Opinion Archives - Page 76 of 136

Ceilidhcatu – Brazilian Beats Meet Bogie Ballads

Sep 132013

Itinerant Scots have been accused of many musical misdemeanours. Musicologists have built careers tracing the global paths that Scottish traditional music has wandered along, injecting swing into cowboy music, adding Hebridean angst to the blues and a hint of bothy life into bluegrass. Since the heady days when The Old Blind Dogs linked New Deer with New Orleans there’s been a consistent interest in setting traditional Scots tunes against global rhythms. Along those lines, and on the face of it, this looks like an interesting CD release from Huntly’s Deveron Arts, reviewed by Graham Stephen.

Brazilian musician Allysson Velez, inspired by ceilidh music, recognised rhythmic links with his own tradition and its African slave roots. He teamed up with Omar Arif, a West African musician living in the area, and a handful of local musicians, including fiddle maestro Paul Anderson. The result is Ceilidhcatu, promoted as ‘a transcultural community of art’.
What I expected was a cross-cultural stew of shared enthusiasm with musicians sparking off each other’s playing and musical styles.

This may well happen in a live situation, but much of this recording lacks a dynamic spark, sticking to repetitive, unadventurous arrangements and never quite matching its ambitions.

Too often it sounds like two styles brought hesitantly together, shyly inter-mingling, but happier to stick to familiar territory. That, you may argue, is itself a fundamental tradition in the NE.

Not that there is anything wrong with the performances. The musicians play well, which is frustrating, because at times the formula works, giving hints of the possibilities. The relentless African drum patterns, for example, enhance the gloom and menace of Twa Corbies.

Driven by Anderson’s strong fiddle, The Devil In The Kitchen set threatens to take off, demanding to be pushed into overdrive by some strong percussion. When the drums arrive, however, they stick to a repetitive groove regardless of changes in the tunes, where subtle shifts and textures would have brought the set to life.

Opening track Scotland The Brave also suffers from this sense of deceleration, giving a feeling that the two elements have been brought together separately, rather than being a natural bonding. The traditional songs and tunes chosen are also very familiar. Perhaps a choice of material beyond the standard session repertoire might have enhanced the project.

Significantly, the strongest tracks are duets featuring only Velez and Afif, their hypnotic Maracuta rhythms echoing the legacy of slave trade links between Brazil and Africa. Set against this, an unexpected unaccompanied version of The Rovin’ Ploughboy, perfectly sung by Shona Donaldson, somehow encapsulates the aching soul of the NE bothy ballad while Steve Brown’s pipes on Farewell To The Creeks sit well in natural sound effects.

CEILIDHCATU
NordEste/NorthEast (Deveron Arts)

Life Cycle: A Bike Ride Round Scotland And Back to Childhood

Articles, Opinion No Responses »

Sep 132013

On a whim and a wave of memories of his love for his childhood bike, Gary Sutherland calls his younger brother Stewart and proposes that they go for a wee run, just like they did as bairns. This time it’s not a Christmas morning 5-mile round trip to Duffus from their home village of Hopeman on brand new bikes. This time it’s around Scotland. Despite neither having been astride a bike for years, the response is, ‘Yeah, OK’. And so it begins. David Innes reviews.

Part travelogue, part buddy movie storyboard, Life Cycle celebrates the simple pleasures and sense of achievement to be had by travelling, seeing the world from a different perspective and all via self-generated pedal power.

Sutherland’s narrative captures the joys of achievement, cholesterol-stuffed Scottish breakfasts, pints and companionship, even when he and Stewart are struggling with the gradients between Ullapool and Durness.

He dislikes hills. He grimaces at headwinds. He detours miles to visit a good coffee shop. He’s a proper cyclist all right.

Although sometimes the in-family anecdotes and snatches of conversation veer into ‘you had to be there’ territory, there are some gems.

Gary and Stewart have found a Callander bakery selling butteries. Yes, civilisation and Ambrosian lard-laden soul food that far south.

‘Do you think butteries are good for you?’ asked Stewart
‘Oh aye,’ I said, even though they’re nothing but butter and salt, ‘I reckon you could power your way round Scotland on butteries alone’.
‘I’d like to see you give it a go’.
‘I reckon I’d be able to do 10 miles to the buttery’.
‘That’s pretty impressive’.
‘It’s also a lot of butteries’.

Although two-wheeled trainspotterly stattoes like me would love to have had daily progress charts, tables of averages and maps of the journey included as an illustration of the tour, that isn’t the purpose of Life Cycle. In some places it’s almost cathartic as the struggle to self-motivate each morning and the mental and physical anguish of tortuous hill climbs are described.

Life Cycle is a tale of a couple of weeks one summer re-affirming life’s simplicity and familial ties. No more, no less. This is encapsulated in the description of a long and welcome descent after a day of excruciating climbing in Sutherland.

‘My eyes were fixed on my wee brother, flying free amid this majestic landscape. It was one of the finest sights I’d ever seen. It was all worth it for this.’

Now and again there can be too much seemingly-anodyne detail given, but on publication of A Journal Of The Plague Year and Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe was acclaimed for bringing journalistic verisimilitude to the fledgling novel genre. Gary Sutherland is in good company.

So, as we cyclists feel winter on the back of some chillier September mornings, as the shorts are consigned to the back of the drawer and the winter gloves are looked out, what better time to reflect on the pleasures of summer cycling and take inspiration for one’s own road trip once the days lengthen again? You may find it between the easily-read pages of Life Cycle.

Life Cycle: A Bike Ride Round Scotland and Back to Childhood. Gary Sutherland.
Birlinn Books. 214pp. £9.99

Scrotum, The Wrinkled Old Retainer

Aberdeenshire, History, Opinion No Responses »

Sep 132013

I spent a day in Elgin this week researching the news from 1964 at the town’s local history resource centre, reports Duncan Harley. Quite a gem. Full of information from the present day to goodness knows when in the past. Run by enthusiastic and helpful staff, it is a Scottish national treasure!

Elgin is a grand town full of rich history. William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw Haw went to speak there in the 1930s, in an inspired effort to recruit for the Blackshirts.

The sensible folk of the town heckled him, but he chose to tell the assembled crowd of around seventeen that he appreciated their support and knew that they were for his cause. He was, of course, later hanged for treason despite being an Irish-American.

Elgin also has a ruined cathedral and some very fine statuary, including a monument on the hill just west of the town centre, comprising a Doric column topped by a statue which might just be mistaken for a second Nelson’s Column.

Nothing could be further from the truth however. It is in fact a monument to one George Gordon, who in 1794 raised the famous Gordon Highlanders.

The Gordon regiment joined an army under the command of General Moore in the Netherlands campaign, and fought at the Battle of Bergen in 1799 in which Gordon was severely wounded. He was presented with the Grand Cross of the Bath in 1820.

In 1964 there was, of course, the grand opening of the Forth Road Bridge by the Queen and the death of, thankfully, a very few unfortunate folk in the NE from typhoid, so in general life went on.

Many were surprised that after the event – that is the typhoid epidemic, not the opening of that road bridge – when Michael Noble MP and then Secretary of State for Scotland, chose to set aside funds to allow local authorities in Scotland to provide ‘hand washing facilities in public lavatories’.

Vivian Stanshall famously drew attention to the issue on an early 1970s John Peel Show when, in an episode of Rawlinson’s End, he wrote a script which read in part,

FLORIE: Perhaps you’d care to wash your hands?

OLD SCROTUM: Arr, no thank’ee ma’am, I already did that up against a tree afore I came in ‘ere.

Stanshall was found dead on 6 March 1995, after a fire broke out at his Muswell Hill flat. In 2001 Jeremy Pascall and Stephen Fry produced a documentary about him for BBC Radio Four.

Some typhoid facts –

A few weeks after the end of the typhoid epidemic, Elgin hosted the Annual Congress of the Royal Sanitary Association
During the typhoid epidemic, many NE caravan sites refused to take bookings from folk from Aberdeen
Grantown Town Council banned Aberdonians from the locality
In 1964 you could have purchased a nice black and white TV for less than £25
Corned beef can still be found on supermarket shelves throughout the NE
The Elgin Marbles have very little to do with Elgin

Vivian’s full sketch can be read at: http://www.vivarchive.org.uk/images2/Rawlinson-End.pdf

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Petitions Committee Snubs 19,000+ Citizens

Aberdeenshire, Featured, Opinion 6 Responses »

Sep 132013

By Suzanne Kelly.

Menie Estate resident David Milne started a petition to ask for a public inquiry into the past, present and future events and issues arising from Donald Trump’s takeover of the Estate to build ‘the world’s greatest golf course.’

As per previous coverage of the problems faced by residents and visitors to the estate, there are many questions that have remained unanswered as events have unfolded. The Scottish Government called in and approved Trump’s plans – a move which was without precedent.

The actions of the police, local and central government, and Scottish Enterprise as well as the SNH since golf course construction began have included the arrests of two journalists on the charge of ‘breaching the peace’, as shown in Anthony Baxter’s award-winning documentary, You’ve Been Trumped.

Environmental monitoring which was to be robust, was patchy at best, and now seems non-existent. Residents have been stopped by Trump private security. Surely the SNP government, keen to show the benefits of an independent Scotland, would want to honour the request of 19,000 petition signatories, and shed light on its actions if they were above board?

The petitions committee members have decided otherwise.

The brief statement now on their website reads:-

“3 September 2013: The Committee agreed to close the petition, under Rule 15.7, on the basis that all of the organisations that responded state that they have made, and continue to make, details of their involvement with the Menie Development public, and that there is little to demonstrate that another inquiry is necessary or justified.”
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01474

Astonishingly, the method used by the committee when asked to consider investigating these five institutions was to ask them if they thought an investigation was needed. The outcome was inevitable, once the decision was made to rely on the word of the organisations to be investigated.

The committee’s statement refers to ‘another inquiry’. Whilst there was a report on the planning process in 2008, a great deal has happened since then. The statement refers to ‘another inquiry’ – there has not been any inquiry remotely like what was requested by the thousands who signed Milne’s petition.

David Milne’s letter to the Petitions Committee has been heavily redacted. Future articles will look at why Milne’s final statement was cut in this way.

What did he plan to say that the committee did not want the public to see?

Were any of the people on the committee likely to want to prevent an investigation into how Alex Salmond wined and dined Trump, and then intervened in the live planning application? Why did the police arrest two journalists on the say-so of Trump’s site manager, yet decline to even look at potential evidence caught on video of property damage and theft from the Milne property?

Reactions are still coming in from residents, campaigners and politicians; these will be aired in due course as well. But for the time being it is clear that the wish of the people to have a proper, public examination of what is now a cause celebre does not matter to central government.

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Offshore Europe – A View From The Taxi

Aberdeen City, Featured, Opinion 1 Response »

Sep 132013

Well, that’s Offshore Europe over and done with for another two years, and yet again it was a relative success, writes Fin Hall.

The word relative is important here.

Thousands upon thousands of visitors, mainly males in light blue shirts, descended on the city and its surroundings, spending their company’s money on taxis, buses, restaurants, bars and ridiculously overpriced hotels.

There were keen ones taking photos throughout the city to show to their spouses and some might have bought a souvenir or two, if they were able to find the time between meetings, cocktail parties and free dinners.

After all, they were on business trips, and not (ahem…) an all expenses-paid party trip.

Personally, as a taxi driver, I thoroughly enjoy the experience, apart from the traffic jams of course, and not just for the extra business to my trade, although that does help.

I enjoy meeting people who tend to be here for the first time and are interested in hearing about the history of the city, and are fascinated by the grey granite buildings which look so much better in the really good weather that we had during the this year’s show. Some have even made up their minds to return for a holiday break with their wives.

There seem to be mixed feelings about the actual exhibition itself. Some say they don’t really enjoy attending, but do so because their boss tells them to, whilst others don’t mind at all. Some really enjoy it and get a lot out of it.

The general consensus is that there is very little, if any, business done inside the marquees and buildings, where the focus is mainly on a great deal of networking, exchanges of business cards and putting faces to names. There’s a lot of and catching up with old friends and making new ones.

I have been told that most solid deals and promises are done over dinner or, believe it or not, in the taxi queue.

But everyone agrees that the city makes them feel welcome and whole experience is really well run.

As yet, nobody has explained why the gates were locked

But….ah yes, there is always a ‘but’.

To return to the term ‘relative’ in relation to the Exhibition’s success, there were a couple of black marks against this year’s proceedings.

First was the well-publicised locking up of one of the overspill car parks, not only because cars were still awaiting to exit, but, for some inexplicable reason, concrete blocks were dumped on the ground inside the gate. This occurred after a car went on fire in the area, causing two hour delays, resulting in an extensive line of traffic.

This chaos was heightened by the fact that the Dons had scheduled a match against Viking FK of Stavanger with a 1900 kick off time.

As yet, nobody has explained why the gates were locked when cars were still inside. I know that the sign said that the car park was scheduled to close at 1900, but surely anybody with half a brain would have been aware of the situation? Also, what was the idea of putting the concrete blocks in place? I am aware that normally this empty lot is kept blocked off to restrict entry to it by travellers, but surely with 24 hour security in place, the need for laying blocks was totally unnecessary?

Not to worry though, the police finally managed to get somebody to nip over and relieve the blockade. After much persuasion, he grudgingly did the business. At 2300.

As for the P&J, I believe it was, pointing out that amongst the cars trapped inside there were even ‘Mercedes and Land Rovers‘.

How puerile and sycophantic was that? Should we be impressed or feel even more sorry for those vehicle owners than for the guys involved in the lock-in who had Mondeos or Skodas?

An edition of Aberdeen Voice seemingly cannot be published without the council coming in for criticism. This time, it is to do with their efforts in trying to lay on some free events for the visiting masses.

First of all was the three-day closure of Belmont Street for the country fair, which ran from mid afternoon until nine at night. On passing several times, it looked less than mobbed, although it was hard to differentiate between folk actually at the market and people coming and going from the street’s pubs and cafes.

The second laid-on event turned out to be an even bigger waste of your council tax

Why they insist on blocking off thoroughfares for this and the pseudo-continental market, when they have a ready-made market stance at Castlegate, and the larger Union Terrace Gardens, still mystifies most folk

The second laid-on event turned out to be an even bigger waste of your council tax, and that was the non-advertised free music shows held in the quadrangle of the Marischal College.

These concerts, which some of you may still not be aware of, consisted of an international evening, a Scottish evening and a jazz night.

Another faux pas here by our city fathers. Never mind that they seemed not to let anyone know about this, they decided to start the shows at 1800 and run until 2100.

This is really anything but an ideal starting time. It’s even worse than the free match at Pittodrie, since the exhibition didn’t end until 1800, and the taxi rank generally cleared of the remaining stragglers around 1945.

After a busy day, and before dining, the exhibitors and the visitors probably needed at least a half hour rest. So maybe if someone in the corridors of power, had really thought this through, then 2000 would have probably been a more sensible start time.

I picked up a man on Wednesday night who had been performing at the Scottish event, and he said that there were only around thirty people at the show. He also said that the line-up was ‘crap’, although he did use a stronger term to describe his fellow performers.

On passing the Thursday event in my car, it appeared that the jazz evening had a slightly larger audience than previous nights and there were even some people dancing. But overall I don’t think the term ‘success’ can be used to describe what should have been an entertaining affair.

Finally turning to my own profession, whilst most taxi drivers come out to provide a good service, and, yes, to make some extra cash, others decided that, and I quote, ‘I couldn’t be bothered’. Again, a stronger word was used.

It is unfair that some deride the industry which has helped stabilise the city through some lean years

What? You couldn’t be bothered providing a service? Couldn’t be bothered making some extra cash? Oh I see, it’s the idea that the regular Joe Public is being neglected whilst all attention is aimed at the high rollers. Well, in fact, the taxi companies make a point of servicing both their regulars and the visitors, being aware that once the Exhibition is over, life goes on.

It is unfair that some deride the industry which has helped stabilise the city through some lean years, when other cities have suffered high unemployment. The oil business is far from perfect and some feel that it should have been doing more for the city and the populace, but maybe history is to blame for that.

When the big companies first came here and wanted to build, the then council should have said, ‘OK, but first you must do THIS for the town’.

Is that too naive? I don’t think so. When Stewart Milne wanted to develop at Portlethen, Aberdeenshire Council insisted that his company build a new underpass and road system, which he did.

Contrary to this, many years ago, when a company moved into the big house on Howes Road and turned it into an office block, warehouse and yard, they applied to the council to build a road linking their new premises to Lang Stracht to save juggernauts trundling through the housing estate where children would be playing. Unsurprisingly, the council declined their offer.

I realise that this seems to be ending on a negative note, and that really was not my intention. I really wanted this to be a relatively positive piece. Hey, there’s that word again,

So what lessons should be learned from this week?

First of all, obviously, when organising something, make sure that it is well-advertised and that citizens and visitors are aware of it.

Secondly, organise events to start and finish at reasonable times and have them somewhere people passing by will come across them, like the top deck of St Nicholas Centre, or even Union Terrace Gardens.

And finally, make sure there are security or police at every car park exit until all the vehicles have departed.

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Fit’s The Pint?

Creative Writing, Opinion 3 Responses »

Sep 122013

By Bob Smith

The Triple Kirks is noo “The Pint”
The pint o’t a dinna git
As far as a can see fowks
Jist anither design fit’s shit

A “cheese grater” o ae wa’
Twa fish tanks side bi side
Tho’ the kirkie spire it seems
Is bein’ alloot tae bide

Mair office space in oor toon
Fin flats wid be mair eese
Efter 5pm an’ at wikk eyns
Human activity wull a’ cease

Affordable hooses is fit we need
Yet verra fyow cum intae bein
Fit developers class affordable
Ither fowk jist are nae seein

“The Pint” wull cum tae pass
O’ aat there’s little fear
Cos some fowk in the cooncil
Awkwird questions winna speir

A biggin wi little tae commend
Jist anither St Nicholas Hoose
In 30 years wull’t be pull’t doon
Cos it’s nae langer fit fer use?

A’ seen as farrer progress
Bit iss a jist fail tae see
Anither blicht on the skyline
In the toon twixt Don an Dee

©Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2013

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Old Susannah No. 131 – Be Still My Heart

Opinion, Satire and Humour 1 Response »

Sep 062013

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

Tally Ho! It’s been such a pleasant summer in the Deen, and there is no sign yet of the great weather retreating. The Braemar Games are set for this weekend, and it should be another great year for these particularly enjoyable games.

Thanks this week to the brilliant team at Swan Vets for dealing with my ailing cat; they are compassionate, efficient, benevolent and plain speaking. As such, they are unique in almost any field of endeavour. If only we had more people like this in the public sector (or printed press). If only everyone respected animals as much.

For instance, things are as bad as it gets for any cetacean life near to Taji Cove, Japan – the Japanese have started their annual slaughter and hunt of these intelligent, family-orientated animals.

We now know that dolphins communicate on a very sophisticated level; they have identifiable names for individual animals in their pod.

The Japanese however want to slowly butcher these animals (you don’t want to know how slow and painful their death is) – or worse, after being weakened and starved, some are flown (courtesy of Japan Air Lines or China Air) to aquariums around the world. Against this backdrop of unnecessary violence and sadism, India has stood up and passed new legislation against the slaughter and transport of dolphins.

This was an important and bold step; cetacean charities and experts around the world applaud this move. More information here http://www.wdcs.org/

Closer to home, the badger cull continues; science is again thrown out the window, just as it was with the ‘contiguous cull’ which saw millions of livestock destroyed, now admittedly a horrific, unnecessary act of a desperate government.

As pointed out, vaccines were an option; American technology could have seen portable diagnostic equipment used. Instead, we had massive bonfires and animals often destroyed inhumanely, and completely unnecessarily. http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/news-analysis/foot-and-mouth-10-years-on-culling-was-pure-madness/37404.article

We need to re-examine how DEFRA and other animal/environmental agencies always leap to culling as the solution when vaccination and other remedies to animal-related problems exist and are possible.

There is a poisoning of a bird of prey being reported nearly daily now; endangered, rare species are being deliberately targeted. Given the plight of wild animals in the UK, you’d almost think a powerful pro-hunting/culling lobby existed that pressured these organisations from the outside and infiltrated them, working inside them to make pro-culling policy take precedence.

It must be very gratifying writing these endless pro-city garden project stories

But surely not. As long as you’re not a seal, a badger, an ailing cow which could have been inoculated, a bird of prey or any form of deer, this is a great island to be a wild animal. (I hope to get back to my series on ‘cull of the wild’ soon, but recent developments at Menie and UTG have kept me a touch busy).

It’s also been a confusing week, with free paper Metro reporting a decrease in support for the ‘YES’ campaign, and our very own Evening Express claiming the reverse. It’s almost as if you can’t believe what you believe in some papers sometimes.

The EE’s chief reporter David Ewen went on an investigative journalism binge this week. He’s broken the story that John Michie, owner of avant-garde chemist Michie’s on Union Street wants to build in the garden. Hard to believe that Michie has come down in favour of such an act; after all there was barely any sign of enthusiasm from him for the previous proposals (except for the frothing at the mouth).

More on this altruistic Aberdeen Journals Ltd. campaign to ‘mend our broken heart’ (ie building something in UTG) shortly. With his command of economics, city planning, environmental issues and surgical spirit, we’re as good as saved now. He’s of course been on ACSEF for years, a fact that the EE neglected for some reason.

It must be very gratifying writing these endless pro-city garden project stories; I do wonder whether the editor subtly suggests them to his reporters, or if they all clamber to be the one chosen to write more pro web prose. More on that in a moment.

Finally, that poor Mr Cameron hasn’t managed to convince his own MPs let alone Parliament that the best way to help the Syrian people is with airstrikes. In fact there was open hostility when the idea of intervention went to the vote. You could be forgiven for wondering if the LibDem / Conservative coalition has a few stress fractures. But don’t worry, the ever-strategic Ken Clark is coming to Cameron’s rescue.

So, nice weather and nice veterinarians aside, perhaps it is time for some definitions with that.

Military Action: (Mod Eng. compound noun) Waging battle, physical intervention in a problem. (Clearly not waging war of course)

That poor Mr Cameron; he’s going to start wondering who is friends are. All he wanted was a bit of support in the House of Commons from his fellow Torys to help the Syrian people – with a little bit of military action.

Children in Syria are being tortured, starved, orphaned, and recently burnt to death in a school. Old Susannah would love to tell you how this amounts to a ‘civil’ war, or indeed what wars have ever been civil. Over a million people have been made homeless; unknown numbers have been killed, tortured, disappeared.

Clearly what we need to do is bomb them.

Some weak-livered hippies think we need to be sending medical aid, shelter, food, rescuing people and working round the clock for a diplomatic end to this civil war. How disappointing that some of this ilk seem to have got into the House.

Poor Cameron must have been feeling down as dozens of his own MPs voted against him. Luckily, that nice Mr Clarke as come to the rescue. He’s said Cameron was only doing what the Americans wanted him to do by raising the vote.

“Mr Clarke, the Minister Without Portfolio, has disclosed that the Americans “wanted us to make this vote very quickly”. He said that the Government “did not have time” to ensure that it had enough support from MPs to win the vote. “
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Cameron-told-to-hold-quick-Syria-vote

Well, the coalition may have lost control of the House, but thankfully, the Americans are still setting the House’s agenda. Phew. For anyone who thinks blankets rather than bombing is the answer (with food and medicine thrown in), more info here. http://www.redcross.org.uk/syriacrisis

Broken Heart Campaign: (modern Aberdonian media propaganda phrase) To make everyone in Aberdeen happy by building something – anything in UTG.

When all is dark, when you can’t get a good VAT deal on regenerating brown field sites (which we have just a few of in central Aberdeen), when billionaires aren’t getting their way by commandeering common good land for their cronies to manage, who ya gonna call? Evening Express!

Using all of its muscle without a thought of trying to sell more papers or keep its advertisers happy, Damian Bates’ organ is going to mend our broken heart! I didn’t know we had one, but there you go. Shops will fill up – we just have to build in the garden.

Perhaps a train stop makes some kind of sense for accessibility obsessives, but then again, if wheelchair users can get in the gardens now, what is the point.

When we have some specific actual architectural drawings, we can see what they’re on about. These, unlike those pretty web drawings, will show any safety features, HVAC details, and any underground structures (which will be opposed if they alter the park). However much cheerleading Wood, Michie and their pals do, there are just a few minor obstacles to consider.

There will be adherence to EU and UK procurement procedures. Aberdeen City Gardens Trust is not going to automatically get control of so much as a blade of grass: the whole thing is going out to tender (architecturally too, Halliday Fraser Munro take note).

There will be environmental impact studies. There will be a public design vote with completely transparent results, which will include the chance to vote for improving the gardens, not building in them.

There is a difference between mending a broken heart and fixing something that’s not broken

There will be, unlike the lovely web, something called a project. A project, for the benefit of any ACSEF members still reading, requires a defined scope of the work to be carried out, a timescale for the work, and (sorry ACSEF) a detailed budget which will be adhered to.

There will be no further expenditure by ACSEF or any other quango on propaganda (we spent £125 or so on a photo ‘showing the gardens are inaccessible’ just for openers) and no more public money doled out to consultants (if you want to know more about the half million pounds of public money swallowed so far for this proposed land grab – sorry heart-mending project – is, have a look at https://aberdeenvoice.com/2012/02/the-great-city-gardens-project-gravy-train/ )

The moral authority of the Evening Express is beyond reproach – or is that beyond the pale? Considering Mrs Bates makes her money from the much trumpeted Trump course which the EE and P&J are always happy to talk up, you have to wonder. Perhaps there is a Bates uncle or auntie on ACSEF? Is it the advertising revenues and the dwindling circulation rate that’s behind this heart propaganda?

I think we should be told (but we won’t be).

There is a difference between mending a broken heart and fixing something that’s not broken. Lower the business rates, start some initiatives to give our talented fashion, craft and arts students and practitioners empty store space to regenerate the town centre, stop building new stores (the mall didn’t exactly help the high street, and a first year economic student could have told us that).

But we need that green space, and what’s more we own it. We don’t need Smith managing it for us. Regenerate the brown field and in so doing stop the urban sprawl. No open heart surgery required.

One way or the other, EE involvement, ACSEF involvement or not – there is going to be no more cronyism, no more secrecy and no more propaganda. And that’s a shame for a few people. Sorry.

Well, if they’re going to continue with the monomania, so must I.

Next week: more on recent Trump-related developments, possibly some city of culture bid skulduggery uncovered too…

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Facile Scotland

Articles, Opinion 3 Responses »

Sep 062013

Having seen a book entitled Fascist Scotland (Birlinn Books, 256 pages) at the library I thought I’d check it out as the name of the author, Gavin P Bowd, seemed oddly familiar. This proved to be correct as he wrote an article in Scotland on Sunday earlier this year linking Scottish Nationalism with Nazism for which he allegedly received ‘death threats’. Having read this awful book I can imagine the alleged ‘death threats’ can only have come from serious historians who have seen their profession dragged into the gutter and their status reduced to that of a third-rate fairground barker, writes Dave Watt.

Basically, the book implies that there has been a major connection between Scotland and Fascism since the 1920s.

It is shotgun mudslinging of the lowest order, even implying that Rudolf Hess arrived in Scotland because he knew the place was full of Nazi sympathisers and that the wartime government was afterwards involved in some sort of major cover-up.

He uses a ludicrous quote from an Evelyn Waugh’s Officers and Gentlemen, in which a lunatic alleged Scottish nationalist Miss Carmichael, an avid admirer of Hitler, proclaims that, ‘When the Germans land in Scotland, the glens will be full of marching men come to greet them, and the professors themselves at the universities will seize the towns’, as his basis for showing that Scotland was just waiting for the word to go Nazi during the war.

Presumably the 50000 Scottish servicemen and women who died in the Second World War were all rushing to join the Wehrmacht when they absent-mindedly forgot that they had rifles in their hands and the Germans were obliged to kill them.

Bowd also claims that although 549 people in Scotland volunteered to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and only one (yes, that’s right, one) went to fight for the Fascists, there were many Franco sympathisers in Scotland and, at one point, refers to us as ‘Mosley’s Lost Legion’.

Based on this kind of statistical interpretation I could state that there are many sympathisers in Scotland for the notion that the Earth is flat.

One of the more surreal pieces in the book alleges that the Protestant League in Scotland initially supported the Spanish Republic since they were kicking out priests from Spanish schools, but goes on to state that they all changed their minds as the Civil War went on and supported the Fascists as a consequence of becoming suddenly impressed with Hitler.

No evidence is supplied for this abrupt alleged Scottish Protestant devotion to Hitler, there are no voting statistics, no pictures of Orange banners with Adolf crossing the Rhine on a white dobbin on the 12th of July, no radio broadcasts from Ibrox with the crowd singing ‘Hello, Hello, We Are The Falangist Boys’ and stating that they were ‘up to their knees in Anarcho-Syndicalist blood’.

Nope. Nothing like that. It happened like that just because he says so.

Paralleling the surreal observation about Scottish support for Franco, he seems to imply that since the National Front got 0.08% of the vote in 2011, there is a huge secret groundswell towards Fascism in Scotland. The obvious corollary to this is that if the evil Jocks gets independence it will be concentration camps all over the shop and you won’t be able to get a quiet latte in Costa for people standing on chairs singing Tomorrow Belongs To Me.

This book is appalling. I don’t know if the smug-looking cock (see pic) did any serious research apart from cherry-picking anything, no matter how tenuous, to make his spurious point but he seems to be unable to relate his findings to his own statistics.

Don’t buy this book. Don’t bother reading it. It’s crap.

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Despairing NHS

Creative Writing, Opinion 1 Response »

Sep 062013

By Oliver Swingler.

In the darkness,
Six feet under,
Bevan turning in his grave
Sixty-five years of free healing,
The NHS he cannot save.

All the doctors,
And the nurses,
Cleaners, porters do their best,
But their efforts no longer valued
In the growing profits quest.

Drug companies pay for research
And they promise us a cure
But all they want is extra profit
And to hell with the sick and poor.

Clegg and Cameron keen to finish
Dismantling done by Brown and Blair,
PFI debts, target culture.
Reorganised for millionaires.

Shipman, Savile, Stafford hospital,
Just how bad can scandals get,
Whistle-blowers, enquiries ignored,
But you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Oh our caring,
Oh our sharing,
Now despairing NHS,
Thou art lost and gone for profit,
Privatised to serve the rich.

Image credit: <a href=’http://www.123rf.com/photo_8687649_lonely-senior-woman-in-the-hospital-bed-hooked-up-to-an-iv.html’> lisafx / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

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Rosemary Goring, After Flodden – A Review

Featured, Opinion No Responses »

Sep 062013

We’re a week away from the 500th anniversary of the ill-starred Battle of Flodden, where ten thousand Scottish deaths robbed the nation of the cream of its youth and its respected and progressive monarch James IV. It is a half-millennium-old scar on the Scottish psyche that refuses to heal. Bringing a human and emotional focus to that dreadful afternoon and its immediate aftermath is the triumph of Rosemary Goring’s first novel. Voice’s David Innes reviews.

It is all too easy to read military history and to become tied up in weaponry, strategy, tactics and numbers, forgetting the individual human outcomes and emotional fallout of major, traumatic events.

After Flodden time-shifts effortlessly and expertly, moving between the preparation for battle, a harrowing account from a participating character and, majorly, a Kidnapped-style post-battle journey across the threatening Border Marches as far south as Durham, to deal with a familial issue of national importance.

Whilst this is going on, the English noose threatens to tighten around the Borders, regarded as an anarchic free-booting hotbed of crime and hostility to authority.

Of course, constrained by accounts of historical events and by the actual cast list of 1513, the author has to fit within the timeframe and the presence of major contemporary political characters. This does not curb her narrative imagination, however, and the plot and sub-plots are populated by protagonists with whose emotions, motives and actions it is easy to identify.

Emotions? Character traits? Are mistrust, subterfuge, passion, intrigue, betrayal, guilt and remorse enough to be going on with? Paniter, Crozier, Torrance, Louise, Benoit and even the vixen are memorable and credible imaginative creations, even where Goring’s own obvious fictional instincts have to be tempered by historical fact and evidence.

This is a fascinating and illuminating page-turner, especially for a debut novel, and readers will hope that there is more to come from the skilful, artful pen of Rosemary Goring.

ROSEMARY GORING – After Flodden
(POLYGON) 331 pp £14.99

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