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The Stealing Of Sheep

Articles, Featured, Opinion No Responses »

Jan 102014

Duncan Harley looks at the debate about the looming war with Wales.

The film Braveheart is held dear by some despite having been described by others as one of the most historically inaccurate modern films ever made.

Seemingly based on Blind Harry’s epic poem The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, the epic story was adapted for the big screen by one Randall Wallace who, for reasons best known to Hollywood, chose to pair William Wallace up with the Princess Isabella despite the fact that she did not actually travel to Britain until 1307 a full two years after Wallace’s execution.

In the poem Blind Harry somewhat famously wrote:

“Till honour ennymyis is our haile entent
It has beyne seyne in thir tymys bywent
Our ald ennemys cummyn of Saxonys blud
that nevyr yeit to Scotland wald do gud.”

In the Hollywood film Mel Gibson somewhat famously shouted:

“Freedom.”

Directed by and starring Mel Gibson, the film Braveheart met with some positive reviews and won several academy awards. Indeed Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 81% with an average score of 7.1/10. The film’s depiction of the Battle of Stirling Bridge was listed by CNN as one of the best battles in cinema history, rivalling Stalingrad and even The Fall.

In the screenplay New Yorker Gibson portrays William Wallace, a 13th-century Paisley man from just outside Elderslie who led the Scots into the First War of Scottish Independence against King Edward I of England.

In truth, The English authorities saw Wallace as nothing more than a dangerous outlaw who had killed the son of an English constable in Dundee. In the film, however, Gibson invents everything that is Scotland in what to many of us chiels seems like re-run of Brigadoon.

In the May of 1297 Wallace was in Lanark. It is said that he was visiting his wife, the very beautiful Marion Braidfute, whom he had married in secret. Lanark Castle was then held by an English sheriff, Sir William Heselrig. When Heselrig’s soldiers learned that Wallace was with Marion they surrounded him.

Wallace escaped but Marion was captured by Heselrig. The English sheriff then had Wallace’s wife put to death.

That night Wallace and his men made their way back to Lanark Castle where under cover of darkness Wallace broke into Sheriff Heselrig’s bedchamber and hacked the Englishman to death with his broadsword. Justice was served.

over 5000 sheep have been rustled by agents of the Welsh office

In 1999, a full 694 years after the Scottish heroes brutal execution by the tried and tested means of being hung until almost dead then being ritually disembowelled before a baying crowd at London’s Smithfield market, Scottish hackers declared war on Wales following a sorry tale of sheep rustling.

After first warning the then First Minister Donald Dewar, an urban terrorist Scottish protest group calling itself the Hardcore Highland Haxxors (HHH) took control of the Scottish Executive Web site and renamed it as the “Scottish H4xecutive” after the web consultancy responsible for the security failings on the Scottish Parliament site with content including:

“The new civil servants charged with advising Scottish politicians and enforcing their policy have also accused the Welsh Office of rustling sheep. In retaliation, the HHH has declared that Scotland is now at war with Wales.”

“The Scottish Executive has estimated that over 5000 sheep have been rustled by agents of the Welsh office in the last six months. It is of our opinion that these sheep that were destined for the butchers of Carlisle will soon end up on the streets of Cardiff.”

“In force IMMEDIATELY is a state of WAR between us to put right the theft of our precious sheep.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said that although the incident was embarrassing there was “no threat to internal security” and “Our internal system is quite separate from the information on our Web site”, he said adding that all was being done to resolve the problem.

Newspapers around the world carried the story.

Spanish media’s www.noticias.com reported that:

“Un grupo hacker denominado “Hardcore Highland Haxxors” consiguió acceso al servidor web del gobierno regional de Escocia, reemplazando la imagen del Primer Ministro Donald Dewar con la del líder nacionalista Alex Salmond. Los administradores del sistema tuvieron que desconectarlo de la red para arreglar el daño hecho por los hackers.

“La nota del gobierno, sin embargo, no ha especificado si los hackers tenían algún motivo político. Salmond es el líder de la independentista Scottish National Party (SNP), la mayor oposición escocesa en el nuevo parlamento. Entre otras cosas, los hackers cambiaron el nombre del Scottish Executive por el de Scottish H4xecutive y declararon em broma la guerra a Gales, alegando el robo de 5.000 ovejas escocesas.”

ZDNet’ s Will Knight commented that the “Hardcore Highland Haxxors had made a serious political statement by replacing a picture of the First Minister of Scotland, Donald Dewar, with one of Alex Salmond leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party”.

A spokesperson from the Scottish parliament, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not consider the Welsh war declaration an earth-shaking matter.

“I don’t think the messages were really serious. I don’t really know what they were all about. I think it was some sort of abstract humour. It just shows that security needs to be a bit tighter.”

In the January of 2014 just after the bells had rung and a full 708 years or so after Wallace’s death, many of us Scots received a message from the current incumbent of the post of First Minister, Mr Alex Salmond. In a quasi HRM Queen Elizabeth II delivery Mr Salmond said that 2014 would be a “truly amazing year”.

You can view Mr Salmond’s New Year message at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/#slide/1/paused of course but in essence it says

“Happy Hogmanay from the National Library of Scotland. I am at an exhibition called The A to Z of Scotland. It highlights the contribution our country has made to the world from Dolly the sheep to the Dandy, penicillin, Harry Potter, television and tarmac roads.”

Penicillin is of course a life saving invention but the Dandy and Harry Potter? Dolly is of course thankfully deceased God rest her soul.

The discovery of Penicillin is often attributed to Sir Alexander Fleming, though according to Welsh history, Fleming’s friend and colleague Merlin Pryce may have been the actual discoverer.

No wonder the Hardcore Highland Haxxors were so keen to declare war on Wales back in 1999.

As for the Dandy and Harry Potter, many of us Scots hesitate to boast about either.

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Old Susannah No. 139 – Christmas, Corruption, Conspiracy

Opinion, Satire and Humour 5 Responses »

Dec 192013

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

Season’s Greetings! No doubt you’ve bought your presents, decked your halls with boughs of holly, sent all your Christmas cards, planned your Boxing Day television viewing, and ordered your turkey.

The holidays are upon us, the pre- pre-Christmas Black Friday sales have turned to pre-Christmas sales which will in turn morph into Boxing Day sales. Hoards of shoppers will claw and elbow each other to get the last Size 14 Per Una black lace dress or the last Barbie’s Dream House from the shelf, all in the spirit of the season of good will.

Happy bargain hunting. No need then for any further lines from me on the true meaning of Christmas.

Of course there are local shops with handmade / unique / different gifts that could be bought to support local traders, but then again, selecting gifts from ma and pa shops requires a bit more time, thought, and sometimes a bit more money.

If you ever worry about who’s made the trainers or clothes you’ve just bought (or how animals were treated in the process), I wouldn’t bother. No less than an RGU lecturer I had some years back explained to his eager class how much better off third world workers are now.

In the old days, they would work for free. Now they can live and work in factory dormitories miles from their families 24/7 and earn a pound or two a week – which is more money than they were used to. Result!

This particular lecturer’s idea seemed to be that this is progress, and we’re doing our bit to help the third world. I was pretty much the only person in the class who asked the question ‘but what about ethics’? It’s best not to question people in a position of power (a lesson that is somewhat lost on me), and much better still to agree with them completely if they have the power of giving you a good grade.

If you’re lucky enough to get rewarded for putting your principles aside during these ‘Business 101’ type lectures from an early age, pretty soon you’ll have lots of good grades, and you won’t be troubled by any nagging doubts about what’s right and wrong, making it easier for those in power to get you to agree to more and more business-friendly, ethic-free dogma.

You’re not allowed to make fois gras in the UK for cruelty reasons

Anyway, back to your Christmas shopping. If your fur trimmed coat was made from cats and dogs kept in unspeakable conditions and skinned alive by veritable slave workers, or if the fur was pulled from a suffering rabbit to make you a nice pink sweater, well, you’re just helping to create a more competitive, capitalist world.

Well done you. (At least I didn’t mention fois gras production. But since you ask)

Fois Gras is produced by force-feeding mature male geese by shoving tubes filled with food down their throats as they spend their last weeks in tiny cages so they can’t even stretch their wings, let alone fly. Their livers and stomachs sometimes burst; they are traumatised beyond words.

You’re not allowed to make fois gras in the UK for cruelty reasons, which is bad for capitalism. Still, a few places still persist in importing the stuff and tout it to the would-be elite.

While you put your presents under the tree, none of which were probably made in the UK let alone locally, you might do well to wonder if there is some connection to you buying £4 jeans and the guy next door losing his job to a foreign company that can produce goods cheaper. It’s almost as if there was a connection of some sort.

The question of ethical goods, working conditions and animal treatment are, of course, the sort of spurious concerns of those who would slow the free market economy. As mentioned, an RGU professor was keen to tell his students how buying cheap Chinese goods was canny, and ethics had nothing to do with it.

Old Susannah recently had a conversation with someone about our entrepreneurial hero, Donald Trump.

I wanted to make sure the business woman in question knew about a few minor details which unfairly make The Don look a bit tarnished. There is the BBC proving his links in the US to organised crime figures. There are the lawsuits, the investors who have lost millions, and of course the small matter of the Trump University leading to charges of racketeering against DT.

The Trumps of this world don’t get where they are just on their good looks alone

I was wondering whether local companies might not look good allying themselves to the Trump course or hotel, if they wanted to stay free of any association to what unkind people are calling sleaze and corruption.

The shocked reaction I got from this woman was:

“well, that’s just how business works. I’ve had to do many things that were not strictly speaking legal, but that’s just how it is”

I wonder if she’d had the same RGU lecturer as I had?

There are those who think that corruption only applies to cases where envelopes of unmarked bills are changing hands. That kind of corruption is largely a thing of the past, except of course in cricket and football. There are far more subtle, inventive ways to operate.

So, is it OK to bend the rules, ignore dishonesty, engage in a bit of friendly racketeering or animal cruelty if there is money to be made? Absolutely. The Trumps of this world don’t get where they are just on their good looks alone. And so, to help the budding entrepreneur, shopper, or business student, here are a few definitions from Christmases past, present and yet to come.

Cronyism: (Eng. Noun) To show favouritism based on relationships such as family, friends, work colleagues.

Cronyism charges were levelled against the BBC; the National Audit Office believes something may be amiss with some of its latest payouts to the most senior departing BEEB execs.

Some of these poor overworked execs have had a tough time; one only lasting a matter of months before going. As you pay your licence fee this month, you might be forgiven for wondering how much of it is going on the £25 million or so in payouts for 150 leaving executives.

Some people were given more than their contracts said they should receive by their colleagues, but that is probably just generosity, not cronyism. Oddly, former Barclays bank supremo Marcus Agius came into the spotlight as well for his role within the BBC doling out taxpayers money.

I guess banks are used to doing what they wish with public funds, since we decided to give them all of our money not so long ago, and that was money well spent.

Obviously this cronyism thing is something that only goes on with left-wing media types

Former BBC deputy director Mark Byford was so traumatised by leaving that he had to be given a token sum of £300k to keep him ‘fully focused’ on his work before he left; his package was worth a million or so. What a brave guy to soldier on.

The Times reports on 16/12 that ‘BBC executives were paid millions of pounds in ‘sweeteners’ because of leadership failures at the highest level and a culture of cronyism’. Well, if friends can’t help each other, what are they for?

Obviously this cronyism thing is something that only goes on with left-wing media types. Thankfully here in the Deen we have the well-balanced ACSEF to be our business and moral compass.

For instance, I’m sure all the work it did to promote the granite web, spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer pounds in the process, were committed only after completely fair, anonymous tendering processes had taken place, even if they channelled many of the invoices through the Chamber of Commerce which refuses to let us know who did the well-paid work.

It’s not as if, say, a PR company that had ACSEF presence and clients interested in the web going forward would just be given work by ACSEF without any full tender process.

It’s not as if disgraced ex-policeman Ian Paterson was known as ‘patting Patterson’ in the circles he moved in without anyone doing anything to dissuade their colleague from his inappropriate behaviour.

In the bigger Scottish picture, it’s not as if a friendship with the First Ministers past or present would lead to any favouritism. Where would we be, for instance, if the rich and powerful could just befriend and dine with our ministers, and get a little help with planning permission, or get appointments to government posts?

Thank goodness for our transparent, fair, unbiased government on the local and national stages, without a whiff of cronyism.

Amnesia: (Eng. noun) A form of illness, causing temporary or permanent loss of short- and/or long-term memory.

Police Scotland are suffering from a bout of amnesia; they can’t remember where they left a report they wrote on the City Council’s interesting finances.

The police surely didn’t find anything criminal going on

Back in 2008, Audit Scotland looked at how our then city administration seemed unable to make any profit out of selling real estate; we the taxpayer lost out on a few million pounds here and there as Kate Dean and Co. approved sales of land / buildings for a fraction of their real value.

Then Chief Executive Paterson (not to be confused with ex, disgraced policeman Patting Paterson, who is now convicted of sex offences) vowed he would not to resign over the property sales crisis. The next week he suffered a bout of amnesia, and promptly resigned, taking with him only a modest home in Ferryhill, which the city, apparently, sold to him for less than market value.

At least they were consistent.

Audit Scotland investigated, but could not decide if it was incompetence or criminality at work as deal after deal involving the same people (cronyism?) lost thousands upon thousands.

They turned the matter over to the police to investigate, and very little was ever said on the matter again. The police surely didn’t find anything criminal going on (cronyism?) or they would have arrested some of the city mandarins that they would have known from being on different committees and working groups with.

And in a classic case of amnesia, only a few years later, the police can’t find any record of the report they created. Or so they told me.

No wonder the police found no wrong doing. They can’t even find the report.

They might have the prints and DNA of children, people accused but acquitted of crimes, a few dangerous journalists such as Anthony Baxter and Richard Phinney (creators of ‘You’ve Been Trumped’) on file forever; but they cannot find a report into city council transactions worth millions of pounds.

Old Susannah isn’t getting any younger, and can be forgetful sometimes, too. But I have this ingenious method of looking for documents I’ve created on my computer: It’s called ‘search’. If I type details of information I’m looking for from anything I wrote, the computer finds it for me in moments.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has been found guilty of turning healthy businesses into bankruptcies

I wonder if the police are clued up to this amazing way to look for infomation? Are they still writing their reports on vellum with ink? I can even look for items in my email, and some of you out there may be aware of this amazing technological development from the 1980s, too.

So, corruption according to some is only when you have envelopes of money flying around; I guess a little amnesia, washing of hands, selling taxpayer property for less than the real value, be it Aberdeen land or the Royal Mail, can’t be corrupt then. Anyway, I’m sure it’s just one of those things, and no cause for concern.

Words such as ‘scandal,’ ‘coverup’ and incompetence would never occur to me when I think of how the former council sold land. But still, I wonder what the market value was of the house Doug ‘I will not resign over this’ Paterson bought from us when he retired, after presiding over these little property sales.

Fraud: (English noun) The act of committing dishonest acts for personal gain

With professors, like my old RGU don, striving to indoctrinate young (and in this case old) minds that all’s fair in business, perhaps it’s no wonder we have one or two instances of fraud around us locally and nationally.

From Carly Fallon passing off other people’s writing as her own, to restaurants offering bribes to those who give them good Trip Advisor write-ups (you know who you are), from companies using offshore tax dodges, fraud is definitely the new rock and roll.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has been found guilty of turning healthy businesses into bankruptcies, and then magically buying such businesses for a pittance and making profit, while the original owners have lost everything. Again, all’s fair in love, war and business.

More on Christmas next week, but if Father Christmas is making a list of who’s naughty or nice, one or two people in Aberdeen may find themselves on the naughty list.

Right, well it’s Christmas again.

I think by now we’ve established that not everyone looks like a supermodel, can afford hundreds of pounds of food and presents, and not everyone will be having dozens of close, equally-beautiful friends dashing to their homes in open sleighs to sing around 12’ tall, perfectly decked trees.

Don’t buy into a picture that doesn’t exist. But do, if you’re feeling stressed or unhappy about anything at all at this time of year, talk to a friend.

If you can’t talk to a friend or a family member, talk to one of the many services out there that will listen to you without judging you. Stress is particularly bad for people at this time of year, and it’s important to remember that worrying about things outside of your control will never solve anything, but will make you anxious or ill.

If there are things you can change and want to change about your work, life, home, then stop, figure out what you need to do, and start to make a plan for change. Don’t let your problems grow out of all proportion.

If you need a little bit of perspective, do some volunteering, fund-raising, join a group – do something new. You’ll be glad you did. There are people out there far worse off than you or I; be glad for what you’ve got, and don’t be tricked into thinking you need more material things to keep up with some imaginary Jones.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit obvious/preachy/oversimplified – but at the end of the day, it is definitely within your power to take stock, realise what you do have to be thankful for, and to fix what needs fixing. Please be happy, be safe, and have a Happy Christmas or whatever you might be celebrating. – OS

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The Bloody, Bloody Banks of Loch Lomond

Environment, Featured, Opinion 4 Responses »

Dec 062013

Suzanne Kelly writes about how the Royal Society for Protection of Birds is determined to cull dozens of feral goats – and deny an animal sanctuary the chance to rescue them, and what is going wrong with land management in Scotland today.

Culling is a fact of wildlife management (so we’re told). But are we culling all sorts of creatures in Scotland too aggressively?
Are there other alternatives to culling?

Many animal rights charities would point to measures such as fencing, deterrents, rehoming and other means.

But we have apparently seen illegal shooting of seals from private land in Gardenstown without the landowner’s consent, and against the landowner’s stated wishes.

Aberdeen culled its Tullos Hill deer population by 35 or so animals: their records are too contradictory to say exactly how many were shot.

Elsewhere, mountain hares are being persecuted by gamekeepers, and birds of prey are being illegally killed, often suffering agonising deaths from poison or in traps.

Prosecutions for such offences are rare and when there are successful convictions, the penalty is more often than not a fine so low that it is seen by many as just another business expense for the unscrupulous landowners whose employees are engaged in this kind of activity.

The badger cull may top all these instances though for its cruelty, illogic, and potentially inflaming the problem it was meant to tackle.

“Concerns weren’t only raised about the cruelty inherent in shooting badgers and about the possibility of leaving many wounded to die slowly from their injuries, but also about whether or not it would even be effective.” http://www.care2.com/causes/cruel-badger-cull-meets-embarrassing-end.html#ixzz2mdfHCvFj

But surely when a small population of animals can be rescued and rehomed instead of being slaughtered, an organisation such as the RSPB can be relied upon to do the right thing, and not kill where a clear non-lethal option exists? Not at Loch Lomond.

This Gets My Goat

The RSPB want to plant more trees for birds; so far so good. They want to kill feral goats, and have already shot at least 5 at the time of writing. They claim they will continue until March. A huge outpouring of public anger, and threats from the public to withdraw their donations has caused the RSPB to enter into talks: but they are continuing to kill. The BBC reported:-

“Hillside Animal Sanctuary urged RSPB Scotland to halt the cull, which is being carried out to protect Pollochro Woods. The area is viewed as a site of special scientific importance. RSPB Scotland said it would consider alternative solutions in March, but that the cull will continue until then.

“Along with advisors at Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), the RSPB wants to reduce goat numbers in the area from about 69 to 30. So far, five out of the planned 20 animals targeted during 2013 have been killed. But Wendy Valentine of Hillside Animal Sanctuary said it had offered to give the goats a home for the rest of their lives rather than have them shot.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-25123587

a salmon in a fish farm has an appalling existence

The RSPB’s rebuff of Hillside has created a media and Twitter storm, and it is hoped that the RSPB will see sense and relent.

John Robins of the Animal Concern Advice Line issued a draft letter and list of people to contact, which can be found at the end of this article. Robins said:-

“Scotland for Animals is heavily involved in the negotiations to save the goats and they tell me that it is also important to lobby the Forestry Commission and Government agency Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). It does not surprise me that SNH is involved in this.

“SNH has developed what can only be described as a culling compulsion and is intent on slaughtering tens of thousands of deer and grey squirrels. They were also responsible for the culling of hedgehogs in the Hebrides and supported the culling of the colony of wild wallabies on an island in Loch Lomond.”

Hillside wrote to its supporters saying:

“Following our plea for help in our last email to you, we would like to thank all of our supporters who inundated the RSPB to voice their dissatisfaction about the culling. The RSPB have responded today by contacting us requesting a meeting but HAVE NOT AGREED to stop killing the goats at Loch Lomond.

“Please can you help us save the lives of these popular goats by contacting the RSPB and asking them to let Hillside give them a safe home. You can do this by contacting RSPB CEO, Mike Clarke on the following email address… Mike.Clarke@rspb.org.uk“

The RSPB were faced with public outcry when details of the goat cull were exposed. They issued a statement claiming they tried to seek alternatives, and claimed they were in touch with the British Feral Goat Research Group, claiming:-

“We have never been opposed to the relocation of the goats and, in fact, we sought a proposal for relocation from the Feral Goat Research Group when we were drawing up the herbivore management plan for the site in 2012, though unfortunately none was forthcoming.” – email to S Kelly of 4 December (more on BFGRG here: http://www.britishferalgoat.org.uk/aims.shtml )

As Private Eye Magazine might say – “Whoops!” When asked to comment the British Feral Goat Research Group answered:-

“Please see our Facebook page for regular updates,..,,we have NEVER stated what has been said, and are pursuing this at present with RSPB” – email to S Kelly of 4 December

The RPSB claims it must go ahead with its current cull, and before allowing any goats to be moved, the RSPB must have assurances the goats’ future welfare will be ensured (presumably this concern for their welfare excludes the RSPB’s own current destruction of the goats).

Wildlife Management and Mismanagement

Who is behind the huge lobbying efforts in Scotland to destroy our wildlife? Fish farms could use better netting to prevent seals from getting to the caged fish. For that matter, a salmon in a fish farm has an appalling existence with barely any room to swim and follow its natural instincts. It is subject to painful attack from flesh-eating sea lice.

Landowners say the SNH population figures are way out of line with reality

Estates that rely on tourist money for shooting want to keep bird of prey numbers down. The SNH seems determined to turn deer into overpopulating villains, eating everything in sight and has even named the non-native Muntjac species ‘the asbo deer’.

Self-publicist SNH man Jamie Hammond is often linked to stories saying deer are over-populated and must be killed off.

At present, landowners are in a standoff against the SNH. What were originally billed as ‘guidelines’ to landowners for deer population control are set to become mandatory powers. The SNH wants to be able to go onto all private land in Scotland, determine how many deer should be shot, and ensure that the killing is carried out.

Landowners say the SNH population figures are way out of line with reality. Landowners also cite the recent ridiculous advice coming from the SNH that fawns should be shot along with their does to avoid them starving in the winter. Landowners point out that this has always been the way that hunting operates.

Adding to the forces aligned against animals is the news that the Forestry Commission has decided to get into the wind farm business. Precisely how a government entity can simply announce that it has a new function is something of a mystery.

There is also an option to control deer by using birth control measures, but because these are currently expensive and perhaps difficult to administer, no one seems to want even to investigate this option. Amazingly, there are laws preventing people from moving deer from over-populated areas.

Aberdeen City Council nevertheless considered this option when looking at the Tullos Hill situation, but decreed that since up to 50 percent of wild deer can die if tranquilised, the answer was to shoot and kill 100 percent of the creatures.

It seems difficult to understand why a safer form of tranquilisation can’t be found in the 21st century, or why such a law against transporting deer populations for their own good exists at all. It seems as if some form of lobbying shadow group has an anti-wildlife agenda and a strictly pro-tree one.

Perhaps most ridiculously, the Scottish Wildlife Trust now wants to destroy deer in order to meet Government CO2 targets. These arbitrary targets were set rather high, and it is widely acknowledged that pollutants from vehicles, industrial activity and energy waste are among the worst offenders in terms of CO2 production, as well as other forms of pollution.

But Maggie Keegan of the SWT wants to destroy deer, and was quoted in the press in October pushing this concept. Her theory seems to be that deer eat young trees and other plants, so in order for there to be enough trees to lower CO2, simply shoot the deer.

Trees for Life has planted one million new acres of forest, and yet we still haven’t solved our problem. This is because trees do contribute, when mature, but not all that much in the greater scheme of things. Maggie Keegan vehemently denied by email that there is a pro-hunting element to the SWT, but has not answered questions put to her.

If we have indeed planted so much more new forest, and if trees are the answer, then why haven’t we made the targets already? The SWT are also actively culling grey squirrels in several areas of Scotland. It begs the question, what Scottish wildlife can trust the Scottish Wildlife Trust?

It is a bleak time for Scottish wildlife, and it is time for the actions of all stakeholders, particularly government policy makers to be questioned. Perhaps a good start would be to press the RSPB to allow those Loch Lomond goats to be rescued. If people were to hold to account those behind the culls, boycotting charities when they cross lines such as this one, it might help to turn the tide.

But at present it seems as if financial interests, the hunting lobbyists, business interests and the evangelical desire to plant trees, often for their commercial value, at the expense of existing wildlife will outweigh animal concerns.

Suggested letter and who to write to from John Robins of Animal Concern Advice Line:

Ian Jardine the CEO of SNH: ian.jardine@snh.gov.uk
His boss; Richard Lochhead MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment at the Scottish Government: scottish.ministers@scotland.gsi.gov.uk (put FAO Richard Lochhead in the subject line).
Paul Munro, Secretary to the Board of Management of Forestry Commission Scotland: paul.munro@forestry.gsi.gov.uk
Fiona Logan, Chief Executive of Loch Lomond and the TrossachsNational Park: info@lochlomond-trossachs.org (put FAO Fiona Logan in the subject line).

Once again a short, polite e-mail should suffice. Something along the lines of:

“I ask you to take urgent action to bring about an immediate suspension of the goat cull which is currently underway on the east side of Loch Lomond. The renowned Hillside Animal Sanctuary has offered to rehome the goats. Hillside has successfully carried out such operations in the past and the cull should be suspended at least until the offer from Hillside is fully evaluated.

“All those involved in this cull are either directly funded from the public purse or rely on charitable donations from the public to fund their work. The public, including many people who live in the area where the goats are being killed, are opposed to this unnecessary slaughter.

“Please respect the wishes of those who pay your wages and take action to stop this cull and give serious consideration to the non-lethal alternative which is now available.”

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Musings Of A Newish Music Photographer No. 6

Aberdeen City, Featured, Opinion No Responses »

Nov 282013

In her continuing series on the life of a pit photographer, Julie Thompson takes in The Boomtown Rats gig at the Beach Ballroom, Hells Bells at The Lemon Tree and has a chat with Matt Jolly, in-house photographer at The Moorings.

While Matt Jolly was mid-Atlantic, returning from his jaunt to the US with Fat Hippy Records, I was at the Beach Ballroom to see a band from my youth.
The Boomtown Rats formed when I was 9 or 10 years old.

Growing up, they weren’t my favourite band – just not in my genre at all.

Still, I figured there was no harm in seeing if I could get a photo pass for the event and as luck would have it, I could and did.

I’ve only seen The Boomtown Rats live once before, on one hot summer day in 1985. It was a memorable day where many other bands played, all around the world.

Since then a new generation has emerged and musical taste has changed, so most of the folk at the Beach Ballroom were of the generation who grew up around the time I did.

There was no photo pit at this venue, so getting there at doors open time meant a chance to grab a spot up front but, once you have it, you stay. I was lucky and got a spot at the stage left.

Next to me was local tog, Andy Thorn. Dod Morrison was with us briefly before wriggling his way to centre stage front. I also spotted a couple of other togs on the far right – George Mackie & Craig Chisolm.

The support act was not what we were expecting – but from what I’ve since found out it wasn’t the support act they had previously and seems to have been playing just on this particular evening. Why the change, I don’t know, and it was unfortunate that it was for the last night of the tour and also the last appearance of The Boomtown Rats with Bob Geldof fronting.

Still, all was forgiven when the reason for us all being there appeared. Laser beams created galloping rats on the speakers, there was a flash of a Pedigree Chum advert (which was an apparently an in-joke regarding one of their crew, who had been a ‘Top Breeder’ in the advert) and then the show began.

I had, of course, seen those photos showing Bob looking old, tired and sad – well, all I can say is it is easy to make someone look bad in a photo. The real trick is to make them look good.

There was plenty of energy that night – both on and off stage.

I’ve heard about, but not experienced, the sprung dance floor at the Beach Ballroom, but I thought I was going to be catapulted onto the stage a few times from the way it was reacting to the crowd jumping about.

One intrepid lady sneaked onto the stage for a quick cuddle & dance with, a clearly pleased, Bob before being chased by security and hustled away.

Between songs there was some chat – tales about how certain songs came about and how they’re still relevant today – nothing much has changed.

‘Banana Republic’ written after a trip to the Republic of Ireland. Due to Geldofs ‘denunciation of nationalism, medieval-minded clerics and corrupt politicians’ during an interview, the band were blacklisted from playing anywhere in their home country. The loudest complaints apparently coming from a priest who had a lovechild in the US, as it turned out.

‘Someone’s Looking at You’ – eavesdropping on phone calls, emails, cameras on all streets. No privacy for anyone these days. And then there is ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’… ‘nuff said.

So, 2 encores later, some new tracks from their album along with many of the old favourites, much hand shaking along the stage front and it is all over. My biggest gig to shoot so far – it was great fun and good experience.

I’ve bumped into Matt Jolly a couple of times since his return from the California, where he travelled with Tom Simmons (Captain Tom of Fat Hippy Records), Amy Sawers and Craig John Davidson. Usually busy when we meet, we finally managed to find time to have a chat.

Matt Jolly at work at The Moorings – Credit: Julie Thompson

Matt spent a year studying for a NC in Visual Communication and Photography at Aberdeen College, before entering a 2 year long HND course.

He’s now in his final year and is using his recent experiences covering the Fat Hippy Records trip to the USA as a course project.

He spent 10 years working as a chef before deciding it was time for a change.

He began started filming friends who were working in the local music scene, putting the videos up on youtube, and taking stills using his phone.

Unsatisfied with the results, he decided to revisit an old desire to study photography.

He bought himself a Nikon D3100 and took off on tour with Semperfi, covering their summer of 2010 tour before starting college that autumn.

He began working at The Moorings that Hogmanay – working the bar and practising his photography skills.

The most difficult part (or challenging, as he prefers to put it) of working the venues is shooting in low light – adapting by using slower shutter speeds (itself a challenge, as antics on stage can move fast leading to blurred action) or flash.

Part of his reason for moving on from his previous work was that he wanted to travel. He’s now travelled on various tours with Semperfi – most recently their 2012 European tour. He’s also travelled as far as California, to Molly Malones – who knows where they’ll go next!

I’ll continue my chat with Matt next time, when we take a look at the bands he’s had chance to shoot.

I’ve been to quite a few gigs over the last few weeks – I won’t bore you with them all but will just mention Hells Bells – an AC/DC tribute band – which played to a packed out Lemon Tree last weekend.

The place was jammed to the rafters and the crowd was there for two reasons – to have fun and to make as much noise as possible.

I had the pit to myself – a nice luxury – and the band had their parts down pat.

I’ll just mention a few set pieces: a striptease from ‘Angus’ went down a storm and also as far as what appeared to be a black thong (I was up the back of the venue and it was, unfortunately, hard to see); ‘Brian’ carrying ‘Angus’ around the audience on his shoulders for one long guitar solo; the two cannons blasting during the finale.

All the boys were sporting Movember facial hair – a comment on their Facebook page referred to them as looking like ‘70’s German porn stars’ – their words.

Some people are scathing about tribute bands, but it was an entertaining night, with well performed songs & lots of happy faces leaving at the end – which is surely the whole point.

Coming Up.

I have some gigs lined up for the end of November – Withered Hand, Pallas (which will be reviewed by Suzanne Kelly) and maybe another, which I have yet to hear back from (fingers crossed). Also, if I can fit it in after Withered Hand, a gig at the Malt Mill featuring our very own Fred Wilkinson and his band, Toxik Ephex.

More on how things went next week when I conclude my chat with Matt Jolly and I decide on which tog will be my next ‘victim’.

More Photos:

The Boomtown Rats
Hells Bells

Links:

Matt Jolly Photography on Facebook
Matt Jolly on Flickr

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Peterhead – The Inside Story: Dave Innes Reviews

Articles, Featured, Opinion No Responses »

Nov 142013

Dave Innes reviews Peterhead – The Inside Story of Scotland’s Toughest Prison, (Black & White Publishing).

Who’d have thought that Scotland’s most notorious prison was founded for altruistic reasons?
This altruism was not connected with any soft notions of prisoner rehabilitation or second chances in the grim 1880s. Rather, it was the Blue Toon’s geographical situation that brought about the establishment of those grim grey blocks.

The dangers to shipping, including whale boats, during unrelenting North Sea winter storms, and the losses incurred, one suspects, of revenue as well as the rather more expendable human life, were well-known.

Calls were made for a Harbour of Refuge to be built on the corner of NE Scotland to which shipping could head for safety when weather asserted its mastery over the flimsy human-built vessels daring to challenge nature.

And how best to provide cheap labour for this large-scale engineering and construction task? First you build a prison, then you put the convicts to work. You can’t make an oubliette without breaking rocks, it seems.

Jeffrey’s narrative describes the back-breaking, morale-destroying toil involved in constructing both prison and harbour, the latter task taking until 1954 to be completed, 66 years after the prison opened, and locked very quickly, its doors for the first time.

The main narrative, however, tells the tales of some of Peterhead’s more famous occupants, career criminals, casually-violent conscience-free gangsters, sex offenders and other dangers to society.

The names of Paddy Meehan, ‘Gentle’ Johnny Ramensky, TC Campbell, Jimmy Boyle and Oscar Slater are legend. Jeffrey looks behind the often lurid and prurient headlines and popular mythology built around the household names among the incarcerated, and punctures some myths whilst upholding others.

Meehan, for example, whilst framed for a murder committed by McGuinness, was a habitual criminal and his pathos-ridden demise following his pardon and release is almost sad, until you remember the misery he caused during his period as an active criminal.

Ramensky, on the other hand, comes in for more sympathetic treatment, the author almost admiring his athleticism, barrack-room lawyer articulacy, efforts to right injustices within the system and resigned acceptance of his fate on every recapture.

Jeffrey describes, using eye-witness details, the series of riots and prisoner rebellions that have marred ‘The Hate Factory’, including the swift SAS action taken to end the riot and release a warder hostage in 1987. It’s scary stuff.

Whilst the grimness and often-squalid conditions within the jail are always in the background and its harsh, inhospitable location a constant reference, there is room for humour, often cruel, but at times ingenious. Jeffrey relishes describing how long-term guests of Her Majesty would relieve the boredom, almost admiring the simple but audacious scams and practical jokes perpetrated by otherwise hard, desperate men.

This may be the biggest human tragedy of all, obvious intelligence and resourcefulness ultimately wasted on lives of crime and long periods of non-productive incarceration. The author, in juxtaposing institutions where rehabilitation and preparation for reintegration to society are the aims, poses questions that are relevant even in the more enlightened UK prison regimes and culture of the 21st century.

Peterhead – The Inside Story of Scotland’s Toughest Prison by Robert Jeffrey
Black & White Publishing
244 pp
ISBN 9 781845 025380

£9.99

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Old Susannah’s Journal No. 137 – Lying and Spying

Creative Writing, Opinion, Satire and Humour 2 Responses »

Nov 082013

Old Susannah aka Suzanne Kelly casts an eye on the past week’s vibrant and dynamic events.

Tally Ho! It’s been bonfire night, which here in Torry means another 7 weeks or so of fireworks at night.

The Members (‘Sound of the Suburbs’) played at the Moorings; the Gerry Jablonski Band is touring Poland, the Opera was in town, and the fireworks went well (better than the last time, when everything went off all at once).

Giant balls and lights are being hung on Union Street for the holidays. Let’s hope the balls don’t drop, like they did a last year.

I bought a wonderful new mattress from Glencraft; the company continues to employ and support people with visual problems and others with special abilities.

It’s just as well it’s still here, those nice ConDems have a plan to save money by taking it away from several thousand people who get independent living benefit. At present a court appeal is saving the day. Let’s hope commonsense prevails at least once. If those individuals and corporations which avoid paying tax paid their fair share, we’d possibly not be in such a position. But they know who they are, and they’re holding onto their money.

Aberdeen Positive (cleverly branded AB+), had one of their inspiring cultural talks this week.

They’re going to give us a cultural identity brand, which is great. BP is of course involved, as are various other businessmen, and RGU admin types (who I’m sure don’t take any direction from web-happy Sir Ian Wood, who is more or less in charge at RGU). Old Susannah tragically couldn’t make their last meeting, but was told a riveting time was had by all.

Sadly someone dared to bring up the subject of Union Terrace Gardens; this dismayed the convener. Happily just at the end, our man from RGU (who’s actually lived in 27 different places, so he proudly boasts – wow!) closed by saying we need a public square. Of course we do.

I’ve spent a happy few hours this past week at BrewDog, you’ll be surprised to hear. They’ve run out of their new creation ‘Hello my name is Sonja’ – which is a blueberry packed delight. Hope it’s coming back soon. There was some pumpkin brew from the US, which was subtle, and perfect for this time of year. And yes, I’ve even bought a few more shares. Me and a few thousand other people.

BrewDog are hiring, reinvigorating the drinks sector in the UK and abroad, and are expanding. If my few quid contribution helps, then I’m glad of it. Cheers all.

It’s a good thing people’s noses don’t actually grow when they lie like Pinocchio’s did; or else some of the great and the good would have to either clam up or hire permanent plastic surgeons. Truth, or the lack of it, has featured largely this past week in the news.

In mythology, Diogenes searched endlessly for an honest man. It seems like he’d have his work cut out for him today. Here are a few definitions to illustrate.

Lying: (English Gerund) To deliberately distort the truth.

Times have changed; and I think people are getting much more honest than they used to be. After all, absolutely no one, no matter what kind of situation they might get caught in, admits to lying these days.

We’ve seen the ‘Plebgate’ case unfold: first policemen accused senior Tory MP Andrew Mitchell of a foul-mouthed rant over a bicycle, which upset the public. Later, Channel 4 obtained the footage, showing no public within earshot at all. The police logs seem to have been creative writing exercises. What followed, when the police and their superiors were asked to explain further, saw one or two innocent little white lies coming to the fore.

Mitchell lost his job, had never used the word ‘pleb’ and it’s proved no such rant actually happened.

Mitchell may have lost his job over this, but don’t worry: all the police involved are still in place, ready to continue to fight crime in their usual virtuous fashion.

The BBC reported:-

“A police officer has apologised to MPs for an “inadvertent error” in evidence to them about the “plebgate” affair.

“Det Sgt Stuart Hinton, of Warwickshire Police, said he had made an “honest” mistake in a previous hearing held by the Home Affairs Committee last month.

“He also said he regretted the “distress” felt by Andrew Mitchell and his family during the whole saga.

“But Sgt Chris Jones, of West Midlands Police, said he had not misled MPs over his disciplinary record. On Tuesday, he told MPs 13 complaints had been made about him but none had been upheld.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24813974

So, no lying there then, just the odd ‘inadvertent error’ and the odd ‘mistake when talking to the Home Affairs Committee. Could happen to anyone.

Just because we assume the police can and should have a head for accuracy and details is no reason to think they’re superhuman. In fact Sgt Jones also managed to forget any claims had ever been lodged against him, but this was soon proved to just be another little mistake on his part.

He seemed very believable to me in his court appearance; first of all, he’s a policeman, and second of all, he was wearing a nice suit. Did the policeman admit to blatantly lying by making up this little story that cost someone a job? Not a bit of it. He does however regret things. I’m sure he does.

So how did the press get all the previous alleged dirt on former MP Mitchell? Er, the police leaked it to them, but I’m sure it was all well intentioned. It’s very bad form for the BBC and Channel 4 to point out these flaws, and to remind us that policemen from the slightly powerful union would wear ‘police pleb’ t-shirts to show solidarity for their ‘inadvertently erring’ colleagues. That’s what friends are for.

It was all going so well against the businessmen involved, who had been granted export licences to Iraq

Perhaps we had expected the politician was lying in the ‘Plebgate’ saga; after all, there have been one or two small instances of politicians lying to us in the past. Even Tony Blair decided to turn an intelligence dossier into a spectacular, sensational, frightening case for attacking Iraq.

Weapons of Mass destruction were poised and ready to take the UK out within 45 minutes; of course we had to have a tiny little war, even if a few million UK residents marched to protest against it. After all, we’re better off, the veterans who went there are better off, and of course the Iraqi people are better off. As is Halliburton and as are a few US tycoons.

Aside from the dodgy dossier, we had the earlier instance of saintly Alan Clark, purveyor of truth back in the days of Thatcher. The Matrix Churchill trial saw gagging orders handed out like sweeties. It was all going so well against the businessmen involved, who had been granted export licences to Iraq. It might have looked like the Government was caught in a web of blatant lies, but that wasn’t the case.

Alan eventually admitted in the face of evidence that he was just being ‘economical with the actualité’. So, once again, no real lying was going on.

Don’t worry, Aberdeen makes the grade when it comes to having honest police. We now have our own local policewoman who managed to avoid being branded a liar and/or snoop.

WPC Amanda Dixon decided that she needed to know a wee bit more about her new Peterhead neighbours; the poor policewoman was in fear they would break the law and rob her. She then merely bent the law a little, and used the police’s STORM database to do a little pre-emptive spying on them. Sure, it might have been illegal, but she is a policewoman after all.

While in the old days, if people wanted to snoop on neighbours they would simply hide behind twitching net curtains and peer, it’s nice to know Dixon is willing to go just that little bit better.

I can’t think why she got into any trouble for illegally accessing personal data in contravention of the Data Protection Act, but the story has a happy ending: she didn’t have to go to court.

Police don’t lie, and they don’t break data protection rules, fabricate notes, and leak info to the papers

Obviously admitting no lawbreaking, Dixon bravely admitted being ‘nosy’.

Thankfully her lawyer told the sheriff that Ms Dixon was too mentally fragile to appear in court and such appearance would be detrimental to her mental health.

I, for one, am so very grateful to the legal system for sparing her this huge trauma of attending court, which clearly would be something a policewoman would never need to do normally as part of her job. You might think she was just trying to evade justice, but surely it is health after committing a crime that’s more important than the people being spied on or the law being upheld.

Now that the police have displayed such compassion to spying Dixon, I await their expedited compassion in offering compensation to George Copland. If you need a reminder, Copland was arrested days after a siege at his empty flat.

The flat was meant to have a gunman in it, although it was empty, and whoever said they were looking in the windows at a gunman would have had to go very close to the house, set away from the main road and peer in deliberately. Perhaps it was Dixon? Anyway, that was in June. No doubt a fair, full compensation deal is winging its way to Copland as you’re reading.

Police don’t lie, and they don’t break data protection rules, fabricate notes, and leak info to the papers. They might sometimes make mistakes, but don’t we all. And if police like Ms Dixon spy, I’m sure it’s for our own good in the end. No doubt her neighbours think so.

Spying: (English Gerund) The act of covertly obtaining information without the person or organisation being scrutinised giving consent or having knowledge.

In this Age of Information, the only thing that’s successfully stopping wars, terrorist attacks, organised crime, and Policewoman Dixon’s neighbours from undoubtedly robbing her is spying. I am very glad big brother is watching. I am very glad that the ‘all-seeing eye’ on American dollar bills stands for something less nebulous than some Masonic symbolism.

Spying is only done when necessary. Sixty Million Spanish telephone calls were intercepted by the US. Yes, that hardly seems like any, and that’s actually the number of calls for a whole year’s worth of listening in. I’d have thought it would be a higher figure, after all the population of Spain is about 47 million: that’s only about a call and a half per citizen.

However, Germany’s Angela Merkel is a bit put out the Yanks have been spying on her personal calls, and there is some evidence to point to the UK helping the US out in these covert activities.

As so many right-thinking people claim ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you don’t have anything to hide’. Quite so. Perhaps we should just give up on the idea of individual freedoms, privacy, intimacy and individuality if it means we’ll all be safer.

It would be churlish to bring up the fact that back in the day, famous cross-dresser and paranoiac J Edgar Hoover had files on millions of Americans. If he needed one of these people to spy on other people, all he would have to do is threaten to expose the personal info he’d collected on them. If we could only get back to those good old secure, happy days – Communist witch hunts, paranoia, government control.

Thankfully, it seems we’re heading there.

Sometimes it might seem that the security forces and police get a bit sensitive about sharing the details of their own activities – particularly when these activities fall into grey areas of law. No doubt if they want our lives laid bare for their legal inspection (or for a less than legal whim, Ms Dixon), they’ll become completely honest, transparent, and law-abiding as well.

I feel sorry for those who make their living from spying on the innocent, that nasty whistleblower Edward Snowden has made life tricky for them and their crucial work. He’s obviously let the world know the extent of US snooping for his own personal gain.

He’s currently living a luxurious life as a fugitive in Moscow somewhere (no – I don’t know where to any government spooks reading this). After all, the people who are willing to look into your and my personal business for reasons ranging from national security to Dixon’s ‘nosiness’ are just trying to make an honest living.

Well, have a good week everyone. And mind what you put in that email, or say on your mobile. Big brother is listening, taking notes, and will be in touch.

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Venezuelan Chamber Maestros Wow Aberdeen

Aberdeen City, Opinion No Responses »

Nov 082013

Our Chamber Music Reviewer, so he wishes to be titled, has submitted this review of Libertadores String Quartet performance at the Cowdray Hall on 4 November. It is based on an article that was first published on the blog Golf Tango Foxtrot, edited to the Voice house style.

Gustavo Dudamel - pic by Chris Christodoulou

Gustavo Dudamel, Patron of Sistema Scotland. Photograph by Chris Christodoulou.

The Quartet are all members of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and are products of El Sistema, the musical education system developed in Venezuela by Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu.
In Venezuela currently half a million children are being educated in this manner. The intention is to produce not just musicians, but happy adults with skills to help them prosper.

The charity Sistema Scotland seeks to replicate this work through its Big Noise project in the Raploch area of Stirling and Govanhill in Glasgow. Both Dundee and Aberdeen have expressed an interest in becoming the next Sistema Scotland location, hence the Cowdray Hall concert.

Apart from a simple enjoyment of chamber music, or a general interest in musical education, there were other reasons a broad cross-section of people chose to attend. Some had an interest in the Bolivarian revolution which supported and nurtured El Sistema, others are committed to regenerating the City of Aberdeen and defeating poverty.

No doubt this mass appeal accounted for the appreciative capacity audience that the Quartet found in the stuffy setting of the Cowdray Hall. As well as the usual chamber music crowd, there were a large number of diaspora Venezuelans. Aberdeen and Venezuela share a current interest in oil reserves.

Civic dignitaries enjoyed the hospitality of the Lord Provost before the gig, and it would be good to see the city put its weight behind the establishment of a Big Noise project in Aberdeen.

Bringing up the rear were a large number of people, like me, who are not regular attenders at chamber music events, but were glad of this opportunity.

Like the Venezuelans we had to buy our tickets and we were not disappointed. Many of us share an interest in regenerating what is the most unequal of all of Scotland’s cities. We were keen to show our support for Sistema Scotland and the attempt to expand its current projects.

The programme started with Mozart’s String Quartet No17 K458 The Hunt. I must confess that I’ve never been a fan of this piece, clearly my loss as the audience showed their appreciation on all sides.

The first movement is scored violento ed agitato and they weren’t kidding

Continuing with an early Beethoven Quartet No 11 Op 95 Serioso, the lads showed great rhythmic assurance and grasp of the dynamics of the piece. Again, not one of my favourites.

After these two examples of the European quartet repertoire came a fine noisy interval.

Fruit punch was served. Alas, the alcohol had been reserved for the civic dignitaries. This just made the traditional Venezuelan punch all the more acceptable for the large number of children in the audience.

First violinist Eddie Cordero made a brief speech recalling that the first international recognition received by El Sistema was in 1976 when the fledgling orchestra was invited to play at the Aberdeen International Youth Festival.

The music continued with a piece from Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera. String Quartet No 1 Op 20. The first movement is scored violento ed agitato and they weren’t kidding. It was edgy, it was full of movement and was cerebral as well as visceral.

The second movement built on the first and really brought out the life in the piece and players. Lots of left hand pizzicatto and con legno passages added to the interest, whilst the third movement, Calmo e poetica, was played with mutes on every instrument.

The final movement, Allegramente rustic, was full of effects evoking almost guitar-like sounds, with rural dance rhythms and knocking on the wooden bodies of the instruments.

In case you can’t tell, this reviewer loved it. The audience did too.

This was not a traditional chamber music audience. How could one tell?

The usual convention of not applauding at the end of individual movements, saving applause for the end of the piece, was totally and happily ignored as the audience showed its appreciation freely and honestly and the performances on stage were the better for that.

Not one, but two encores followed. The favourite for me was the Quartet’s setting of a Chick Corea piano piece Senor Mouse.

I loved it. You can find out more about El Sistema in Scotland on its website

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Old Susannah No. 135 – Garden Salad

Opinion, Satire and Humour 1 Response »

Oct 182013

Old Susannah, aka Suzanne Kelly, gets to grips with her greens this week, with the never-ending Union Terrace Gardens saga, GM crops and various vegetables – including Eric Pickles – all vying for news coverage this past week.

Another vibrant and dynamic, connectivity-laden, smart, successful Scottish week passes in Aberdeen.

The weather is taking a turn for the cooler at night, and I’m starting to throw old unread copies of the Evening Express (is there any other kind?) onto the fire at night (living without central heating has its charms).

Alas, I’ve been down in London and missed many events here, including Thrashist Regime, who I’m told were so lively the staid Lemon Tree staff were freaking out at all the rule infractions the band committed.

London was wonderful, but the Londoners seem to think they can manage without one central square smack in the geographical centre of town. Somehow they carry on, in a city which is more like a series of different villages, each with its own ‘green/living/vibrant/dynamic’ heart, as our Evening Express reporters would put it.

Why, they haven’t even drawn up a map to show what is the Civic Zone or the Merchant Quarter, like we’ve done. London clearly needs a transformational project – if only one man with a horrific – sorry terrific vision would come along, put money on London’s table (well theoretical money anyway) and tell Boris Johnson what to build and where to build it, London would start to thrive.

Thankfully, we have Sir Ian Wood.

Looking at aerial maps of London, huge great green open spaces abound. Some call these parks/wildlife reserves/wetland centres/leisure spaces. Some people hold that these green spaces help give London a decent air quality, encourage wildlife, provide leisure space – even decrease stress levels and improve fitness.

Such spaces are, at least to the more sophisticated billionaire and ACSEF member, development opportunities. Oddly, London chooses to build in its disused brownfield rather than ‘transforming’ its green areas. Thankfully, we’re not falling for that stuff here. (I did hear a rumour that Hampstead Heath was going to be lowered to ground level for greater accessibility and connectivity. Watch this space).

Trafalgar Square remains a focal point, but it is far too small.

That will make London and Moscow take note.

At some 12,000 square metres for a population that’s around 8 million, it’s clear they are out of step with our Aberdonian city square project, otherwise known as the thing that wouldn’t die. Our much needed outdoor square will, if Sir Ian gets his way, be larger than Moscow’s Red Square.

Perhaps Aberdeen’s quangos, committees and elite have more in common with Moscow than London, come to think on it.

The City Square/Granite Web/Garden Project is proof that reincarnation is real; the thing just keeps coming back under new names, with increasingly beautiful, workable, desirable details. Our broken heart (aka Union Terrace Gardens) could have had a new beating heart (copyright Evening Express), dwarfing both Trafalgar and Red Squares, for our population which is around, er, a quarter of a million people.

That will make London and Moscow take note.

You have to hand it to Sir Ian Wood (or so he thinks); he is persistent. If half the goings-on I hear of were true for his retinue, finding time for any granite web project flogging would be nigh on impossible.

Aside from London’s museums, I saw the amazing Deborah Bonham and band at the Half Moon in Putney; I hope that someone is working on getting them an Aberdeen date…

Returning from London to the Deen, I eagerly bought the first P&J I could find, and started to catch up on the news; learning that former top cop Ian Paterson has just been found guilty of sexually harassing and assaulting several women over time. Looking back over old news stories, council records and so on, I find he was involved not only with the AVCO but also with groups working with young and vulnerable people. How wonderful.

Old Susannah remembers first moving to the Deen, and reading stories about old people being neglected, abused and mistreated in residential homes. There was even a home that had a broken lift for weeks – leaving people stranded and unable to get outside (I’ll bet it was a jolly adventure and fun for them, rather than a hardship).

Some might find his behaviour sleazy, contemptible, inexcusable, predatory and degrading

Naively I wanted to do my part, and I called my nearest residential home, asking how I could volunteer / help. ‘Oh, no, you have to get all kinds of clearance and be security checked’ was the response I got; I was definitely discouraged from taking it further. Fair enough – leave the volunteer work to the professionals, I thought.

All the while, some people were allowed access to vulnerable, young and old people because they were important – like Paterson.

Kindly, Patting Paterson would ‘comfort’ women – whether they wanted him to or not – by touching them where he had no business touching them. Sounds very comforting indeed. Then again, he only did this for a few years to a score of women. If those around him knew about this, they were quite right to leave it be, so he could continue ‘comforting’ others.

Some might find his behaviour sleazy, contemptible, inexcusable, predatory and degrading, but you can’t argue with a policeman, or indeed an ex-policeman, can you?

Old Susannah wonders now just who his friends/colleagues were (kerb crawling ex-councillors perhaps like Gordon Leslie?). Who knew what of his activities? What work was he presiding over as Chief Superintendent, or as chief executive of Aberdeen Council of Voluntary Organisations?

Could his actions and decision-making have been compromised at any time? Could he have been coerced or influenced by people who knew what he was doing? Was he around when the police were tasked by Audit Scotland to look into the dodgy property dealings uncovered in 2008?

Thankfully, we don’t need to bother with any such questions, because it’s all in the past. The police could find no wrong-doing on the former council’s part, for instance when we sold land for peanuts, ripping off the taxpayer, and keeping very shoddy records. Who knows what could be unravelled, but I’ll certainly not be pulling at that loose piece of yarn on the jumper, will I?

Time for some definitions (and a shot of BrewDog’s Watt Dickie) after thinking over this week’s news. Note to self – I must try some ‘Hello my name is Sonja’, a new addition to the ‘Hello’ BrewDog collection. And to Messrs Dickie & Watt, and all at the BrewDog Aberdeen Bar, a Happy Third Birthday.

Garden Salad: (modern English compound noun) – A dish comprising leafy and other vegetables, or a recipe for same.

Take one small, perfectly formed natural hollow, fill with trees, greens and flowers. Add greed, a pinch of desperation for immortality, and lashings of ego. Add in various vegetables (Tom Smith, Ian Wood, Stewart Milne, etc.) and toss. Add a few hundred inches of column spaces, revoltingly poor architectural grandiosity, and unintelligible drawings.

Garnish lavishly with hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money (for consultants, PR, etc.). Serve with a side helping of indigestible financial sauce. Add £50 million pounds; remove; add again; remove. This dish can be served again and again. And again. Keep serving until someone, somewhere swallows. Best eaten out of Sir Ian’s hands.

Yes, he’s at it again. We can’t keep our only city centre green space, despite having so much unused brownfield, because Wood wants it.

Barney Crockett has promised that if the garden is raised, it will not be for parking spaces – which are what was wanted by the ACSEF/Wood mob in the first place. If you have any opinions on this, please let your elected councillors know, lest they then turn around and say no one ever got in touch with them.

Let your council know how great a glass pyramid will be, or how ruining the back side of Belmont Street’s businesses which overlook the park will somehow add to connectivity. Tell your councillor how destroying our only natural wind break, getting rid of the few city centre trees we have will mean to your sense of transformation.

Pickles: (English noun) A sour, bitter, bloated vegetable, preserved in brine.

Eric Pickles. Where does one even start with this one man’s accomplishments? He’s been in the news again lately, and like me, I’m sure you relish reading about him. I love to ketchup with his doings, even if some people find Pickles unpalatable.

MP Pickles claimed expenses for a second home so he wouldn’t have to commute the massive 37 mile trek from his first home to Westminster. (I wonder if Pickles’ second home is close to the Gherkin?) This may have seemed a bit greedy to some, but for Eric to have to travel so far to get to work just wouldn’t have been right.

If he was tired in the House of Commons, he might not be able to cut the mustard. He also needed at least £300 in cleaning expenses, which he kindly repaid when asked to, at the height of the MPs expense scandal.

One of the reasons he’s rated so highly is his love of the countryside, as development opportunity anyway. As Secretary of State, he refused to call in controversial plans which saw a vast swathe of historic Dover and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty turned into a housing development / complex.

Area residents found Pickles jarring.

If the refusal to listen to a public demand sounds familiar to anyone in the Balmedie area, another quote from this particular debacle may ring bells with Union Terrace Gardens watchers: defenders of the plan said “This is about building for the future; unlocking the economic potential of our heritage assets.” – the tone of which somehow seems familiar to me.
http://pickles_public_inquiry_into_controversial_development

You can’t help but wonder if Pickles and his supporters would find a spiritual home in city and shire.

teenagers at the Kendall House home in Gravesend were restrained with huge doses of tranquillisers

He was also instrumental in getting rid of greenbelt in Yorkshire, Liverpool and other formerly boring areas in favour of skyscrapers and parking lots- and a gas plant in Tewkesbury where the objections were virtually unanimous. We do need a man of his vision here.

But in his latest pickle, Eric told a woman with health issues, who had severe side effects to ‘increase her medication’ as he wisely disputed her story of residential care home forced drugging. His friend (yes, I didn’t know he had any either) told the BBC that Pickles “was giving her a frank piece of advice in private. It wasn’t meant in any way to offend or insult her”.

What a nice guy. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24324556

The BBC story goes on to say “An investigation… claimed that teenagers at the Kendall House home in Gravesend were restrained with huge doses of tranquillisers and other drugs… 10 girls who were heavily sedated while living at the care home during the 1970s and 1980s went on to have children with a range of birth defects.” – Doesn’t sound like much of a big deal to me; perhaps upping her medication was just Eric’s fatherly, well-meant advice. With Pickles around, there is never a dill moment.

Golden Rice: (Modern English noun) A genetically modified, patented rice variety.

Are you one of those people who are unsure about GM foods – not certain that Monsanto should be able to splice genetic material from arctic fish into strawberries, own entire strains of food, seek a monopoly on existing seed businesses, charge farmers each season for food crops rather than farmers being able to store and use their own seed?

Are you unsure about environmental and health aspects of newly-nascent GM plants entering our food chain? Do you have ethical qualms about the third world being indebted to Monsanto forever for using GM food? Maybe you’re not convinced farmers should be sued for theft when GM pollen gets into their own crops (as happened in Canada)?

Then Minister Owen Paterson knows what you are: wicked.

Paterson said as much to the BBC; quite rightly too. The proliferation of GM food into our environment is nothing to fear at all, no more so than when the pesticide DDT came into wide use, and was hailed by the Patersons of the day. Of course, traces of the deadly stuff can now be found in EVERY living organism in the planet, but there you go; no harm done.

There may have been the occasional reason to harbour doubts about scientific advancements, but Science is always right, and technological advances are not made for profit, but for the betterment of the world in every instance. The odd nuclear accident, Thalidomide birth defects, tranquilisers with deadly side effects such as Halcyon – that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, well hardly ever.

Don’t question, don’t worry, don’t object – doing so is wicked. Where would we be without the guiding moral compass of Paterson and his ilk?

You wicked people should be ashamed; Paterson also says it is your fault people are starving in the third world, and golden rice will solve everything. That’s you told, then. And here I was thinking centuries of colonialism, civil war, disease, violence and draught were to blame.

Next week: A look at recent Trump news including his classy new roadside sign and 2012 accounts; a glance at Stewart Milne-related news, and more definitions.

Confidential to anyone who is feeling old: In passing, someone in their mid 50s told me they were old. First of all, I was Old Susannah way before anyone else decided to be old. Secondly, don’t be old if you don’t want to be old. One of the most youthful people I’ll ever meet was Les Paul (the guitarist and innovator).

I had the extreme pleasure of watching him play many times. There was nothing like it; the music he made; the passion for what he was doing all kept him at a mental age of perhaps 21. He’d joke; he always smiled; he had a twinkle in his eye, and he loved every moment. (And I wish I could see and hear him again). Did he have pains, aches, heartache, problems the same as the rest of us? Absolutely. He just chose to be young.

I hope to be as young as he was one of these days. Anyone who’s reading this at a computer/phone, in a warm building with food in their stomach is pretty lucky compared to most of the rest of the world, something too easily forgotten. If you have some kind of talent or gift, you have much more reason to lighten up.

Refuse to be jaded. Carpe Diem. Do something new. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Go on an adventure. Start something. I can promise you, you can stay young in heart and mind if you want to. As they say, ‘this is not a dress rehearsal’.

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Eat To The Beat

Featured, Gigs and Concerts, Information No Responses »

Oct 172013

Singer Cindy Douglas has come up with a novel way of combining two of her passions – food and jazz – and serving them up to people in rural communities as pop-up jazz supper clubs. Photos by Alicia Bruce.

On a recent trip to New York, Cindy observed that citizens of the Big Apple can go out for dinner and enjoy jazz at the same time in intimate and sophisticated surroundings, whereas jazz in Scotland tends to be presented in formal concert halls and arts centres or in pubs where the jazz is relegated to being background music.

Following the trend in larger towns and cities for pop-up cafes and restaurants, the Netherley-based singer has devised Eat to the Beat, a jazz supper club that will pop up initially in villages in Aberdeenshire and the Mearns.

On the menu will be great food from a roster of high-class chefs, and fine jazz from Cindy Douglas and her musicians, in locations where jazz concerts are a rarity. The plan is to roll out the project throughout Scotland and beyond.

“I think of Ronnie Scott’s in London and The Blue Note and The Village Vanguard in New York, and these are places where food is part of the experience that makes going out more of an event,” says Cindy, whose singing style has been described as exuberant, mesmerising and versatile and whose repertoire covers jazz standards and original songs.

“Village halls in Scotland may be miles away from these venues in every sense but I think we can give people in these communities an opportunity to socialise and make their night out one to remember for all the right reasons.”

Experience Eat to the Beat on

23 November 2013, 19:30
Auchenblae Village Hall,
Monboddo Street,
Auchenblae AB30 1XQ

Tickets: £25, includes a 2 course meal

29 November 2013, 19:30
Touched By Scotland,
Ryehill Cottage Oyne,
Insch, AB52 6QS

Tickets: £25, includes a 2 course meal

What the critics say about Cindy Douglas…

–          Singer-led jazz with a smile on its face. The Musician
–          The extremely talented vocalist sings with all her heart and soul and her glamorous voice reflects that. Jazz Beat, Voice of America
–          Explores everything from bebop to swing to world music … the song arrangements are full of captivating detail. Jazzwise

For further information on the Eat to the Beat pop-up jazz supper club, contact Cindy on 07840 884973 or by email at cindy@cindydouglas.co.uk

Website: www.cindydouglas.co.uk
Youtube: http://youtu.be/RpOO8LfPQR8
Facebook: www.facebook.com/CindyDouglasJazzVocals
Twitter: https://twitter.com/douglascindy

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Old Susannah No.133 – Stealing Special

Opinion, Satire and Humour 1 Response »

Sep 272013

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

Tally ho! Has the Deen ever seen a fairer summer? It’s not faded out just yet, and the parks are still full of people. Union Terrace Gardens were full of revellers for the Rainbow festival.
The mythical drunks and junkies said to loiter there are as much in evidence as the transparent giant boy who floated over the lurid flowerbed in the Granite Web drawings.

Hazlehead is filled with people, including motorists who don’t give a damn about parking on the grass, as well as thieves who’ve stolen a metal plaque.