By Bob Smith.
|
A new player on the scene Ti keep the gairdens bonnie Oh michty me oh fit a flap Jim Milne he’s noo bein accused |
We micht bi seen Stewartie says Noo is ess nae jist scaremongerin? Hats aff ti Jim Milne an his freens Time noo fowks ti aa staan up |
© Bob Smith “ The Poetry Mannie” 2012
Old Susannah looks at the Granite Web, and the impressive effort it has taken to spin.
By Suzanne Kelly.
Tally Ho! Yet another vibrant and dynamic week in the Granite Web City. Whilst Friends of Union Terrace Gardens, Aberdeen against Austerity, and Democracy Watch engaged in some inexpensive grassroots campaigning by flyer, the mysterious Vote for the CGP group pulled out all the stops and spent, spent, spent.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Northsound is playing City Garden Project commercials non-stop. The Art Gallery has a swish new display showing the Garden plan in its Alice-in-Wonderland perspective and garish colours, and issues of The Granite Web compete in the ugly stakes with the A3 VFTCGP colour flyer sent out before.
News reaches Old Susannah that visitors to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary are being cheered up no end by pro-City Garden Project posters on the walls. There is no escape at work either, as employees of Wood Group (no surprise really), Nautronix, and Taqa all seem to have received lovely e-mails from bosses hinting gently that they should vote for the CGP.
I do find it very touching that employers are looking after their employees so well and giving gentle guidance which puts no pressure on them at all.
Why do I call the VFTCGP members secret? Because I was told in so many words by the BIG Partnership, which does PR for this group and, coincidentally, the artwork for the CGP, that “if the members want to stay secret, it’s up to them.”
But before I return to my Myth-busting busting activities started last week – I only got through the first four of the ten Myths the CGP team say we’re suffering from – condolences to Rangers fans.
Was this one of the top Scottish clubs? Yes.
Will this leave a massive hole in Scottish football? Yes.
Will other sides face similar financial clubs? Looks like it.
I believe one tycoon is still paying some £60,000 of his own money each time his team plays. I do hope this mogul is not getting overly financially stretched. I’d again ask the question if Loirston Loch land – in a Special Area of Conservation – should really be turned into a 21,000 seat football ground with offices and museum in this climate.
Donald’s granny was Scottish. This gives him good cause to call Alex Salmond ‘insane’
Well, I would ask, but the continuous concrete covering of anything green in Aberdeen seems unstoppable. Thankfully, we all have one tireless, gentle campaigner who is not giving up the fight for ‘Scotland’s heritage’. Step forward, Mr Donald Trump.
You might have seen one or two small news items saying that this gentle giant wants to build the galaxy’s greatest golf course on a no-doubt-underused stretch of coastline. He’s got rid of many of the view-blocking trees, but there are horrible plans to build windfarms offshore which could actually be seen by his guests, if you can believe that!
Now, windfarms don’t actually work very efficiently yet. The technology can, and should improve. But I guess we’re all agreed there are few things in life worse than being a rich golfer who might have to look at an offshore wind farm. For those people in favour of this kind of blot on the seascape, I would remind you that you’re forgetting something very important.
Donald’s granny was Scottish. This gives him good cause to call Alex Salmond ‘insane’ for supporting renewable energy. Please try to keep that in mind, thank you.
Finally, it might have been Valentine’s Day this week, but it looks like the May to December romance between Callum McCaig and Aileen ‘Ho’Malone is over. One of them is an over-blown, over-hyped, over-rated, naïve, headline-seeking soul, blissfully unaware that they are dangerously out of their depth. The other is Callum McCaig.
No more will they share a coalition; there will be no more romps on Tullos Hill; there will be no more late-night negotiations. Maybe yet the SNP will change its tune over the ridiculous cull of deer to plant trees that cannot possibly grow on Tullos Hill. Watch this space.
the taxpayers’ side of this great granite garden bargain is to borrow £92m and pay the loan, and its interest, back over decades.
There is certainly a current in that direction, not least fuelled by public anger and the wasting of some £43,800 to date. Still, a break-up is hard to take. Final confirmation of this great bust-up comes in newspaper stories announcing that the coalition is still absolutely fine. I am thinking of offering my condolences to Mrs Robinson, sorry, I mean Aileen.
I’m still thinking on it. PS. Message to Irene – feel better soon!
And now back to debunking the debunking of the Myths. The City Garden Project seems to be the only entity that’s been presented with these Myths, and I commented on the first four last week. Here are a few choice words on the remaining five Myths. Thank you CGP for printing these not-at-all-wild and not-at-all-made-up Myths – we’re all really onside now. Their comments are in bold. Old Susannah’s are in regular type
5. It will cost the taxpayer millions of pounds – FALSE.
Sure. All this happens for free, and you’ve not paid a penny, and you won’t pay a penny. I wonder if the CGP forgot about the £422,000, or probably more, of taxpayers’ money Scottish Enterprise has already spent on this project? And, no doubt, our CGP friends don’t think it matters that some of your city councillors voted to set aside up to £300,000 of your money for legal costs.
Old Susannah is still mulling that one over. A billionaire is ‘giving’ Aberdeen £50m, but there isn’t enough money on his side of the fence to pay the legal costs the city will incur? So, rather than getting granny a new wheelchair, or providing 24/7 care at homes which have just announced cuts etc etc, Wood wants your £300,000. But this £722,000, nearly quarter of a million pounds, is small change. we’re going to chop down existing, healthy trees, thus getting rid of wildlife that’s called the trees home for decades, if not centuries
Multiply that figure by ten and you get close to the amount of interest on the loan Aberdeen City Council has to sign for this project to go ahead, according to one of last night’s radio show speakers. Thanks to Original FM (on 105FM) for hosting last night’s debate. Anyway, the taxpayers’ side of this great granite garden bargain is to borrow £92m and pay the loan, and its interest, back over decades.
If the 6500 new jobs don’t come in and we don’t make £122m each year (I can’t wait to see how this happens), if we go over budget, if anything goes wrong – then it will cost us an unknown additional amount of money in repayments. The trams fiasco has reached a cost of nearly one billion pounds.
But this won’t cost you a cent. Honest, guv.
6. Fake, plastic trees – FALSE.
It’s a great Radiohead song but a lousy Myth. It has been suggested that fake plastic trees will be planted in the City Gardens to act as vents for the giant car park underneath. If any fake trees are seen they will be beside the flying pigs. 186 new trees will be planted, some of them mature and many will be Scots Pines.
Old Susannah doesn’t know where to start with this alleged Myth. She does find it reassuring to find that a job in public relations entails so much creative writing talent. I know of no-one who’s heard of plastic trees being part of the plan. However, if we’re building underground, then we’ll need plants with very tiny root systems. Goodbye 250-year old elm trees, one of only a few surviving clusters of elms free from disease, and home to wildlife. In comes progress. Who needs fresh air, wildlife, shade and beauty when you can have ramps?
we’re going to chop down existing, healthy trees, thus getting rid of wildlife that’s called the trees home for decades, if not centuries
My favourite bit is the announcement that the trees stay in the Gardens forever, as wood chip and seating. Well, you can’t say that’s not sensitive to nature. Still, the BIG Partnership’s student placement has managed to make a meal of a non-existent plastic tree myth. Perhaps someone will explain how mature trees are going to be magically planted in the new Gardens?
Where will their roots go, as there is meant to be underground parking? How do we get to have a thriving pine forest in the city centre – something that doesn’t seem possible according to experts including local architects?
If Old Susannah has this right, we’re going to chop down existing, healthy trees, thus getting rid of wildlife that’s called the trees home for decades, if not centuries, plant some new trees, and have the world’s only pine forest in a city centre.
The pines must grow faster than genetically-modified Leylandii hedges if the drawings I’ve seen are correct, and of course, no-one can fault the accuracy of these precision drawings. I like the giant transparent child romping over the flowerbeds best. So, replacing grass and trees with grass, concrete and trees can be done for only £92m. RESULT!
7. It will cost people their jobs – FALSE.
As a result of the project a projected 6500 new jobs are to be created, not taking into account the hundreds of jobs that will come as a result of the construction. In addition, a transformed city centre will breathe new life across the city, helping us become a World Energy City long after oil and gas has run dry in the North Sea. Existing businesses will be retained meaning existing jobs will be safe-guarded.
These 6500 jobs are going to be wonderful! What will they be? Well, for openers we’ve seen how well Union Square has protected high street businesses. Our small high street shops are struggling whilst multinationals got a cheap rent deal in Union Square. But clearly what we need is….more shops. Surely there is nothing we’d rather do than shop, and you can’t have enough shops can you? It’s not as if a glut of shops will ever result in shop closures, price wars and endless sales, especially ‘Going out of business’ sales.
I wonder if there is any reason that a cafe culture has never really taken off in Aberdeen? Could it be that it’s often too cold, too windy or too rainy? Could it be because the City Council consistently refused to allow anyone to run a snack bar or coffee kiosk in the shelter of Union Terrace Gardens? Clearly not. One wave of the granite wand, and just like those convincing concept drawings, we’ll all be sitting outdoors in short-sleeved shirts, drinking decaf mocha lattes while Toto play on the brand new stage, in front of the existing indoor theatre.
Right. The taxpayer is propping up the AECC with extra money since it can’t make enough by holding events. Same for the Lemon Tree. But the new theatre won’t have any problems making a massive profit and creating loads of jobs.
So, ‘how many theatres should a taxpayer prop up?’ is one question.
I for one can’t wait to sit through an outdoor electronic folk music competition in February. But, by winter, this theatre will be an ice rink, thereby competing with the ice rink the city tried to kill off before.
But no, there won’t be any harm to jobs. We’ll need people to cut down the trees and get rid of the wildlife. Then there will be jobs cleaning the graffiti off the Web. Yes, the Web will create more permanent jobs in small Aberdeen than the 2012 Olympics will create in Greater London. Rest as assured as I am on that point.
8. It will be entirely made from concrete – FALSE.
Obviously concrete will be used – would you like to relax, visit an exhibition or attend a concert on top of a cardboard box? The project has been carefully designed so there will be 95% more open, green space with a series of pathways providing access for people through, across and in and out of the gardens. These paths will be made of granite, crushed granite and wood.
By now, Old Susannah is finding the content of the dispelled Myths by BIG just a little bit patronising and smarmy. They thought they had to talk us out of believing in plastic trees. Now they explain that we need to sit on something more robust than a cardboard box. Thanks for that! Appreciated.
So, ‘how many theatres should a taxpayer prop up?’ is one question. ‘How many competing businesses should Scottish Enterprise suggest?’ is quite another. They used to have rules on displacement and suchlike, but these seem to have gone, probably about the same time as your employer started to tell you how to vote.
This project has been carefully designed. Of course it has. More green space, but somehow it manages to have a giant concrete, sorry, granite theatre which takes up some 15% minimum of the existing Gardens. They count the giant granite potato-crisp shaped thingy over the stage as green space.
what if the architects were to give us some drawings showing how these ramps will work safely now rather than later?
Of course it won’t sustain any wildlife, and at best will be a thin wedge of sod over concrete, but if they want to call it green space, fine.
I guess these people call anything green space if they can colour it green with Crayolas on their paper plan.
Looking at the slope of the ramps both up and downwards, I’m wondering how the aged, infirm or wheelchair-bound are going to find this system easier than the current access. The current access could use an additional ramp and you could probably do this for less than £92m as well. For the truly baffled, there is ground level access on the north side, not far from the theatre. This is where vehicles somehow manage to get in.
Clearly there is no other way to ‘relax and visit an exhibition or attend a concert in this town.’ Let’s borrow £92 million and build this beauty.
9. There will be no railings in the Granite Web, people will fall from the paths – FALSE.
Safety will be paramount. The concept design shows the various walkways at different levels but the final design will show how these work safely. And, seriously, do you think any development in a country obsessed with health and safety would get off the ground without proper safety measures?
Our PR work placement is patronising us again. I might be old, but here’s a crazy idea – what if the architects were to give us some drawings showing how these ramps will work safely now rather than later? Are they going to be enclosed, and of course, not at all potential rat traps? Are they going to have fencing that somehow won’t look like Stalag 17? How will wheelchair users go up and down these steep ramps? Details, details.
Well, Old Susannah has run out of space for one week. We will return to normal definitions next week, and take a closer look at who is behind ‘Vote for the City Garden Project’. You will, of course, want to know what businesses are in this group, to make sure you can reward them with your custom. Or not.
Finally, many thanks to those brave business people who have stuck out their necks in favour of saving our city’s only unique, free, green garden.
That’s you, J Milne. It is appreciated.
Robbie, ma loon, jist turn aroon
Pit doon the daisy, boot up yer Mac
A twenty-first century parcel o rogues
Hell-bent on destroyin fit lies at your back.
Wallace, my friend, when it came to your end
You were tortured and flayed, stretched oot on the rack
But tak up yer shield to show we’ll nae yield
‘til the vandals and money-men are driven richt back.
Salvation, look doon o’er the apron afore ye
Verdant and colourful, unspiled and free
Replaced by a latter-day usurer’s temple?
Frown sternly upon those fa wish it to be.
Hey Byron min, look roon the corner
And wonder, ‘far’s next for concrete and tar?’
The Gairdens destroyed? The wreckers micht lobby
To fill in the corrie of dark Lochnagar
Granite-hewn monuments, proud parts of heritage
We call on your spirit, for now is the hour
And, toonsers a’wye – fae Bucksburn to Pointlaw
Save these great Gairdens. We have the power.
Belle Mont
February 2012
By Bob Smith.
| “Fred the Shred”’s nae langer Sir He’s bin strippit o his title Noo jist a plain ex bunker Wi views nae langer vital . Reduced eence mair ti the rank O a mannie in the street Bit still he his mair millions Than fowk ye’ll likely meet . Wull the chiel be maist pit oot Nae langer bein ca’ed Sir ? Is stem cumin oot his luggies? Is oor Fred in a bit o a birr . Forced ti chynge his letterheids Titled stationery wull disappear An cardies sayin he’s a Sir Wull be chuckit on the fleer |
Noo spare a thocht fer Fred There’s lots mair o his creed Titled gadgies linin their pooches Wi the proceeds o great greed . Anither Goodwin we aa ken A bank – bit een o sand As notorious as oor Fred Fer “shipwreckin” oot o hand . The puir mannie’ll hae ti learn An iss he micht weel dread Fin ask’t fit his name is He’ll hae ti say “jist Fred” . . . ©Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2012 Image © Alexandr Denisenko | Dreamstime.com |
Oh stunning is the vision that the CGP has shown
Of a futuristic plaza where the land that we all own
Lies waiting for the digger to tear it all asunder
It’s Mounthooly in the firmament, with parking spaces under
A theatre. A forest. Gardens by the acre.
A rowie tree with sponsorship by Aitken’s, Torry’s baker?
Trips on ships on Denburn’s tides from the former Trainie Park
On noble graceful clippers just like the Cutty Sark?
A cottage made of gingerbread? A Lagavulin fountain?
A petting zoo – with unicorns – below Malteser Mountain?
It never rains, the breeze is warm, one never needs a brolly
Thanks to Callum, Oban’s is a poorer McCaig’s Folly
A Granite Web, renowned world-wide, or is that even wider?
A web designed and realised by a maniacal spider
High-maintenance, and dear to clean, with all those nooks and crannies
Nodded through for me and you, by feart brown-nosing mannies
A monolithic Concrete Web with a permanence of gales
Shops with garish frontages proclaiming last chance sales
Litter in the flower beds, the ramps a ‘boarder’s dream
The urine of a Friday night in constant steaming stream.
Think forward two decades or more and stroll along its edges
And tell your bairns or grandchild, “Here once grew flowers and hedges
Ripped apart, the verdant heart, to leave this barren hole
A city, formerly in bloom, now a town without a soul”.
A new creative writing group is being launched in Aberdeenshire.
Grassic Gibbon Writers Group has been set up by Grassic Gibbon Centre manager, Isabella Williamson, and will be led by local poet, playwright and short story writer Catriona Yule.
The meetings kick off on Friday 17 February at 10.30 am and will run for six weeks initially. Each informal session will support and encourage new writers through workshop exercises and constructive feedback. Anyone is welcome to come along.
Catriona told Aberdeen Voice:
“I’m absolutely delighted to be involved with this writing group and feel that this is an exciting opportunity for any budding writer wanting to learn more and share their experiences. The Grassic Gibbon Centre plays a crucial part in maintaining the heritage of the Mearns area and in keeping Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s legacy alive. It seems only fitting that it should have its own writing group to continue his passion. He was a very gifted writer who achieved an incredible output in his short life,”
For further information, contact the Grassic Gibbon Centre, Arbuthnott. Tel: 01561 361668.
It’s the American holiday Ground Hog Day this week, and Old Susannah wonders if she’s not reading the same old stories over and over again in the local news. By Suzanne Kelly.
Happy Ground Hog Day! In America people eagerly await the movements of groundhogs on 2 February (everyone has to have a hobby I guess), and allegedly can predict whether there will be an early spring by what the little things do. Ground Hog Day was also a Bill Murray film wherein he kept reliving the same events over and over again.
As I read the Evening Express and the Press and Journal, I wonder if the same old stories aren’t coming back again and again just like Ground Hog Day. Another car crash, more pictures of cute babies and cute pets, potholes and personal health stories I’d rather not read.
And of course Union Terrace Gardens stories have sprouted up faster than the ‘rare’ pine forest the architects have now drawn fully mature in their ‘vision’ of the concrete future. Guess the pines should appease all those environmental-type people.
I had really wanted to ‘keep off the grass’ and spend one week not writing about the City Gardens Project. However, the issue continues to dominate our local newspapers, other than a few car accidents and cute pictures of babies and/or pets, there’s nothing else in the local news.
On the other hand our bus fares have gone up – by about £150 per year for weekly pass users. This is to pay for all the improvements – the increased reliability, cleanliness, and improved frequency and so on that you are experiencing. No doubt you likewise received a pay rise of 15% or more, so you don’t mind stumping up more for First Buses. I hear their owners are a bit hard hit by the recession, and heating mansions isn’t as cheap as it used to be.
Last week I was one of the deputees at the City Council’s great vote on shovelling money into the City Gardens Project. If you’re interested in what I had to say, here’s a link: http://oldsusannahsjournal.yolasite.com/
I spoke for 10 minutes, and answered 10 minutes of questions from our elected officials. Councillor McCaig repeated the promise made by Alex Haig the Scottish Infrastructure Secretary that the project will NOT go ahead if the people vote against it in the referendum. We shall see.
But back to the Ground Hog Day theme. Sir Alex Ferguson has stepped up to the plate concerning Union Terrace Gardens: he’s in favour of the garden scheme (and ‘scheme’ seems like the operative word) going ahead, per the Evening Express. But haven’t we heard from him on this score before? Yes we have – several times. You have a feeling of déjà vu for a reason.
You can usually tell something is a fact if an authority figure tells you it is true
The pro City Gardens teams are still ramping up with their fantastic, well-planned campaigns. The people in Aberdeenshire were the first to receive the glossy, beautiful (not at all fifties retro, dated, overly busy) A3 colour brochures telling them why they must vote for the City Gardens Project.
It was such a heart-breaking pity to realise that no one in the Shire gets a vote.
Easy mistake. I just wonder exactly who has paid for these brochures and this little mistake. But this lovely piece of campaigning literature (for which we don’t know who wrote, created, paid for) leads nicely to a definition or two.
Facts: (plural noun; Eng) data based on measurable, demonstrable truths and observable phenomenon.
A triangle has three sides. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. The City Gardens Project will create 6,500 jobs and make Aberdeen £122,000,000 every year for about 20 years. All these are examples of facts.
You can usually tell something is a fact if an authority figure tells you it is true. If you read something in print, it must be true as well. All those lovely brochures that went to the Shire residents (who can’t vote on the issue) tell you to vote for for 6,500 jobs and all the millions of pounds the Teletubbie Park will bring.
Who would vote against these great things? It’s not as if these figures for an as-yet unfinished design with no price tag on it are just wild, bloated fictional guesses paid for by, er, organisations that want this building project. Or are they?
My favourite part of the brochure is the transparent boy running through the flower bed in front of the theatre. If it were to scale, the wee lad is about 27 feet tall.
If you still aren’t sure what is fact and what is fiction, here’s an example from ACSEF meeting minutes from 22 March 2010:-
“Reassurance was given that the consultation report commissioned by Scottish Enterprise on behalf of ACSEF will be independent, and the consultation process had been robust and transparent”.
Even if the electronic voting went a bit strange, and even if all of the entities involved in ‘reassuring’ that the report would be ‘independent’ wanted the garden project to go ahead, it was all ‘robust and transparent’. (and that’s a fact).
You can’t say Aberdeen doesn’t have its fair share of celebrities
Another favourite fact of mine was when Sue Bruce left Aberdeen and claimed in a press release that our city had a budget surplus of a few million pounds after she’d done her bit. (Yes, I miss her, too). Pity the budget surplus didn’t even last as long as she did here.
Celebrity: (noun or adjective) fame, or being famous. You can’t say Aberdeen doesn’t have its fair share of celebrities: There is Sir Alex Ferguson, Annie Lennox, Scotty from Star Trek, an’ tha quine fae Torry wi the accent naebody kens fa’s on ‘River City’ [Editor: am I getting the hang of Doric yet? Suz].
But alas: no longer can Aberdeen lay claim to being the home of ‘Willie’ – school janitor from ‘The Simpsons’. Willie is apparently from The Orkneys. The Evening Express carried this exclusive this week – I think they did a telephone interview with Willie or something. DOH!
At least we still have Mr Scott, and of course our own talking cactus, Spike. Neither has yet released statements through their agents or directly as to their view of Union Terrace Gardens. Annie Lennox has in the past stated that it’s up to Aberdonians to vote for what they want, but that she is a supporter of the gardens as they are.
She is clearly not as vibrant, dynamic and forward-looking as the much more hip Sir Alex Ferguson. Sir Alex took a break from throwing football boots at players’ heads long enough to yet again pop up in the press in favour of the skateboard park – sorry granite web. In the Evening Express Sir Alex is reported as saying:-
“I would urge everyone not to be scared of change and to look upon this as an opportunity and something which will allow Aberdeen to be favourably compared with cities both in the UK and further afield”
Well, we can safely assume his friend Stewart Milne looks at the gardens as being ‘an opportunity.’
Perhaps Sir Alex has hit it on the head (which he’s good at doing): I’m really just scared of change. I’m not scared of killing off the existing wildlife by removing the vital feeding and living grounds the wildlife depends on. I’m not scared of destroying beautiful, listed, healthy 200 year-old trees that clean the surrounding air. I’m not even scared of the city taking a £70 million (or probably more) gamble on an as-yet untried financial gambit: Nope, I’m just scared of change.
As to how the granite web will make Aberdeen compare to other cities and places, I’d suggest that Milton Keynes, Siberian work camps and Ceausescu’s Romanian architectural projects would be the best place to start.
I think I’ll leave it there for now. Keep a look out for your full colour brochure from the pro City Garden Project now, won’t you. It should arrive any day now (if you live in Yorkshire). You may wonder who printed it and who stands proudly behind its facts. You may wonder for quite some time, as they didn’t bother to say who they were on this flyer.
There is a helpful web address on it, even if it doesn’t work at the time of writing, I’m sure that’s just another one of the few dozen small errors that’s hit the publicity campaign.
Question: if the people supporting this project are throwing your money around on inaccurate full colour A3 leaflets that are going to the wrong houses today, what will they do with a giant architectural project tomorrow?
– Next week: disappearing press releases, Press Complaints Commission, and Code of Practice for Public Relations Agencies – and more.
In the concluding part of Voice’s interview with author Maggie Craig, she talks of life as a NE inabootcomer who’s only been here for 20 years. By David Innes.
Not quite. 500 is a paltry number of words. 2000 is a good total for the day. I have a computer upstairs and I go up there and work for the morning until about one or two o’ clock. I write about ten thousand words, six or seven chapters, and then go back and start shaping it. I think of it like how my auntie used to make butter, patting it into shape.
The book I’m writing just now started because I saw a photo of a man’s face and there was something about his eyes made him look very sad.
He’s turned into a character in eighteenth century Edinburgh although his name’s Catto. His family’s from around the Methlick area, so Aberdeenshire is coming into it.
You’ve said that you admire what Aberdeen Voice is doing, but you believe there’s a lack of radicalism in the North East.
It’s not something I’ve ever been made aware of, although living out here I feel very dislocated from the city. But when I go into Aberdeen I don’t feel a heartbeat. You get that heartbeat in Glasgow although I know because that’s my own place, I would feel it. I was almost surprised when I saw Aberdeen Voice and I thought, “That’s great, there are radicals in Aberdeen!”, but the whole presentation of Aberdeen is that corporate, business “let’s go to the Oilmen’s Ball and we’re all doing charity for Marie Curie” thing, so you’re not seeing that radicalism on the street.
I’ve been coming to Aberdeen and the North East since I was a wee girl and there’s so much there but much of it’s occult. I’m really interested in the folklore but it needs to be explored. North East people seem to be terribly backward at coming forward. What infuriates me is when you go into the bank or the Post Office and they stand so far back and you go, “Go forward! You’re the bloody customer!” It’s almost like you’ve got your cap in your hand.
Well, let’s discuss the Turra Coo. Let’s marshal the arguments
When I was speaking to the kids in Ellon, I said, “I don’t think the Turra Coo reflects very well on the North East”, and one girl looked horrified. She’d obviously been brought up to think that the Turra Coo was a great story, but you had to be very careful about political views as you could lose your job.
I have this friend who, when she was at school, only twenty or thirty years ago, was told because she was a farm labourer’s daughter, “You’ll never make anything of yourself”. That’s what’s been done to young minds. She’s an intelligent girl, but doesn’t think that she is because she’s been told she’s a neep. There are a lot of entrenched attitudes, I think. You have to teach people to think for themselves, to give them self-esteem. That’s so important.
The kids at Ellon Academy impressed me. They’re getting a good education, but it’s so focussed on them passing exams and not, “Well, let’s discuss the Turra Coo. Let’s see what you think. Let’s marshal the arguments”. It’s stimulating to change your mind on something you were brought up with. Or not, of course.
There’s a meeting in January about some cultural development in Aberdeen. They’re using the usual jargon, it’s going to be a “step change” in the cultural life of the city and Aberdeenshire, but what I liked was that they’re saying that culture should not always be associated with the money it can earn. Culture and creativity should be there for their own sakes. Aberdeen needs more of that, I think, as it all seems to come down to the bottom line.
I’m sure industry’s highly-successful. I’ve met radical people who have worked for oil companies but you don’t say anything there either, do you? You might be the equivalent of Not Required Back.
It would be interesting to research it, to see who got into trouble for standing up for the laird.
So will you write something about this area?
People always ask if I’m going to write about Aberdeenshire, but I’ve not really got under the skin of it. When I found out my mother was from the Haddo House estate I thought that was interesting and could be something to look into, to find out what was going on, but that’s going to come later.
There are wee snippets. I’m fascinated byAberdeen Harbour, the Shore Porters and so on, so I’d love to write something about that.
I did a talk about a non-fiction book to an Aberdeen Ladies lunch a couple of years ago and that tribal thing was so funny. I don’t sound like I come from the North East, so people make judgements that you’re an inabootcomer. But when I said to them that my mother came from Barthol Chapel, it was like, “come in”, they embraced me.
That’s not always the way though. Naively, I thought that since my mother came from near Oldmeldrum, that might help, but to some people even not that far away from there, it might as well be Istanbul!
Thanks to Maggie for giving her time to talk so passionately about her work and what drives it. We fervently hope that her muse inspires a book about her adopted Aberdeenshire and NE Scotland.
Dave Watt writes: A recent study revealed that the US Navy is known to have experienced at least 380 major nuclear weapons incidents, but the details are not known, as most of these occurred at sea. The following story is based on an imaginary event with a British nuclear submarine close to land. The sequence and severity of the event was produced by a random number generator, although the post event weather came from the Meteoprog weather archive.
Background
“In 40 years we have never had an accident” Commander Eric Thompson, Faslane 2009
“MOD admits to 16 nuclear submarine crashes” Sunday Herald, 7 Nov 2010
“We will always get advanced warning if something was to go wrong” Alan Moore, MOD spokesperson
30th April 1992. MOD fails to inform Plymouth Council of a serious fire on a nuclear submarine in the port. “It was a bureaucratic mess up”. Captain David Hall, Chief Staff Officer (Nuclear) at Devonport
Potassium iodate tablets, for use in the prevention of thyroid cancer in the event of radiation leaks have been issued to 17 schools and 17,500 households around Devonport. No potassium iodate tablets have been issued to any schools or households around Faslane.
“I should imagine that two or three independent Highland companies might be of use; they are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to a rough country, and it will be no great mischief if they fall” General James Wolfe (1727-1759)
Detailed reports on nuclear submarine accidents are routinely destroyed after only 10 years. “This may explain why they keep repeating the same mistakes” John Ainslie, Scottish CND
While the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl was in progress, rainfall in Govan, Glasgow was found to have a radioactive content.
Monday January 2012: Faslane Submarine Base, Holy Loch, Scotland.
Stores are being loaded on board the vessel and test runs of the engine and electronic systems are underway. Submarine support vessel HMS Forth is also preparing to land alongside the quay and is reverse-manoeuvring beside HMS Astute.
Approximately 2:17pm HMS Forth appears to encounter some control difficulties as her turn towards the jetty has her stern facing the rear of HMS Astute’s hull at an acute angle. A furious spray of foam and gushing water came from under HMS Forth’s counter and she suddenly speeds up in the last few seconds heading straight for Astute. Her ship’s siren alarm blares a loud warning and is still blaring as her stern crashes into Astute’s pressure hull driving it into the jetty, crushing plates and fracturing welds as Forth‘s rudder is mangled while her thrashing screws bite into the Astute’s hull. The scream of wrenched and tearing metal overcomes even the howling siren. The day has started to go horribly wrong.
2:19pm. By the time personnel from the nearby administrative buildings have reached the quayside and a rescue launch has arrived at the scene of the incident, it is obvious to onlookers that both vessels are severely damaged. Astute is settling visibly by the stern.
2:21pm There is a small explosion within HMS Astute’s hull and smoke is now coming out of the rear deck hatches.
2:24pm The base rescue services can be heard in the distance and the base’s general alarm joins Astute’s alarm and HMS Forth’s wailing siren.
2:29pm The seriousness of the event becomes even more apparent as the crew of Astute can be seen hurriedly evacuating the boat whilst base rescue crews are donning full Nuclear Biological Chemical (NBC) kits with respirators. Several figures on stretchers are carried from the sub’s forward hatches by the NBC-suited figures and smoke is now issuing from the conning tower. Firefighting and rescue personnel disappear into the hull of the sub and after a few moments Astute’s alarm stops. HMS Forth’s crew are being evacuated by the rescue launch and her own boats as her siren is also switched off. With the sudden deadening of the two ship’s sirens and only the distant whoop of the base alarm, it seems to onlookers that the situation has begun to stabilise. Fire and rescue crews disappear and reappear from the hull of Astute although the smoke remains as thick as before.
2:43pm The assumption that the situation has stabilised is found to be very optimistic as there is another crashing sound on board and the stern of Astute is seen to lurch, then settle further into the water. The hull is now lying at something like 15-20 degrees from the horizontal.
2:46pm Firefighter and rescue control are shouting to the crews on the sub and there is a movement of figures out from the rear hatches in Astute. A rescue Land Rover on the jetty speeds off towards the centre of the base. A few minutes later, the base general alarm stops and there is a sudden quiet broken only by shouts from the fire and rescue teams emerging from the forward and conning tower hatches. A firefighter rushes towards a rear hatch, but a gout of flame from it drives him back. He tries to get to the hatch several times, but each time the smoke and flames force him back to the conning tower.
2:54pm The comparative silence of the last few moments is suddenly broken by a new sound coming from the base centre – a loud, ululating howl that very few have ever heard before and then only as an exercise simulation. It is the base evacuation warning. It is joined by several loudspeaker vehicles driving around the base advising that this is not a drill and that the base must be evacuated at once. Ships and small craft immediately start to get steam up preparing to leave the base.
3:02pm A general warning of a possible radiation leak is issued to towns surrounding the base, but it is a national holiday and responsible authorities are difficult to contact.
3:08pm Police units at Helensburgh, Greenock, Rhu, Cove and Kilcreggan are advised of a possible emergency whilst hospital and rescue services at Port Glasgow further up the Clyde are also alerted. At this point, all radio contact with rescue and firefighting crews still on board is lost. It is believed that the angle of the submarine’s hull increased further and fractures in the coolant pipes resulted in a wave of heat and radiation pouring up the length of the hull towards the bows from the out of control main engine.
3:17pm From subsequent conflicting testimonies of onlookers on the Mambeg Hill overlooking the base, it was stated there were either four or five minor explosions within the central hull of the now half submerged Astute. However many explosions were actually heard, the result is to prove only too disastrous. Several caps from the mid hull silos blow open and a gout of flame issues from one, whilst three Trident II missiles are launched into the air from three of the others.
The first flies erratically into the air for several hundred feet directly south south west at an angle of about 30 degrees and, twisting in flight, plunges into the loch about 700 metres away. It lands tail first in the shallows beside the shore and cracks open with a loud crash. There is no fire or explosion.
The second also takes off at around 30 degrees and continues a comparatively straight flight, directly south for around seven kilometres, whereupon the engine flames out and lands on the hillside to the north of Rosneath, with a tremendous explosion as the fuel ignites.
The third shoots into the air to a height of around 600 feet and then seems to stabilise. Unfortunately, it flies directly south south east towards Greenock. As it passes over the shallows of the estuary before the town, a close observer flying alongside would probably be dismayed to see the decoy missile deploy from its pod, flare suddenly and start to turn west away from the track of the onrushing Trident II.
This would, however, probably be the last thing the close observer would have seen, as at 3:17:43pm, the one kiloton warhead ignites, incinerating the decoy drone and exploding 600 feet above the main stand at Greenock’s Cappielow Park, where an SFL First Division game is in progress between the local club Morton and rivals Ayr United.
This is the third nuclear weapon in the world’s history to explode over an occupied town or city.
In Greenock, it is the day after New Year and for some of the people it’s a chance to spend some money at the January sales. For a great many, however, the death of the once-famous Scottish shipbuilding industry on the Clyde and the generation of poverty that follows, means that their participation in the sales is mainly as onlookers. January 2 is also traditionally a day in Scotland for visiting friends and relations to celebrate the New Year. For some, the tradition is the New Year derby match and just over 1900 people are attending Cappielow as the Trident II goes off over the main stand.
Immediate impact
The 2010 census rates the population of Greenock as 43,495 citizens.
An area of complete destruction on the ground covers about 200 metres around the ignition point.
There are no survivors within this area. Around 3000 people are instantly vaporised by the fireball which is seen from the centre of Glasgow, roughly thirty miles to the east.
In a larger area, covering about a mile, with a population of around 7000 people, from Ground Zero, casualties range from almost 100% to around 50%.
Of these casualties a combination of wounds and burns runs at 5%.
Wounds and irradiation are suffered by another 5%.
Wounds individually account for 5%.
Burns individually account for 5%.
A combination of burns, wounds and irradiation covers a further 20%.
A combination of burns and irradiation accounts for 40%.
The remaining 20% are irradiated.
The first plus point of the tragedy is that both local hospitals, Inverclyde and Ravenscraig, are outwith the immediate blast area, although both have taken some structural damage. However, the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) from the blast has stopped all electrical activity, which effectively means that both hospitals are going to have to try to deal with a huge and varied casualty list with facilities basically at Victorian medical levels.
There are also no moving vehicles or telephone communications within the EMP area, and people who would otherwise have survived will succumb to their wounds in the interim period. Roads will be blocked by rubble as rescue units are mobilised initially from Port Glasgow and Gourock and later from further afield. The housing and street lighting is out in the centre and east of the town and most of the rescue work will have to be done in complete darkness until sunrise at 8:46 the following morning.
In addition, there are thousands of minor blast injuries to people in Greenock and towards Port Glasgow which require treatment. The medical personnel around Glasgow and the Central Belt are about to encounter the kind of dreadful triage choices normally endured in a major war zone.
HMS Astute
On board the submarine, the stay-behind fire fighting crews have mainly been obliterated in the explosion which launched the Trident IIs. Before this however, the fire and rescue teams have been seriously irradiated by the radiation blasting the length of the sub as the nuclear coolant pipes ruptured. Many of these and other base personnel require decontamination and immediate hospitalisation in a situation similar to that following Chernobyl. Unfortunately, unlike the Soviet Union in the Cold War, very few civilian medical establishments around the base, or indeed in Britain, have the training or facilities to deal with decontamination of irradiated and physically-injured patients.
Radiation
Radiation spilling from the sinking submarine, which duly sinks at her moorings just after 4:15 pm, is washed around the loch by successive tides, and into the River Clyde where the current washes it down past Kilgreggan and Dunoon and out to the islands by Rothesay and Millport by Wednesday morning. The entire mouth of the estuary displays dangerously-high radiation readings. Radiation has also spilled from the two Trident IIs which landed in the loch and on the hillside opposite the base. The behaviour of the cloud of irradiated smoke and debris issuing from HMS Astute, the crashed Trident IIs and what is effectively a ground burst at Greenock, is now entirely at the behest of the elements.
Weather post-Z hour.
At the moment of the blast, the wind is blowing from the south west between 7 and 8 mph. This continues until around midnight on 2 January. Helensburgh and Port Glasgow are affected almost immediately by the Greenock radioactive cloud, and casualties are very heavy there as they are in Garelochead, immediately to the north of the now-abandoned Faslane base.
Callander in Perthshire is luckier, as when the spreading radioactive cloud reached there in late evening on 2 January, the town had been almost completely evacuated. Equally luckily at midnight, the wind swings to blow from the south, and by 3am, light rain and sleet fall over the West of Scotland for over four hours reducing the cloud but irradiating ponds, streams and woodlands, whilst the wind shifts still further to blow at 9 mph from the south east for several hours, threatening Oban.
Tuesday 4 January (Z-plus 2) In the early morning of Tuesday, the wind, gusting and patchy, swings between south west and west yet again over Rannoch Moor and Glen Coe, and the dark streaky cloud up to around 15,000 feet becomes ragged, as the wind swings yet again from the north west to threaten the Central Belt. A light rain fell on the region in late afternoon with the 10 mph north-westerly wind moving to the west in early evening and causing the evacuation of Auchterarder, Gleneagles and Crieff, whilst Perth is on a two hour evacuation warning. Ignoring the reassuring broadcasts on TV and police loudspeaker cars, people in Glasgow are crowding the M8, moving to the east away from the city. As traffic jams build up, people are seen to be hiking along the motorway and abandoned cars add to the congestion. In the early hours of 4 January, the wind continues to carry the cloud to the west at between 7 and 10 mph, although a welcome rainstorm reduces the cloud further.
Wednesday 4 January (Z-plus 3) With the weather forecast stating that the wind is to continue westerly, the populations of Perth, Coupar Angus, Dundee, and latterly Arbroath and St Andrews, are evacuated towards Aberdeen and the Central Belt. This is mostly completed on time as the cloud, although down to about half of the original size, covers most of the Tay valley as heavy rain in the region has washed settling particles into the Tay and out towards the sea. By this time, Aberdeen and Edinburgh are both reporting slight radiation traces in rainfall. Reservoirs along the east coast are being checked hourly for radioactive content.
Thursday 5 January (Z-plus 4) By early morning, the wind has dropped to 3 to 5 mph and the visible frontage of the cloud covering 8-10 miles is blowing offshore from the Dundee- Arbroath-Montrose coastline. By 3am there is light rain turning to sleet and snow for around four hours and the wind speeds upswinging to the north west for the rest of the day, with further light snow by late afternoon pushing the remnants of the cloud further out to sea.
Friday 6 January (Z-plus 5) Today sees the cloud dissipating further, with southerly and south westerly light breezes blowing it down towards the central North Sea where further light rain fell over the late afternoon/early evening.
Saturday 7 January (Z-plus 6) Intermittent rain and sleet and a gusting westerly breeze sees the visible diminishing cloud over the central North Sea. Despite this, the Angus,Fife, Fergus and Rolf platforms are evacuated. Berwick is reporting slight radiation traces in the rainwater.
Sunday 8 January (Z-plus 7) Gusting breezes and intermittent rain at 6 to 10 mph continue to vary between west and north west. Several platforms in the Danish sector of the central North Sea are evacuated.
Monday 9 January (Z-plus 8) Mid-morning -Esbjerg and Ringkobing on the Danish coast are reporting slight radiation traces in rain water.
Maggie Craig’s writing catalogue includes highly-rated and very readable insights into the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and Red Clydeside. It was only natural then, when David Innes and Maggie met that a political discussion would ensue.
I think the worst thing that happened to Britain was Margaret Thatcher. Someone tried to tell me that she had a human side. I said that I didn’t want to talk about Margaret Thatcher as we would fall out if we did.
I wouldn’t wish ill on anyone, but that’s one grave I would dance on because she skewed Britain. I’m not at all anti-English and I hate the Scottish nationalism that is, because that’s a divide and conquer thing.
I remember when she was in power and I was a tourist guide taking German visitors around and they would often say, “I really admire your Mrs Thatcher”, and I’d think, “I’m working, I must be careful here”, but I knew I was tired when I said, “We wouldn’t have had beggars in the street like we do now before Margaret Thatcher”. If you’ve got beggars in the street, there’s something seriously wrong with your society.
I was in Aberdeen for the book signing at Waterstones in October. It was about 6 o’ clock and I’d parked up Huntly Street way and I passed the Cyrenians where there was a crowd of mainly men. I thought, “It’s a soup kitchen! Here in the oil capital of Europe there are people queuing up for a bowl of soup”. You wonder if there shouldn’t be a levy on the oil companies – they haven’t really done much for Aberdeen, have they? They haven’t really left any sort of cultural development behind them.
I think people don’t realise that they themselves have power. Maybe the one blessing of the financial crisis is that people who have been turned into consumers may think again. Shopping centres are the new cathedrals, and it’s almost become like ‘Brave New World’ where people just have to get the latest model of phone. It used to be that you just worked and didn’t have the money to buy the goods you produced, but now we’ve got this circle where you can buy all these goods; but do we need them all?
There’s nothing wrong with honest trade. We need oil to keep our houses powered. I don’t want to go back to candles, to that simple greeny thing. I think I’m quite anti-green and that there’s quite a Fascist strand in a lot of green thought. I went to see the Trump development.
I know people don’t like him and his ways, but I was quite impressed by the people telling us what they were going to do. I thought, “That means I can get down to those dunes where I couldn’t get down before when Menie was a shooting estate”. I’m horrified too, by how we’re being forced to accept windfarms, industrialising the countryside. It’s just people making a buck, little to do with greenness.
I believed in that and now it’s been destroyed. Now it’s been shown to be brutal
I suppose there have been entrepreneurs who have had social consciences but then they claw their way over everyone else. I don’t know the full story of Andrew Carnegie, but I don’t suppose he was lily-white as he made his way up the greasy pole.
I do think there is a ‘zeitgeist’ thing going on, where people are saying that we ought to think about society and community. I slightly despair of the anti-capitalist protestors because they don’t seem to know what they want, what they’re in favour of. It seems a bit vague and woolly. Someone said it was irrelevant that they went to Starbucks to buy their coffee, but to me that’s an issue.
My dad was a member of the Scottish-USSR Friendship Society based in Belmont Street in Glasgow’s west end, and we would meet people from the USSR, who were probably carefully selected, and here on holiday, and they would talk about Robert Burns. Then Prague happened and things went downhill after that. I was about 17 and it felt personal. I thought, “I believed in that and now it’s been destroyed. Now it’s been shown to be brutal.”
The Communist experiment failed. You think about the Russian people, “How much more can they suffer?” because a strong man like Putin always seems to emerge in Russia and just take the country and use it. You wonder, “Is old-fashioned socialism really the answer?” but capitalism stinks, so maybe I’m as bad as the anti-capitalist protestors and don’t know what is the middle ground and what we should be doing. I’m not sure how we can use the old left and right thing any more.
I’m coming round to thinking that everybody should get some sort of a basic wage, but that’s too radical isn’t it?
There’s this dichotomy with the Scottish left. There’s a nationalism and a pride in Scottishness, but there’s also the feeling that the workers don’t have a country – but they do. The workers of Germany, for example, have lots of reasons to be proud of Germany and their own culture.
The Labour Party has moved too far away from its roots and has become perceived as an anti-Scottish party. I think Johann Lamont has a helluva mountain to climb to persuade people that they’re not. I like Alex Salmond. I think he’s very sharp operator, like when he swooped down on to the lawn at Prestonfield House in the helicopter. Someone had produced a poster with Alex Salmond as Che Guevara, “El Presidente” and you can see how that could be dangerous, so I’m angry with the Labour Party for being useless, for taking their eye off the ball.
I think people who are working class kids made good felt that the Labour Party was saying to them that they had to pay higher taxes. But they’d only just clawed their way up to a better situation, so there was to be no help to get your kids to university, that you had to do it all yourself. There’s a problem there in that the politicians themselves were in quite comfortable positions, but they were almost preaching.
I think it’s been advanced before, but I’m coming round to thinking that everybody should get some sort of a basic wage, but that’s too radical isn’t it? It would also give you buying power which would help the economy. If you’re making widgets, someone’s got to be buying them.
I was talking to a woman earlier who said that she couldn’t afford to work and look after her children so she decided to give up work. I wondered when we’d got to the stage where a woman looking after her children was considered not to be contributing to society. It disturbs me that you’re expected to be out there doing some god-awful job rather than being with your kids.
Although Maggie’s only lived in the North East for 20 years, she still sometimes feels like an ‘inabootcomer’. In the concluding part of our chat, she talks about this corner of the planet, and drops a hint that she may find inspiration to write about North East Scotland.