Herbicide application (various locations 7527
(unk) 09/03/2012 Deer Fencing at Tullos (first part) 9000
(unk) 38/03/2012 Deer Fencing (second part) 7575

 

Highland Estate Services were paid £480 per day to clear our gorse; their Invoice No. 547 shows them receiving £4,608 from the city.

Payback’s a B*tch

The city had to return £43,800 to the Forestry Commission for the dismal failure of Phase 1, but this seems to have no place in the 2010 or 2011 accounts. This figure was paid rather late; it was demanded of us in November 2010.

The Commission had to chase the city, which eventually paid in March 2011. Yet the sum was not reflected in accounts to December 2011 (received under FOI legislation), nor is this figure reflected in the 2011 scheme.

The council should explain where this figure appears in the books – it is clearly part of the tree scheme. If it were to be combined with the net expenditure recorded in 2011 of £39,798.41, then we have spent £83,598 (minimum) on a scheme opposed by 2,400 people, several community councils, and animal charities including the Scottish SPCA.

This should be a matter for serious investigation by Audit Scotland and Standards in Public Office. It has enriched a few businesses, served as a Liberal Democrat mantra and compromised what was once a rich meadow teeming with wildlife.

What the Forestry Commission wrote:

“031/000390 – Tullos Community Woodland

“This is a failed WGS planting scheme. The scheme failed due to inadequate protection from deer and weeds. On the 4th November 2010 we issued Aberdeen City Council with an invoice for £43,831.90 – the reclaim of monies paid out under the above contract.

“This invoice was to be paid within 30 days. The monies have not been received. This invoice is now accruing interest and has led to a payment ban being put in place over your Business Reference Number”.

What Ms Watts eventually admitted: this money was paid in March 2011. She continues to deny the Tree for Every Citizen Phase 1 planting at Tullos and St Fitticks has any connection whatsoever to the Tree for Every Citizen Phase 2 planting at Tullos and St Fitticks. This is a nice bit of semantics, but would it stand up to an auditor’s scrutiny?

I can find no record of Pete Leonard going back to the Housing and Audit Committee and advising them the scheme which he promised was cost neutral would be nothing of the kind.

You might be forgiven for thinking an officer of the city should account to the relevant committee (if not the public) when his figures were found to be faulty. Whether the expenditure was £39,798, £83,598 – or considerably higher when taking into account the 2010 costs – this scheme was never going to be cost neutral.

Come Fly Away, Come Fly Away With Me

When a city is cutting services to the elderly and infirm, when a city wants to drop arts and music lessons, and refuses to maintain its pavements and roads, should it really be deploying its higher-ups to foreign countries for seminars? Aberdeen thought so last year:

Traveller Date Destination Flight cost subsistence Hotel cost Reason for trip
Gerry Brough 29/4 – 5/5/11 Houston Flights and accommodation arranged through group package 662.22 – returned 381 US Dollars OTC (Annual oil event)
Gerry Brough 5/11-9/11 Lyon/Grenoble 277 449.23 – returned 110 Euros 388.79 Invited to speak at conf/networking
Gordon McIntosh 3/12 – 7/12/11 Doha 671 529.72 Paid of City of Doha World Energy Cities AGM
Gordon McIntosh 6/11-15/11/11 Australia 1,518 1379.62 1,148.99 Economic Development Activity
Gordon McIntosh 17/1-25(?)/1/12 Ghana Paid UK trade & Inv 794 US Dollars 242.01 UK Trade & Investment Project
Gordon McIntosh 21/3-23/3/12 Nice 495 233.52 Launch of Hydrogen Bus Project
Gordon McIntosh 25/3-25(?)/3/12 Brussels 205 120.53 492.25 North Sea Commission 2020
Valerie Watts 27/9-30/9/11 Aarhus, Denmark 525 (?) 310.60 550.23 CPMR General Assembly
Lord Provost Peter Stephen 30/4-7/5/11 Houston Flights and accommodation arranged through group package 311.07 returned 40 US Dollars OTC
Lord Provost Peter Stephen 34/6-27/6/12 Nuremberg 314 242.45 Regensburg Burgerfest Festival
Lord Provost Peter Stephen 3/12-8/12/11 Doha 537 529.72 Paid of City of Doha World Energy Cities AGM

 

One hopes that the flight costs were reasonable; they were in many cases not disclosed. In terms of carbon capture, so important to Leonard and Malone when it came to Tullos Hill, perhaps we could have preserved the hill and lowered our carbon footprint simply by not flying these mandarins around the globe.

Perhaps attending our Oil and Gas event at the AECC would not have been sufficient to advise people Aberdeen has something to do with the oil sector. Perhaps nothing was more essential than the Regensburg Burgerfest Festival, or knocking around Australia for economic development purposes.

However, would it be more prudent and somewhat more in keeping with current austerity measures to do more teleconferences and cut out the air miles? Who knows? One or two events less and our former Lord Provost and his wife might have made some saving on their dress allowance, which of course comes from the public purse.

ACSEF: One Hand Washing the Other

ACSEF is an economic forum where our richest and most influential business people are supposed to give us an advisory forum. The quango, however, transformed itself from ‘forum’ to ‘future’, and this unelected body, existing to further business interests uber alles in our city, regularly gives advice to City and Shire governments, which are expected to rubber-stamp ACSEF recommendations.

Under the stewardship of chair Stewart Milne, ACSEF decided the city’s special area of conservation at Loirston should have been transformed into a ‘community’ stadium (and then somehow a private stadium which Milne would decant AFC into, turning AFC’s historic grounds into housing for his own profit).

How Mr Milne was able to wear his ACSEF, property developer and AFC Chairman hats without having any conflict of interest is unclear. It is perfectly clear ACSEF wanted a ‘spade in ground’ project at Loirston, coincidentally favouring its chairman’s business interests in the process.

If the taxpayer wasn’t paying for this blatantly self-interested lobbying, it might be funny. ACSEF cost the city £126,541 in 2011/12, broken down as follows:

Item Actual
Staff Costs 89,321
Premises Costs 5,484
Administration Costs 2,924
Transport Costs 927
Supplies & Services 119
Commissioning Services 7,927
Transfer Payments 19,839
TOTAL 126,541

 

Chamber of Secrets

The Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce submitted their Invoice No. 42810 dated 18 April 2011 to Aberdeen City Council – for ‘public relations services (ACSEF)’ – this bill has some of the familiar features of the invoices prepared by The BiG Partnership (its members no stranger to various quangos, boards, city groups) to the city for ‘AWPR’.

BiG was at the time also getting the city to pay for ‘AWPR’ public relations services. This Chamber of Commerce invoice is for £1416 to cover ‘public relations services (ACSEF)’, ‘newspaper licenses and cutting service’, and (partially redacted) ‘photography, energy industry conference, town house’.

In summary, ACSEF’s PR services seem to be invoiced via the Chamber without the actual supplier being specified, much like the City Gardens Project invoices were.  BiG also bills the city via central government for ‘AWPR work’ as shown in Part 1.

The Chamber refused to say which organisations’ services it was billing the City for at ACSEF’s directions when it came to the City Garden Project. So much for straightforward, transparent procurement and invoicing. (See The Great City Gardens Project Gravy Train article for more on those City Gardens Project invoices from the Chamber to the taxpayer).

As well as serving as clearing house for City Garden Project and ACSEF-related costs, the Chamber charges £300 per year for membership – which the Kirkhill school paid via Aberdeen City Council, with a few hundred more for the city’s annual membership.

People might be forgiven for thinking decisions are made in Aberdeen by a network of powerful, self-serving individuals; there certainly is a smidgeon of evidence to support this view.

Observations

It is too late to get any of this 2011 money back. It is not too late to call to account those who may possibly have overstepped their remits, wasted public money, caused environmental damage, and who enjoyed clothing allowances, portraits, parties and foreign junkets while the rest of us were coping with bills and noting a downturn in city services.

It is down to the new administration to look at the past, stop that which should be stopped, and investigate what should be investigated. It is hoped the new council will give us a more robust financial accounting system going forward, one that spends wisely and respects the public, the environment and the public purse.

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Paying Through The Nose: Part 1

 Aberdeen City, News  17 Responses »
Nov 232012
 

In a move meant to demonstrate transparency in government, August 2012 saw the opening of a statutory period in which members of the public were able to view Aberdeen City Council’s financial year documents for 2011. In the first of a two-part investigation, Suzanne Kelly seeks answers but winds up with more questions.

invoices In 2011 Aberdeen moved from being an SNP/Lib-Dem controlled city to an administration with a slim Labour majority.

Although drains on the public purse like the Tullos deer debacle and the development of the Granite Web’s TIF funding application were left behind, the public still had to bear the cost of the previous administration’s policies.

Staff at the ACC finance department were most helpful but the year-end document on display was not the detailed set of accounts I had hoped for.

The year-end statement made many claims about the city doing the best it could but most of the costs had already been lumped together and processed.  I wanted to see actual invoices and spread sheets from some of the year’s more contentious projects (or at least those I knew of).

I provided the list of invoices and accounts I wished to examine and eventually received the information collated and ready to inspect. I have to say seeing the various costs involved is a far cry from reading the wonderfully prosaic year-end statement, and though I am still sifting through documents looking for answers, here are some issues that emerged.

Stewart Milne

ACC and Stewart Milne are in legal dispute over land transaction issues at Westhill. The city sold land to one arm of the Milne empire at far less than its market value on the understanding it would eventually see a share of any future profit.

At the same time Milne companies were buying and selling land at knockdown prices, they were submitting bids for council projects (at very narrow margins compared to the competition), winning work worth approximately £10m. The courts – including the highest in the UK – sided with ACC and Milne should by rights be settling his debt to the city.

Despite Milne entities refusing to pay ACC its rightful share of profit on the land transactions, instead dragging ACC (and therefore the taxpayer) through the courts, Milne had (and may still have) preferred bidder status for council contracts. Milne is assuredly carrying out work for the city, which in 2011 was rewarded as follows:

In fact, the 2011 ‘self-raised invoices’ reflect the following monies paid to Milne:

Reference Amount
SB/P/10431 270,630.00
SB/P/10432 299,536.00
SB/P/10433 244,149.00
SB/P/10474 226,268.00
SB/P/10475 137,379.00
SB/P/10476 127,637.50
SB/P/10528 75,030.00
SB/P/10529 19,210.00
SB/P/10530 8,850.00
Job CH 12306 36,286.00
Job CH 12308 44,046.00
Job CH 2307 39,326.00
SB/P/10645 20,001.00
TOTAL £1,548,348.50

 

The paperwork I was given is intriguing, referencing neither particular jobs nor targets reached. Indeed, three of the documents entirely lack a second sheet containing supplementary information.

The cover sheets I did receive refer, for example, to Bryan Park and Hayton Road, but fail to indicate exactly what work is being paid for, or if any target has been reached. For the sums involved, one might hope sufficient documentary back-up evidence does exist.

Wood Family Trust

The Wood Family Trust (WFT) is listed as having paid £160,000 towards the CGP referendum. The taxpayer chipped in £40,000.

The city also paid the WFT £22,000 for an educational pilot scheme involving Kincorth Academy ‘per contract’. What contract ACC and the WFT have entered into will make interesting reading. Perhaps other charitable trusts have contracted with ACC – but why a charity should be engaged by contract on an educational scheme is at present unclear.

http://aberdeenvoice.com/wp-content/gallery/images2/wood-family-trust-get-22-k-from-acc-nov-11.jpg

BiG Invoices

It was a good year to be in PR. Well, it was if you were a certain BiG name agency. There was the unofficial campaign for the Granite Web – when print media was sent to every household in the city on at least two occasions (and lest we forget, in error to the shire on one).

BiG was involved in other areas, though at present we don’t know which PR agency the city paid when the Chamber of Commerce (Chaired by Bob Collier) billed ACC for work ordered by ACSEF (Tom Smith) in support of the Granite Web scheme.

Smith is, of course, better known as a director of the Aberdeen City Gardens Trust, a private company to which the management of the web and UTG was to be handed without recourse to a tendering process or checking either man’s expertise in the rather narrow field of constructing concrete webs.

But, getting back to BiG: readers may be interested to know ACC has paid monthly invoices to BiG for various PR services, storage, servers, altering maps, expenses, photos and a trip to Glasgow. Below is a short summary of selected BiG invoices, interestingly enough all addressed To AWPR – Scottish Executive, which reference A-AWPR, and seem to have been paid by ACC:

Invoice No Date Description Amount
17801 30/3/11 Info packs and inserts (what project? – SK) 10,802
42810 18/4/11 Expenses, press cutting services, photos, PR 3,416
17848 31/3/11 March PR, storage (nb seems to be £120/month) 1,022
18072 30/4/11 April PR, storage 2,076
18080 30/4/11 Website servers for PLI and AWPR 700
18320 31/5/11 May  PR, storage 2,045
18567 30/6/11 June PR, storage 2,968
(not clear) 31/7/11 July PR, storage 1,762
19062 31/8/11 August PR, storage, travel to Glasgow 6,307
19308 30/9/11 September PR, storage 5,013
19533 31/10/11 October PR, storage, amendments to AWPR map 2,434
19770 30/11/11 November PR, storage 1,858
20033 31/12/11 December PR, storage 1,493
20254 31/01/12 January PR, storage 3,492
20509 29/02/12 February PR, storage and handover re. K McKee 8,788

TOTAL

 54,176

 

The BiG Partnership billed ACC for £54,176 in the last fiscal year: was the AWPR acronym used in the invoices referring to the Western Peripheral Route? Other possibilities seem slim, but why ACC should have engaged a PR firm (let alone paid it storage fees or for website servers) in relation to this project is not clear.

Issues so far

a) ACC regularly deals with a company holding preferred bidder status, a company that has not only reneged on a profit-sharing scheme but dragged the city through every court in the land. How much was lost on the initial transaction? How much is the city incurring in legal fees, and which side picks these up?

Why is the Milne group apparently saying it wants to negotiate when the courts have already found against them? Have Milne companies retained their preferred bidder status? If his companies were enjoying profits from a favourable land deal, while at the same time entering low bids for contracting work, is this ethical, fair, and completely within tendering guidelines?

b) Should the referendum have been financed to such an extent by one of the interested parties? Was there even a slight possibility of psychological influence over those involved in administration of the referendum by the fact the costs were picked up by the web’s main proponent? At one stage we were told the entire costs were being met by Wood – why did the taxpayer pick up a £40,000 tab?

c) ACC seems to be paying a billionaire’s trust for an educational pilot – and has entered into a contract. What is the nature of the contract, and in what way can the services performed be described as charitable?  An overview of the charity seems to indicate no money is received by the Trust from government. I wrote to WFT and received this reply:

“The funds received from Aberdeen City Council were a relatively small contribution to an Enterprise in Education programme, which was delivered as a partnership project with the local authority and carried out at two schools in the region, with the balance of the funds coming from Wood Family Trust. I can only assume that the reason the Scottish Charities Register indicates WFT received no money from Government is that this doesn’t cover funds received from Local Authorities.”

d) Has the city paid for public relations for the AWPR?  If so, how was the contract for the work tendered? Was BiG given favoured status in obtaining this work via its involvement with ACSEF and the CGP?

 

Coming soon in Part 2

The Tree for Every Citizen Project – more revelations, CJ Piper, Bryan Massie

A Scottish Enterprise invoice or two

Further observations

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Old Susannah No. 102: Culture, Vultures And Liverpool

 Aberdeen City, Satire and Humour  11 Responses »
Nov 092012
 

Voice’s Old Susannah takes a look over the past week’s event’s in the ‘Deen and beyond. By Suzanne Kelly. 

dictionary

Tally Ho!  This past week has been an exciting one on several counts.  The fireworks were amazing – when Nick Clegg tried to handle Question Time in Parliament, the poor man could not open his mouth without the Opposition attacking him.  Sadly, his friend(s) must have been confused, because they jeered him just as much as Labour did.

The speaker tried to calm the explosive situation to little avail.  Alas, going down in history for being heckled by both sides is possibly not what Mr Clegg intended.  (I recall he was helping Kate Dean with her image; that doesn’t seem to have worked out as intended, either).

It’s almost as if breaking one or two election pledges is not doing the LibDems any favours.  If things get any worse for Clegg, he’ll have to ask Kate to give him some popularity pointers.

On Sunday I ran into someone from the Scottish SPCA; there had been reports of an injured seal near Torry Harbour.  The Scottish SPCA couldn’t find the seal, nor could I.

Still, if anyone comes across any animals in distress, do call the Scottish SPCA on 03000 999 999.  (The leaflet to combat dog fighting will be ready for distribution from Saturday, and anyone who wants to help give these out should get in touch with Aberdeen Voice).

There were delicious canapés at Malmaison, lots of delicious eats at Café 52, and BrewDog has some particularly gorgeous craft beers on tap.  Moreover, the Dog has re-released ‘Ghost Deer’ – a strong, amazing beer in brilliant packaging. Perhaps I’m drawn to the Deer-themed artwork for some inexplicable reason.

I’m told a t-shirt will be produced soon; it seems a chief BrewDog artist works in the Aberdeen BrewDog bar – do check out the shirts on offer; they are a good example of locally-created, wearable artwork.

This Friday night I look forward to some pampering at Lush, and then heading to the Masked Ball in Union Terrace Gardens.  It sounds like a very creative and elegant affair, and the Balmoral Group organisers are holding this event in aid of Friends of Anchor.  This charity seeks to buy equipment and improve things at the ARI for cancer patients; a most worthy cause.  Pictures to follow.

tullos-hill-by-nicky-cairney Also this week artist Nicky Cairney got in touch to share some haunting artwork on the theme of Tullos Hill; she found the Hill’s story very moving and inspired this artwork.  More of her work can be found at www.nickycairney.co.uk.

I am sure that despite the rocky ground, visible waste everywhere, ploughed up gorse, resultant smaller wildlife numbers, dead deer and a fraction of the 89,000 trees planted, this great project alone will help our eventual city of culture bid.

Perhaps the Turners and Constables of the future will flock to the hill to paint pictures of rusty metal and tainted earth.

Limousine Bull is re-grouping.  If you weren’t aware, this art resource was forced to leave its premises in Torry a few months back over a funding crisis – a crisis that any one of our great and good self-proclaimed patrons of the arts or culture-loving former city administration could have stepped in and solved for a four-figure sum.

I guess they had more important things to fund instead of supporting a gallery space, a teaching space, and affordable studios for up-and-coming artists in Aberdeen to work in, which brought people to Torry, and brought artists together.  After all, we have to prove we’re a city of culture.

Closer to home, despite non-stop editorialising in the City Garden Project Press, aka ‘The Aberdeen Press & Journal’, Labour are sticking to their election pledge and aren’t going to build the web.

Never a news organ to let beautiful artwork sit idle, the P&J have trotted out the luridly coloured concept drawings from the doomed CGP several times this week.  (I really must start forcing myself to look at all the old P&Js, and seeing if there has been a single issue over the past 2 years which didn’t have a web story on the first few pages – but I just can’t bear the thought of it).

Granite web supporters (i.e. Scottish Enterprise and its sprog ‘Visit Scotland’, ACSEF, and the construction industry) would have you believe that the web should still be the salvation of Aberdeen and the reason no one wants to lead our city of culture bid is that we didn’t turn our only city centre green space into a granite-clad spaghetti junction and we didn’t mulch our ancient trees.

Perhaps by building the theatre in front of the theatre they were trying to do for performing arts what they did for high street shops by building Union Square Mall?

What kind of youth culture exactly is going on here?

Should we be the City of Culture?  While I did address this with a definition a while ago, it seems timely to do it again.   As people try to make a living in the Arts in Aberdeen with or without government support (such as Limousine Bull), let’s take another look at the great expense – sorry – benefits of becoming a City of Culture..

Youth Culture: (compound noun; English) A given collection of style, behavioural, ideological characteristics shared by a given group of young adults.

Well, we do have youth culture in Aberdeen, and not just the long-running international youth festival.  During Bonfire events, a group of young people in Seaton decided to throw burning pieces of wood at fire-fighters, and shoot fireworks in the firemen’s directions.  A group of young people assaulted two men as well.  What kind of youth culture exactly is going on here?

I think the problem lies in there not being a granite web.  You build your web, create 6,500 jobs, and then there will be no further problems.

Skateboarding, graffiti, hanging around smoking  and underage drinking can all be centralised in the web, perhaps in a ‘youth culture zone’.  This will please everyone who insists Union Terrace Gardens are filled with old drunks and druggies – we’ll get in a better class of sub-culture.  Younger drunks.  This indeed will help our city of culture bid.

Perhaps these violent outbursts are because we have too many affordable, exciting things for young people to do, too many arts and music programmes, too many places for them to socialise and have fun.  I think there is room for further cuts to library opening hours, music tuition, art and craft provision and so on.

City of Culture: (compound noun, English)  A European designation given to a city for one year; the city is meant to then put out a varied programme of performing and visual arts.

Right, we are all agreed (apparently) – we want to bid for and win the coveted (?) City of Culture title.  As described in Old Susannah No. 82, this might mean spending a few million here and there on things like giant spiders (nice fit with the web) which Liverpool spent £2 million on.  It will definitely mean building lots of new structures!  Result!

The unhappy millionaire builders we have locally will get to give us more ground breaking (probably greenbelt breaking) glass box buildings, malls and parking spaces.

Of course we have lots of buildings in the public and private sectors which we could put back into use (via tax incentives, improvement notices, discount rents to arts groups and social projects), but there’s little in it on the building front, and that’s what the City of Culture is all about – building new stuff.

Since the City of Culture bid for Aberdeen is being linked to the web, it is in the news nearly as much as those lovely drawings of the flower-covered, sunny web design.  It is prompting much discussion and speculation.

A friend of mine asked me:

 “why can’t we just have lots of events like we do anyway, and give more support to our local up-and-coming artists without spending money on the City of Culture Bid?”

I guess some people just can’t grasp the concept.

Unexpected: (adjective) An event or result which could not have reasonably been projected or forseen.

Here’s a coincidence for you.  Liverpool spent millions on its 2008 bid to successfully become the City of Culture.  Then there was a little coincidence in 2009, totally unrelated to this wonderful honour.

According to the Liverpool Echo newspaper of 29 December 2009:-

“Row brewing over £11m budget cuts proposal by Liverpool city council

“SCRAPPING school uniform grants for needy children, closing children’s respite homes and swimming baths and slashing culture spending are among cuts proposed by cash-strapped city bosses.

 “They have also put forward the closure of the Park Road swimming baths in Toxteth and cutting culture funding by £400,000.

“The options have been put forward by officers as they try to plug an unexpected £11m gap in next year’s budget.”

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2009/12/29/row-brewing-over-11m-budget-cuts-proposal-by-liverpool-city-council-100252-25484325/

I suppose you couldn’t have expected that spending £2,000,000 on a giant spider, and spending  hundreds of thousands of pounds on the culture bid, and unknown quantities on management companies, events, building projects and so on in 2008 could have led to any financial hardships in 2009.  Who could have seen that coming??

The City of Culture was supposed to make everyone rich after all.  This promise of wealth has a bit of a familiar ring to it; I’m sure I’ve heard about some project somewhere in Aberdeen like that.

Old Susannah must write to Liverpool and ask them if they use the services of PriceWaterhouse Cooper when they make their financial forecasts.

Synthetic: (Adjective) something which has been artificially fabricated, as opposed to something that naturally grows.

Whether or not we get the City of Culture award, we can be glad we’re in a city which nurtures local talent, allows creative movements to grow, and encourages experimentation within the arts to occur organically.

Sure, there may not be any money for school music, arts programmes like Limousine Bull are being allowed to die, and talented fashion designers and video artists (like the unique Fraser Denholm) are leaving the city at an alarming pace to live and work elsewhere (heaven knows why they head to London and Glasgow).

Furthermore, the more cynical are asking whether no one wanted to take on the role of City of Culture director because we don’t retain our talent, because we don’t support the artists we do have enough, because we kicked Peacock in the teeth, because we don’t encourage children to take up art and music in school to a greater degree, and because there is no natural flowering of art in all the unused shops we have – which other cities manage to rent to artists on affordable bases.

No – the reason no one wanted the job is because we didn’t build the web.

But more importantly, we’ve got a couple of city council suits who are helping to sort our culture out.

These people have decided what ‘quarters’ parts of Aberdeen are.  We have the ‘merchant quarter’ on the green.  Sure, half of the shops are closed or closing, crippled by business rates, but we’ve put up signs saying ‘merchant quarter’ – so merchant quarter it is.

We must all rejoice in the arbitrary designating of ‘cultural quarters’, ‘merchant quarters’ ‘civic quarters’ and so on.  You can practically feel the difference when you step from the civic quarter into the merchant quarter can’t you?

In case you doubt Aberdeen City’s and ACSEF’s abilities to create awe-inspiring artwork and prose, here is a little something to keep you going until next week:   http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/nmsruntime/saveasdialog.asp?lID=38444&sID=14302

As you can appreciate, if you just let things happen, you wind up with places like Notting Hill Gate, Brick Lane and so on – areas that are a bit edgy and filled with unwashed artist and musician types.  Down with that sort of thing.  Remember to know what quarter of the city you’re in, and be glad someone more creative than you or I thought to slap labels on them.

Next week:  No quarter.

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Old Susannah No. 99 – 99 Problems

 Aberdeen City, Satire and Humour  4 Responses »
Oct 182012
 

Voice’s Old Susannah looks back on the week that was, complete with Zeppelins, BrewDogs, and a bad smell coming not from the Torry sewage plant, but a whiff of scandal from Edinburgh. By  Suzanne Kelly

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Tally  Ho!  By the time you read this, I’ll have been to the Led Zeppelin film ‘Celebration Day’ at the Belmont.  Am counting the minutes.  Another major highlight of this week was  BrewDog Aberdeen’s second birthday party.  I celebrated with great people, great beers, food and a lovely cake.  Happy Birthday to Brew.

I also took in a bread-making course at Nick Nairn Cookery school; it was a great course, not least because of the lovely breads I got to take home (including the tutor’s lovely white loaf).

On the down side of this week, a dog has disappeared from its garden on Holburn Street.  Grampian police downplayed earlier Facebook posts warning of potential dog thieves in our area. 

The police issued a Facebook post about a week ago, saying dog-napping worries were just rumour-mongering, and several FB posters chimed in to ridicule the people worried about potential thefts.

The cops categorically claimed no such thing was going on. Fast-forward to 16 October, and a dog has mysteriously disappeared from its back garden in Holburn Street.

Unless the small dog, not tall enough on its hind legs to reach the lock, undid the lock, went away, and decided never to return again for food or shelter, it looks like theft is a possibility.  However, the police refuse to treat this as a theft.  There is no evidence you see.

Perhaps they had expected a smoking gun, guys in striped shirts wearing masks holding bags of swag?  I wonder whether they even checked the gate for fingerprints – they certainly could have done so.  The moral is – keep an eye on your pets as much as possible, and report anything like thefts or suspicions straight away to the Scottish SPCA – and/or email stop.dogfights@yahoo.co.uk.  PS – dogs, cats, handbags, Led Zeppelin CDs , etc. are not safe left alone in cars for any length of time, either.

Common Good Aberdeen reached its financial target of £15K for a children’s play area in Union Terrace Gardens with ease, expect a play area in UTG sometime soon, hopefully with a volunteer-run, cafe, too (with all profits going directly on UTG).  No one could object to putting a play area in a city centre park, could they?

But perhaps best of all this week was sharing joyful commuting stories with fellow bus travellers.  To a man we’re all thrilled to bits at the reduction in routes.  We are of course waiting for the corresponding reduction in bus fares, which must be just ‘round the corner‘.  How wonderful that the No. 21 bus is no more, just as those wonderful Milne homes are going up in Cove.

  I’m wondering  exactly what kind of ‘independence’ Alex is actually offering

It must have been my imagination (and the imaginations of a few dozen other people), but it seemed as if quite a number of scheduled buses (no. 3s, 1s, etc) didn’t actually materialise when they should have.  I got to learn a few more new words from fellow travellers while waiting for a No. 1 bus on Monday evening.

In the wider Scottish environment, this was the week that Cameron and Salmond signed up to a yes/no referendum (wish we’d done so over the gardens –  but never mind).  Alex smiled from the covers of most newspapers this past week, and he told the press:-

 ”I didn’t want to look too triumphant.” 

Don’t worry about that, Alex, you didn’t.

In fact, Alex is starting to look like a man with Ninety-Nine Problems.

Old Susannah is looking at some of these minor worries.  All things considered, I’m wondering  exactly what kind of ‘independence’ Alex is actually offering.  For openers, once you consider some of Alex’s  pals, you come to one inescapable question:  How independent exactly is Alex himself?

Is he offering Scots independence or perhaps a form of government that is just a little bit older?

Feudalism: (Eng. noun) – A system of governance/land steward ship prevalent in the middle ages in Europe where a small minority of wealthy property holders wielded power over those with less money, and a great gap existed between the haves and have-nots.

Believe it or not, it was not only the English who were oppressing the Scottish people throughout history, many Scottish nobles did so, too.  Clan warfare, theft, battles, treachery, wife-stealing, drunkenness, cruelty – these are not just part of the daily grind at Holyrood.  Indeed, there were many forms of Scot on Scot violence in the bad old days, too.

In the feudal societies of the past, a rich man owned everything in his territory and all those below him fell in line in accordance with his wishes.  If this ‘lord’ (or sometimes the noble was given the title ‘Sir’, as in ‘Sir Ian Wood’) wanted a castle, a bit of land, or say a granite web, his lackeys ensured he got what he wanted by hook or crook, or compulsory purchase order or by an arm’s length management company or Aberdeen City Gardens Trust.

Thankfully, the days of the rich man dictating the future of the land to the common man are gone.

Alex Salmond will ensure that no rich men can possibly dictate policy, seize land (or public parks), bend Quangos to their will, shield their gold from the taxman via offshore schemes, etc.  No, Alex won’t in any way favour the rich or help them gain unfair advantage.

If he did do so, say for a Murdoch (to whom he seems to have offered his services at one point), a Wood (whose web he favoured) or a Trump (who got permission to ruin the only moveable sand dune system on the UK mainland), then we would not have a free republic.  We would have feudalism.

Intervention: (Eng. noun) to take action in a situation to try and prevent an undesirable outcome.  Interventions can be legal or not.  In Scottish politics – usually not.

When Aberdeenshire Council said no to Donald Trump, Alex’s Government weighed in and  said ‘we’re open for business; c’mon over’.  Thanks for the intervention!

But now it looks as if when Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) didn’t give the beautiful, sparkly granite web the thumbs up, Alex intervened again.

The cat is out of the bag, the chickens have come home to roost, and so on.  No doubt with the best interests of Aberdonians at heart, Alex seems to have put the £140 million web into position to get TIF funding.  Where would we have been without him?

This little intervention raises just one or two questions.  Firstly, I wonder what first attracted politician Alex Salmond to Billionaire tycoon Sir Ian Wood and his Wood-Wide-Web?

How could Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) criticised Wood’s wonderful web?  Well, for openers here is how it scored ( click on table to enlarge ):-

assessmentpanelscoringaug2011
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/Finance/18232/FOI/TIFScoring

“…further detail / clarity could have been added in relation to:

  • The potential level of private sector activity created (in terms of NDR creation) and its likelihood
  • The underlying enabling nature of the assets themselves – i.e. why are these the right assets
  • The potential level of retail activity in comparison to the overall activity enabled by the TIF
  • The rationale for the redline
  • The key milestones of the project
  • The consideration of risk and risks beyond those detailed in the submission”
    http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/Finance/18232/FOI/TIFComments

The SFT/Government fought tooth and nail (whatever that means) against Steve Vass of the Herald getting this information made public.  For one thing, the SFT claimed people weren’t smart enough to understand their findings.  Quite right.  They argued people would not understand  that Scottish Futures Trust and its reports were only meant to guide the Government, which was then free to ignore the report and do whatever it chose to do.  Funny, this method of government consultation seems perfectly obvious to me.

You are of course as surprised and disappointed as I am that our web didn’t get higher scores.  It’s hard to imagine SFT deciding there were some financial and risk elements.

We should have sent them some of those lovely glossy brochures from Vote for the City Gardens Trust -  you know, the ones that promised 6,500 permanent jobs and £122 million flowing into Aberdeen every year if we got us a web.  That would have swung the balance.

Some  voters may well wonder why this SFT  information wasn’t  shared in advance of any referendum vote.  I’m sure it was for our own good and not to confuse us with facts.  However, if you  are angry we had a referendum with crucial facts withheld deliberately, Go Ask Alex.  Just drop him a line to find out who was playing at what, and why anyone thought we weren’t clever enough to understand a short report.

  No doubt Alex is confident that an independent Scotland will demand a granite web

Perhaps this is all too complicated for us non-Government mortals after all.  I’m so confused I’m thinking the Government wanted a trial run of the referendum system to see what the pros and cons were in advance of the Independence Referendum.

The pros?  You can put anything you want to in a glossy brochure, true or not as long as you remain anonymous.  Result!   You can also hide the voting record from any scrutiny, as was done in Aberdeen.

The Cons?  I think there were plenty of ‘cons’ involved, don’t  you?  In fact, I’m fighting the urge to list the cons by name.

You could also be forgiven for wondering  why the SFT report was prepared in the first place, if the Government had its own ideas about what should or shouldn’t be given a TIF loan.  (Old Susannah heard an unconfirmed rumour that Alex told Sir Ian to ‘leave his money on the table’ for a year.  No doubt Alex is confident that an independent Scotland will demand a granite web.  We could put it on the back of the new Scottish Banknotes).

So, Alex is going to try not to look too triumphant.  If it helps, Alex, just think back to some of your finer moments:-

  • Testifying to the Leveson Inquiry – Alex claimed the Observer had hacked his banking account in 1999 (no evidence was found) – almost as if he were trying to deflect attention from the revelation that Mr Salmond’s adviser (Aberdein) – had agreed that the first minister would call Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt “whenever we need him to” on Murdoch’s behalf.
  • intervening in Aberdeenshire planning permission and giving Trump carte blanche to bulldoze the SSI, make life a misery for the existing residents, and run the area with heavy-handed security
  • Asking Donald Trump to back the return of Megrahi to Libya
  • Spending c. £48,000 to go to the premier of the film ‘Brave’ with an entourage
  • Claiming a sum adjacent to £1,800 per week for food and drink (four year period May 2007 onward)
  • Meddling in the future of the Granite Web, and elevating it over other areas’ projects
  • Cutting money to charities while allowing unelected quangos to thrive…..

It might not amount to quite 99 problems, Alex, but you’re getting there.  Give it a week.

Teflon: (mod Eng.noun) a non-stick coating often applied to pots and pans.

Bill Clinton lurched from sex scandal to Whitewater financial scandal and back to sex scandal again, yet he escaped relatively unscathed.  People called him ‘the Teflon President’:  nothing stuck to him.

Not that our First Minister would ever do anything untoward of course, but it is almost like he’s using deflection techniques – sorry to even think it!  Just because he showed up at Leveson with counter claims that he had been hacked when he was there to testify as to his relationship with Murdoch is no reason to think he’s a slippery character.

In fact I’ve  written to Salmond to ask for his comments on some of these little trifling issues.  As soon as he answers, I’ll let you know.  Until then, just keep waving the Saltire, chant ‘Freedom!’ and believe everything you’re being promised.  Would Alex ever steer you wrong?

Just one little thing to remember:  sooner or later that non-stick pan stops working, and it gets thrown out.

Next week:  A wee update on council finances, and an old FOI of mine updated.

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The Great City Gardens Project Gravy Train

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Feb 282012
 

A person might think that a chamber of commerce exists to promote local businesses.  Here in Aberdeen this is true as well.  But as Aberdeen Voice’s Suzanne Kelly learns – the taxpayer is funding at least some of the PR work  for the City Gardens  Project – and the Chamber of Commerce and ACSEF seem to be leading the City Council by the nose.

SJDUTG2 The proposed City Gardens Project/Granite Web is a contentious idea which would see a mix of public and private interests building huge, granite ramps over Union Terrace Gardens.
While this idea may not even get off the ground, it has been a gold mine for some fortunate businesses via the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce – at the taxpayer’s expense.

This article will primarily deal with money that the City Council was invoiced by the Chamber of Commerce for PR-related work.  Before doing so, a little recap of other financial facts will add perspective.

PriceWaterhouse Coopers have come up with some grandiose projections including the creation of some 6,500 permanent jobs and £122 million flowing into Aberdeen every year until c. 2023:  all because of the granite web.  PriceWaterhouse Coopers were first paid £41,000 and change for TIF-related work in March 2010.  Other invoices followed, and so far I have been shown by Scottish Enterprise £71,000 worth of PwC invoices.

These invoices are made out to Scottish Enterprise, and Scottish Enterprise is funded by the taxpayer.  Unfortunately, these projections have been seized upon  by the press and turned into ‘facts’  (The Press & Journal published these and other items in a box entitled ‘facts and figures’ on 19 January next to an article about the PwC projections and the garden’s many projected benefits).

The unelected and free-spending and secretive ‘Vote for the City Gardens Project Group’ have likewise promoted these figures in their literature as being reliable facts as well.  They are projections, and arguably very optimistic ones at that.  Whether or not these glowing projections (that we will have more permanent jobs from our web than London expects from its 2012 Olympics) are based on the fact that PwC is being paid by the side that wants to build the web is something the referendum voters may wish to ponder.

A Freedom of Information request I lodged with Scottish Enterprise some time ago revealed (details of which I have previously published) included:-

Item Description Date Amount
1 Technical Feasibility Study to undertake an engineering, cost and design appraisal of the development options for UTG, each incorporating an arts centre. Jun 2009 £162k
2 Architect, Design & Project management fees for a Contemporary Arts Centre project Feb 09/May 10 £226k
3 Consultation Report – City Square Project.. Mar 2010 £113,915
4 Union Terrace Gardens (TIF)-Tax Increment Financing Mar 10
Oct 10
Nov 10		 £71,959.65
5 Scottish Enterprise holds 22 copies of invoices relating to ACSEF approved spend for activities relating to stakeholder engagement, events management, and communcations. [sic] 2009-10
2010-11		 £51,766.60
£22,712.72

(source – Scottish Enterprise email exchange with Suzanne Kelly May 2011)

While this £648,000 was being spent, Aberdeen City Council was battling with potential job and service cuts in order to balance its books.  It seems that these costs have largely been paid by the taxpayer via Scottish Enterprise and other vehicles, and I can find nothing to show that the Wood Family Trust, which has offered £50,000,000 to further the project, has paid towards any of these costs.  The PR and promotional invoices referred to at Item 5 have been paid by the Aberdeen City taxpayer.

Before moving on to Item 5, which is the subject of this article, some of these other items are worth a further glance.

At Item 2 you will notice we are now talking about some kind of ‘Contemporary Arts Centre project’ – is Peacock already being edged out of the picture at this point?

Item 4 would seem to correspond to PriceWaterhouse Coopers invoices which I referred to.  How much more money has been spent on PWC since this May 2011 exchange is unknown.

From what I have been subsequently sent by Scottish Enterprise, the bulk of the invoices at Item 5 were from the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce to the City Council.  In the words of Scottish Enterprise:-

  • 9 invoices relate to financial year 2009/10 – these total £51,766.60
  • 16 invoices relate to financial year 2010/11 – these total £36,692.95. This total is higher than the original figure stated due to the invoices received after the date of that response
  • There has been no spend on the City Garden Project from the ACSEF budget during the current financial year  (SK notes – it is only February – there is time)

(source – Scottish Enterprise email to Suzanne Kelly February 2012)

Arguably a mere £88,459 is small change as Aberdeen City contemplates borrowing £92,000,000 (minimum) if the project goes ahead. However, this is money which the City paid from its own budgets – it is taxpayer money.  Should a financially-pressured city use pubic money for propaganda purposes – PR, events and photos designed to promote the City Garden Project?  Is the Wood Family Trust contributing any money towards these expenses yet?  I simply do not know.

A spreadsheet of the expenses comprising Item 5 can be found online at http://oldsusannahsjournal.yolasite.com/  I would recommend looking at these 50 or so items.

If you look at the wording in the table above, ACSEF is apparently approving this expenditure.  ACSEF is a public-private quango, and at the time of writing, Stewart Milne is on its board.  He owns the Triple Kirks land adjacent to Union Terrace Gardens, and he wants to turn this landmark into an office complex which will likely enrich him if it goes ahead in my opinion.

Despite several emails, no one in a position of power has the slightest qualm with Mr Milne potentially having a conflict of interest.    Why precisely ACSEF is allowed to commission and recommend for payment invoices to the City Council is a matter I personally find worrying.

Virtually none of the invoices from the Chamber to the City specify who / what company actually performed the services in question.  What company got all the PR work?  Who took the photos?  I do note that Zoe Corsi of the BIG Partnership is on the Chamber’s Board of Directors – as are other key players such as Tom Smith, one of the two directors of the private entity, Aberdeen City Gardens Trust.  This company seems to be in the thick of the decision-making processes; it is apparently the company which is holding onto the results of the design finalist public vote – which it refuses to release at present.

The taxpayer apparently paid for that exhibition and the public vote – and yet a private company seems to be withholding the results.  The argument has been put forth that it is no longer relevant.  Many people took the opportunity to write on the voting papers that they were against all the schemes and wanted the gardens retained and improved.

The public should have had this ‘no’ option at the final selection vote, but it seems councillors who asked for a ‘no’ option were outmoded by the Project Management Board (note – see the website listed previously for details of how all these companies and entities have interesting personnel overlaps).

It may be of interest to accountants that the party which actually performed the work not specified on these invoices, and with only a rare exception is VAT ever charged.  It would be interesting to know whether or not the Chamber of Commerce adds any fees or commission charges to the work it is invoicing the City for.

Highlights of the list of invoices include:-

  • £180 paid for a photograph showing ‘inaccessibility of Union Terrace Gardens’
  • over  £25,000 paid for ‘Stakeholder engagement’ events and so on since October 2009 to August 2010
  • £3500 paid to ‘Comedia’ for Charles Landry to attend event / speak
  • Redacted line items and handwritten notes adorn several of the invoices
  • One invoice – No. 42407 shows only one line relating to ‘coach hire’ – this is £246.  However, the total shown on this one page invoice is for £7444 – what has happened?
  • A January 2010 Advertising bill from Aberdeen Press & Journals for £ 2,820 ( See: http://fraserdenholm.blogspot)
  • £11,000 in February 2010 charged from the Chamber to the City for “Development of images, movie, powerpoint and exhibition material for City Square Project as per attached sheets”

As to the redacted text on the invoices, redacted text has started showing up in Project Monitoring  Board minutes and reports again, despite Councillor McCaig’s previous intervention to cease this practice.  One company which has had its name redacted from recent documentation is Brodies.

The value of three Brodies invoices which I received copies of is around £12,000.  One of these invoices from April 2011 is for:

“City Gardens Project – Development Constraints Report (Legal  [sic] To fee for professional services in connection with the preparation of a development constraints report relating to the title of Union Terrace Gardens, Aberdeen, and surrounding land.”

I suppose our City’s in-house legal department cannot be expected to know whether or not it has free title to Union Terrace Gardens.   Happily, experts have demonstrated the land is Common Good Land.  As such, whether any of these garden projects can or should be legitimately carried out will be a big question in the future.

Earlier we saw how ACSEF was allowed to recommend these expenditures; we have seen how the Chamber of Commerce invoices the City for ACSEF-approved costs.  If we were to put in some of the over-lapping names from ACSEF and the Chamber of Commerce into the equation, we would be able to see that:

ACSEF [including Stewart Milne, Jennifer Craw (of Wood Family Trust), Tom Smith (Director, Aberdeen City Gardens Trust), Colin Crosby (Director, Aberdeen City Gardens Trust), Callum McCaig (ACC) ]

approved invoices generated by the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce [Colin Crosby; Zoe Corsi (BIG Partnership) , former director Tom Smith]

for the City Council [Callum McCaig]

to approve to further the aims of the Garden Project (CGP entity members include John Michie, Colin Crosby, Jennifer Craw).

Given the above, I suggest that the time is right for an entire re-think of how this project has been allowed to develop, and a full investigation into the demise of the Peacock plan and an investigation into the genesis of the current state of affairs might not be a bad idea as well.

While this is going on, a local care home has announced it will no longer provide 24/7 on-site staff as there is not enough money.  Residents were told to drink less fluids at night time.

Jim’ll Fix It

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Creative Writing, Information, Satire and Humour  No Responses »
Feb 192012
 

By Bob Smith.
utgpanpic

A new player on the scene
His thrown the gauntlet doon
The weel kent face o Jimmy Milne
A local north east loon

Ti keep the gairdens bonnie
He’ll cum up wi some dough
If the citizens o Aiberdeen
Vote the Granite Web a no

Oh michty me oh fit a flap
City Gairdens Trust fair pit oot
O coorse they jist resorted
Ti pittin in the boot

Jim Milne he’s noo bein accused
O gettin the wrang eyn o the stick
Oor Stewartie’s jumpin up an doon
Like some  puir demented prick

We micht bi seen Stewartie says
As a toonie wi nae  desire
A place fits lacking ambition
A city fair left in the mire

Noo is ess nae jist scaremongerin?
Like fit FoUTG hiv bin accused
We aa ken fit yer tryin Stewart
Yer ploy we’ve aa jaloused.

Hats aff ti Jim Milne an his freens
Fer helpin in the ’oor o need
In the myns o aa the dooters
Ye’ll hae sown a positive seed

Time noo fowks ti aa staan up
Show the Granite Web  the door
Vote ti  retain oor bonnie gairdens
Wi Jimmy’s dosh we can aa score

  © Bob Smith “ The Poetry Mannie” 2012

 

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