Tullos Time: What’s Happening On The Hill? – Part 2

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Environment, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Jul 222011
 

Last week in the first of this two part investigation, Suzanne Kelly described how The City Council and its officials were dealing with the Tullos Hill roe deer cull and tree-planting issues. Part 1 also covered the decades of arson on ‘The Gramps’, the excellent quality of Tullos Hill as it is, local community councils’ opposition to the cull, and the considerable public anger at the City’s refusal to even consider modifying its plans.

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The hill itself is a wildlife haven; the very important gorse providing homes to bees and birds.  There are fields of wildflowers (the spectacular Dame’s Violets for instance), and it is a recreation area.

This is why our City Council – as a LibDem election pledge – want to turn it into some gargantuan 40,000-tree profit-making (ie lumber-producing) forest.

We now look at other important aspects of this issue, challenge the government to comment, and propose some actions.

The Gorse is always Greener

‘Kissing is out of fashion when the gorse is not in bloom’ goes an old saying – based on the fact gorse virtually always has blossoms.  This is an extremely useful plant for bees.  If you’ve not been made aware, bee populations around the world are in serious trouble.

As long as we still want our plants to be pollinated so we keep eating, we are well advised to do all we can to encourage bees.  My research leads me to conclude that gorse is far better for bees and several other species than trees are (particularly trees which will be cut down for profit when the Council chooses).

Don’t take my word for the importance of gorse.  Do take Dr. Ian Rotherham’s word:-

“Gorse is an incredibly valuable habitat for wildlife – supporting a diversity of invertebrates and many birds and mammals. It provides dense cover plus abundant nesting sites, invertebrate food associated with the gorse, and of course the blaze of flowers during much of the year. Butterflies, bees, hoverflies, spiders, badgers, whinchats, stonechats, yellowhammers, chaffinches, linnets, greenfinches, meadow pipits and skylarks for example, all thrive in gorse-rich areas.

“As the biomass of gorse builds up it loses vigour and beings to die back. If there is a fire then the gorse is reduced to ground level and will quickly regenerate for the next 30-40 years or so. Clearly fire risk can be a problem but not for the gorse or the associated wildlife (except at the immediate time of a conflagration).

“Cyclical cutting of gorse, grazing, and cutting of fire-breaks are positive ways to reduce risk and damage but to maintain what is a rich but often unappreciated wildlife habitat. The establishment of a friends group to watch over the area would also help reduce risk. The gorse in bloom is also a wonderful landscape feature. A plantation wood does not provide a biodiversity resource or a landscape feature to match this. Trees are often planted at the expense of the wildlife habitats and landscape features because of the misconception that they are inherently better for wildlife – which they are not – and because money is available as grants to do this.”

(  Dr  Rotherham is a Professor of Environmental Geography, Reader in Tourism & Environmental Change, International Research Coordinator, associated with universities around the world. He is editor of several important academic publications including International Journal of Urban Forestry, Journal of Practical Ecology & Conservation, and International Urban Ecology Review )

I would be interested to hear from any City Council officer, ranger or pro -Tullos Hill tree plantation consultant wishing to comment on Dr Rotherham’s statement. 

In the meantime, Ian Talboys, Countryside Ranger for Aberdeen wrote to me on 6 June:-

“The amount of gorse on the site will be substantially reduced to make way for the tree planting
which again reduces the risk of wilful fires”.

Why should a countryside ranger particularly be keen to change an ecosystem such as  Tullos to a profit-making, lumber-producing forest?  Where is the evidence that replacing gorse with saplings and trees will reduce wilful fire risk?

City  Council ‘austerity’ and ‘budget’ cuts

I spoke to a person connected to the countryside services for the Council.  They advised me that like virtually every branch of our local government, they are now expected to find income streams and do all they can to make money.

It is not enough that our environment is under threat from over-development, pollution and loss of biodiversity – our environmental conservation activities are supposed to make money for the City.  Would our rangers’ time be better served in patrolling the fire-prone areas, educating people and engaging in active conservation, or are we asking them to look for grants such as the tree-planting ones and to make money at all costs?

If I get an answer to this question, I will share it with you.  Again, I invite comment from the City.

I still await a reply as to how this timber business is going to be set up, and for a copy of the business plan.  Should any of this information ever be forthcoming from our elected officials, I will share it with you.  Again, should any City proponents of the scheme like to come forward and (finally) explain how the timber business will work, I invite them to do so.

It has just been announced that despite negotiations with Unions being incomplete, the City has signed an agreement with external consultants to make £120 million worth of budget savings over a five-year period (cost of these consultants has been estimated at between £500k to £600k).  Perhaps they will have their own opinion as to the viability of a timber business venture on an arson hotspot which has already resulted in the City returning £43,800 to the Forestry Commission…

Failed Tree Planting, Failed Open Government, Failed Freedom of Information Requests

In a ten-point complaint I clearly asked for clarification of a £44,000 debt for a failed tree plantation which I had heard of.  The City’s Chief Executive Valerie Watts wrote in early June to deny any money was owed.

Proof that this payment was made was given to me almost immediately  after Watts’ denial – but as of 21 July,Wattshas not explained the failure to disclose the repayment.

The proof is a letter the Forestry Commission sent to the City earlier this year which was copied to Ian Talboys.  The question is whether Watts knew of the letter when she wrote to me or not.  Until she explains her answer, the whole planting programme should be put on hold.  It is not just returning money for the past failure (we had to pay interest) but the implications for this new planting that need to be considered, which could be significant for the cash-strapped council’s taxpayers.

Watts was made aware of this repayment by me, and possibly earlier by others.  What is beyond the pale is that Freedom of information Officers continued for some weeks afterward to advise that no debt was owed.  All of the requests I have seen referenced the £44k figure; mine specifically asked for clarification of the matter.

If the City tries to use the excuse that since the debt was paid in March and the questions arrived in June, then that would be the most disingenuous logic coming from Town Hall in memory.  I am sure it is beyond the Council’s lowest standard to try and make pretence of using such a childish defence.  When we will get the truth is crucial – they must not be allowed to stall this matter until cull season opens.  If anyone trying to prevent the cull could ask their elected officials to have these issues addressed and investigated fully as an urgent matter, it will help.  I have asked the FOI office to explain whether or not it discovered this letter in its search to answer my question.  I have asked it to advise whether or not it made a deliberate decision to not disclose this letter.  I await the outcome of the investigation.

Yet another Freedom of Information anomaly exists regarding Grampian Fire.

Fire power

The previous article covered the problems of arson.  Confusion emerges as to the number of fires.  There was a FOI request response from Grampian Fire which shows a nominal number of deliberate fires.  At the time of writing I await permission to share or reproduce these figures, as they are apparently ‘copyright’.  I have officially applied to print them, but cannot do so until Grampian Fire’s officials approve my written request.

However I came across an internet document which shows a rather different, substantially higher number of fires than the FOI request revealed, entitled  ‘Grampian Fire and Rescue Service Category 2 – Advancing Community and Citizen Well-being’ .  This document states there were over 70 fires for 2006, and claims the figures were going down; it had partial 2008 figures and said only 11 fires started that year.  It is worth mentioning that there have been at least half a dozen fires in the Gramps since May of this year.  In any event, the paper’s numbers are not the same as the recently supplied figures, which are lower.

I will try to discover an explanation for the discrepancy, and will cover whatever explanation Grampian Fire sends in another article. Both email addresses for the FOI officer and the above paper’s writer are at the address ‘@grampianfrs.org.uk’, which leads me to conclude the same organisation might be responsible for distributing contradictory figures.

I add this to the ever growing list of things I am trying to discover, and yet all the while a cull remains the City’s goal, and the clock is ticking.

SNH – Natural Heritage as long as it’s not inconvenient

Scottish Natural History have been taking great pains to gain media coverage recently (BBC and local press), saying in effect that deer are great, but to stop them being killed in road accidents and over-populating, they have to be ‘managed.’  They launched a consultation, which many animal groups felt had a strong bias towards hunting and culling red deer and roe deer equally.  First, what kind of animal are we talking about exactly?

What are roe deer?

Recognition: Small deer, reddish brown in summer, grey in winter. Males have short antlers, erect with no more than three points.

Height: Average height at shoulder 60-75cm (that is less than 3 foot tall). Males slightly larger than females.

Weight: Adults 10-25kg

Lifespan: The maximum age recorded for wild roe is 16 years, but most die before 7 years.

Diet: Their diet is varied and includes buds and leaves of deciduous trees and shrubs, bramble, rose, ivy, herbs, conifers, ferns, heather and grasses.

By permission, the Mammal Society,
http://www.mammal.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&id=228

So in short these tiny creatures, of which we seemingly have 30 on Tullos Hill alone jeopardise a 40,00 tree plantation.  (The Council has made absolutely no mention of how they will tackle the weed problem cited by the Forestry Commission as a partial reason for the previous expensive failure – again, I have asked for this information with no reply).

Glasgow has made a strong statement against these types of culls which can be found at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/291204/0089678.pdf  and the relevant section starts on page 5.”

Here are some relevant extracts:-

“….collaborative deer management is not necessary for Roe deer in urban environments as there is no scientific justification for this.

2.4 There is no mention of the positive role of wild deer on natural habitats. Large herbivores help to create and retain glades and rides within woodlands, which provide habitat for a range of other species.

2.5 This section of the Bill has the potential to perpetuate and reinforce the perception of deer as pest species. Whilst this will promote the interests of a minority who have a vested interest in deer management principally through culling, it goes against the reason for the inclusion of native wild deer on the Scottish Biodiversity List, Le. the appreciation of these animals by the general public who wish to see them left unharmed.

2.6 Glasgow City Council believes that this section in its present form promotes an unbalanced view of the rationale behind deer management, whilst acknowledging that there is scientific justification for the management of red deer in parts of the Highlands.

Deer in Scotland – General Comments.

2.7 GCC object to the blanket statement that ‘Deer therefore need to be managed … ‘ for the following reasons:

• The terms manage/managed/management are not defined but appear to relate to culling deer, which is not the usual definition of management. This needs to be clarified.

• If the above is the case, then deer do not always require to be culled because in some areas an increase in population size could be beneficial.

•Red Deer and Roe Deer are quite different animals not only in size but also in habits etc. Why are they covered by one piece of legislation and why do they both have to be managed?”

The various animal charities I’ve communicated with all remain against this cull and have their own experts who explain the flaws in the entire premise.

Can we have some urban trees please?

A personal observation.  The section of Aberdeen I live in, Torry, has fewer trees on its main streets than any other part of the world I’ve lived in, city or suburb.  The streets are however covered with cars and trucks 24/7, and the exhaust fumes have air quality implications.

A few trees would do a good deal to clean the air.  It would be costly and difficult to plant and protect them.  But it would not be impossible.  We know from the Council’s websites that parts of Aberdeen (Wellington Road in particular) have serious air pollution issues.  We also know trees help reduce vehicular pollution.  In the course of my research I learned that the indigenous fir trees for the Grampian area have been greatly depleted over time – yet there is no plan to replace these native species.

Conclusion:  Stop this destructive, unwanted plan now and cancel any deer cull.  Plant fewer trees.  Plant in other locations

Unanswered questions
  • Regarding the business plan for the proposed forest.  How much will it make?  How disruptive would this plantation be to the area residents and businesses? 
  • Why does the City insist only a ‘minority’ of people are against this cull when elected bodies have objected on behalf of their communities?   If the Community Councils are lining up against this scheme – which started life as a Liberal Democrat election pledge – is it not just time to dump it?
  • Why didn’t the City disclose the £43,800 failure when asked to clarify whether a £44,000 debt existed?  
  • As the failure was due to deer and weeds – what are we doing about the weeds?  What kinds of pesticides will be used?  What are the risks and implications?
  • If the scheme is ‘cost neutral’ – who exactly pays the (low-seeming) estimate of some £2,500 per year for ten years to shoot the deer?
  • Have council employees been discouraged from expressing opinions against the cull? (My sources tell me this is the case).
  • Why take the scheme up at all if it must be done at the lowest cost – which is shooting the deer?  Who is hold a gun to the City’s head and forcing it to change Tullos Hill into something it is not?  What is the reluctance to just stop this scheme now?  Has the City made any effort at all to get sponsors to pay for the non-lethal options?  (Note: BAA and Wood Group have contributed for the phase 1 scheme – neither seem keen to be associated with this deer-culling phase 2.  Concerned people may wish to contact these and other companies to state opposition to phase 2).
  • What are the real arson risks once a forest is established on this windy hill (if indeed it is not too windy for trees to be established in great number)?   Is it possible the situation could be as severe a problem as the forest fires that plague the US and Europe?  What are the correct figures for the arson attacks?
A final summary

Last week a media contact asked me to supply the statement below, which sums up my conclusions and reflects the opinions of the vast majority of the people I have spoken with:-

The public have in no way given up on stopping the deer cull on Tullos Hill. Tullos is an important and beautiful ecosystem as it is, and the deer population has been stable for many years.   

Putting up signs to warn motorists that deer are in the area is sensible; putting 40,000 trees on this arson hotspot is not sensible.  Four Community Councils have told the Council they do not want the trees if it means a cull – these elected councils represent thousands of people. 

The City had to repay £43,800 for a planting on Tullos that failed due to deer browsing AND weeds.  The City initially omitted this when I asked for clarification- and I patiently await sensible answers to this and other questions. The tree planting was a Liberal Democrat election promise – it is amusing that it is this unpopular promise they are so stubborn about keeping. 

Finally, Peter Leonard has written to say that the Community Councils don’t understand the issues and they only know what they got from the media.  I find his remarks unbelievably patronising and insulting, particularly when it was down to the Council to communicate the details of its scheme in the first place. 

The Council kept the deer cull out of the phase 2 public consultation and is now claiming people don’t have the facts.  This is wholly unacceptable, and I am pleased that my sources tell me there is a great deal of unrest, with an official calling the situation ‘a hot potato’. 

Unfortunately the lack of timely, sensible answers looks to many people as if the City is stalling and hopes to get away with a cull.  There will be no cull without repercussions at the ballot box in May.

I am creating a presentation to give to any community council that wants it, particularly aimed at those councils which will have the City’s experts present their side.  Direct action is being considered by some animal rights/concern groups.

If you have any feelings one way or the other, then I urge you to contact your elected representatives (you may also wish to contact Scottish Representatives Roseanna Cunningham and Stewart Stevenson who are backing the proposal). 

Good luck to the roe deer and the wishes of the people of Aberdeen in the face of our government.

 Image Credit: Roe Deer Standing Still © Catalin Pobega | Dreamstime.com

Ban The Batterer For Fox Sake – Peterculter Protest

 Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion, Sport  No Responses »
Jul 222011
 

Paul McDonald reports from the Fox Watch demonstration on Saturday 16th July at Peterculter Golf Club in protest regarding the club’s decision not to ban convicted fox batterer Donald Forbes.

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We arrived at approximately 12:30pm and were greeted by a ‘representative’ of the golf club who turned out to be a lawyer.

We were on private land – the whole of the road in the surrounding area apparently belongs to the golf club right up to a fairly distant bridge. At first he had no issues with our presence, although he did request us moving into the car park to stage the protest.

As a compromise, we moved to the car park when press arrived as I assured  him we would continue our protest there, but only after the Press had taken pictures of the protesters next to the Peterculter Golf Club sign.

Conversation with the ‘representative’ – aka the club’s lawyer

In terms of the conversation about what we wanted – I informed him that we wanted:

a) the golf club to ban Donald Forbes and

b) to stop culling foxes (a fact which I was informed of by a source who wishes to remain anonymous). After the rep outright denied there was a fox cull policy in place, he told that me it was the decision of a committee to decide whether or not Forbes would be banned.

I asked to speak to a committee member and was told “nobody from it is present” and that he was ‘just a messenger’ who had nothing to do with decisions. He then asked if I had a petition to hand over.  I replied that I wanted to do it in view of the press. He agreed, and went back inside.

The cavalry turns up

As cars drove into the car park, leaflets detailing the incident involving Donald Forbes clubbing a tame fox to death for taking his biscuit, and the refusal of Peterculter Golf Club to ban him were distributed, with the vast majority of customers being supportive to our campaign. Soon afterwards, a convoy of activists turned up, boosting our number considerably.

Protesters were handed high-vis vests and asked to hold banners with slogans including:

‘Don’t Cull the Cubs’,

‘No Shame in Golf Clubs, Every Shame in Fox Culls’,

‘Killed for Stealing a Biscuit’,

‘Play Golf all Day Long but Killing Foxes is Wrong’.

– Two activists were brave enough to don fox costumes!

 Press and Journal and Evening Express  photographers and reporters arrived. The club’s rep was became uncomfortable and asked we’d go to the car park as people were about to tee off. He reluctantly agreed to allow a few minutes to have photographs taken!

The lack of a true representative

The press wanted a picture of the petition being handed over to the club’s rep, and set up a shot with all of the placard  holding  activists present.  I asked to be photographed handing him a packet of biscuits. The rep refused claiming I was ‘being silly’.

I explained that I was merely proving a point. This fox was killed for no more than a biscuit, and if he found it silly to be handed a packet of biscuits, then surely he also found it equally silly that a fox could be killed over something as trivial as a biscuit.

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He did tell me he sympathised with us, but that it was not his decision. I find this hard to believe considering his behaviour and inability to answer as to why Donald Forbes has not been banned. I cannot accept that the committee were not available to discuss the issue. They have avoided my emails, letters and phone calls, and now a personal visit all the way from Liverpool.

They clearly know they are wrong.  They sent out a lawyer to speak to protesters as they can’t deal with the issue themselves. I can safely assume it would be a different story if I was a wealthy customer seeking to become a member.

The petition

Thanks to the valued support of compassionate people, we achieved a total of 297 signatures for the petition ( in less than 3 days!). Handing the petition over was a visibly uncomfortable moment for the club’s rep, who was forced to hold one part of the petition whilst I held the other as the photographs were being taken.

The highlight was undoubtedly when we were asked to look at each other for a photo whilst holding the petition.

The rep simply couldn’t look at me. He let out a nervous laugh when asked but continued looking elsewhere.

The culling issue

When asked by the press, I stated that I wanted to have Donald Forbes banned. How is it that a member can commit an act of animal cruelty on the course, be convicted, and still be welcomed as a member? What message does that send to other members of the club?

Regarding the the cull policy, I was not able to confirm anything with the club beforehand as they refused to comment.

But what conclusion can be drawn when they refuse to answer? What are they hiding?

Interestingly, I was then told that they would only cull foxes if they posed a significant threat to humans. I told the rep I could not think of a situation whereby a fox could actually pose a significant threat to a human.

I have reason to believe they either cull foxes on their land, or allow people on their land freely to shoot foxes, officially or not, and I will be seeking evidence of this from my unnamed source. I told the rep to state in writing that that the club do not endorse a fox cull policy and have provided him with an email address.

The outcome

Before leaving, I told the rep to inform the committee that unless Donald Forbes was banned, there would be more protests. The press asked for Donald Forbes address before leaving in order to obtain a statement from him. Regardless of whether he was approached for a statement, he will certainly know the demo took place.

So far I’ve heard nothing from the club about banning Forbes or about the fox cull policy.

However, I’ll be sure to update here.

This is by no means over – Fox Watch will keep up the pressure to ensure Forbes is rightfully banned from this club.

Image credits:
Fox © Mikhail Blajenov | Dreamstime.com
Little Fox © Nicolaas Weber | Dreamstime.com

Tullos Time: What’s Happening On The Hill? – Part 1

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Environment, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Jul 152011
 

In the first of two parts, Suzanne Kelly offers an update into what is and is not happening on the hill.

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There may have not been much about the controversial Tullos Hill Roe Deer Cull in the media of late; therefore it’s time for an update.

The relative quiet in the media is not for lack of investigation, protest and anger on the community’s part.

As for the City and its LibDem councillors and officials, they are either spreading incorrect information (denying the past failure and £44k debt which resulted), or not answering questions at all (I eagerly await overdue answers on a number of fronts).

The question is:  are they trying to stall a proper investigation until they start shooting in September?  It looks as if stalling might indeed be their strategy.

There are so many outstanding issues, questions and problems with the Tullos Hill deer cull that this article needs to be split into two parts.  This part will look at the location chosen for the trees, Community Council’s stances and the small matter of arson.

Next week will cover issues including the SNH, the unanswered Freedom of Information requests and formal complaints, the importance of the gorse-covered hill as it exists (an expert writes), and the curious case of the £43,800 Forestry Commission ‘repayment.’  This repayment  Ms Watts either forgot about or didn’t know about when last she wrote to me.

Interestingly, Freedom of Information requests on this point are still being answered that no such debt exists. 

Either the council is being very very accurate (the debt was repaid late this March, but it most definitely existed), or someone was keen to keep the repayment quiet.  If so, they failed just as they failed in their bid to keep the cull quiet).

Before we get into the details, a small ray of hope: unnamed sources confirm that there is unease within the corridors of power over this ridiculous plan, with officials calling the situation ‘a hot potato’ and a ‘can of worms’.  Take heart from that, but please continue reading this article.

If at the end of it you decide you don’t want the cull, then write to your elected officials and Aberdeen City Chief Executive Valerie Watts, making it clear you will vote against anyone in May who has voted for this cull.

See: http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1

Roe Deer
Deer have lived in relative security (bar the arsonists and Aileen Malone) on Tullos Hill for many decades; they delight the residents of Torry and Kincorth as well as people visiting from further afield. 

The hill is a wildlife haven as it is with the very important gorse providing homes to bees and birds, fields of wildflowers (the spectacular Dame’s Violets for instance).

It has bronze age cairns set dramatically on its summit (currently un-obscured by trees), and it is a recreation area.  This is why our City Council – as a LibDem election pledge – want to turn it into some gargantuan 40,000-tree profit-making (i.e. lumber-producing) forest.

Of all the Liberal Democrat promises, killing the deer and planting the trees is about the only one in the UK they are adamant about sticking to.

They told the community councils and the public at large what a great thing this forest would be – but as previously demonstrated, they and SNH deliberately sought to keep a cull of the Tullos Hill roe deer secret.  Without a cull, there is no money for planting all these trees (although we could have had experts advising us – for free – how to plant trees without culling deer:  it just would have cost money).  Why then we are insisting on a forest of this size or a forest at all, and why on Tullos Hill?

Location, Location, Location

If we accept without question that trees must be planted because we can get grants for doing so as long as they reach growth targets, then where to put them? 

The easily-accessible Loirston Loch greenbelt area has several young trees on it – all in tree protector sleeves (the same sleeves which the SNH November letter tells us are rejected because they have ‘visual impact’ among other reasons – someone at ACC took this decision to reject tree protectors for us all with no recourse to the public or local councils).  There was a splendidly suitable area for these trees – but we are putting a football / community stadium on this piece of ground now.

This virtually flat land is easily reached by car (Tullos at present has no parking and is mainly reached by several footpaths), is not on a windswept hill, and is not as remote as Tullos – therefore less desirable to arsonists.  It is a largely open field with grasses and some vegetation in very moist, nearly marshy ground.

Loirston was not the only option either.  But this is Aberdeen:   Tullos Hill is apparently the only choice we have, according to our Council.  They are happy to sacrifice greenbelt at Loirston and elsewhere for stadiums, offices and housing – but are adamant that an existing, stable ecosystem must become a forest:  and they will not answer us why.

Fire on the Mountain

For all the City rangers’ and Grampian Fire’s attempts to be ‘down with the kids’, the arson issue remains the burning question:  why put 40,000  young trees on a windswept hill with access issues which is next to settlements and industry when we can’t keep the arsonists out?

Ranger Ian Talboys is at pains to play down the arson issue.   In an email to myself, 6 June 2011 he states:

“As the trees to be planted are mainly broadleaved species which do not readily burn in the way gorse does the risk of fire is reduced.   The conifers in the scheme will be mixed in with the broadleaved species again reducing the risk of large scale fire damage….. The recent statistics have shown a substantial reduction in wilful fire raising on the site, despite the recent incidents.

“It is however encouraging that the Police have charged a number of youths in connection with these fires as a result of intelligence gained from the local community and following the work we have been doing with the local schools over the last 5 years.  In the last couple of years there have been very few fires on Tullos Hill, a total of some 11 fires were reported for 2010 on Kincorth Hill and Tullos Hill combined….”

Mr Talboys also talks about getting rid of the gorse, which:

“reduces the risk of wilful fires”

Gorse is a vital part of the ecosystem, particularly on Tullos Hill which we will look at later.  However it is disappointing that the attitude is to get rid of a natural feature which supports wildlife because it is more flammable (allegedly) than trees – rather than to simply stop the arsonists.

Who are the arsonists, and is Talboys right that the fires are decreasing?  So far this year there have been at least a dozen fires.  Two men aged 27 and 23 are being charged with starting fires on 3 July:  so much for the idea of stopping the schoolchildren starting fires, which is the strategy Talboys promotes.

American studies identify half a dozen types of arsonists; these two would fit into the ‘excitement-motivated’ arson category, often men between 18-30.  Blaming children was the favourite option; it is now discredited.  The Council may wish to do more research on this one.

You may be interested to know that Talboy’s figures are slightly at odds with figures supplied by Grampian Fire.  Then again, media reports would seem to say there have been more fires than either of these sources.  I would love to tell you what Grampian Fire had to say:  but they have qualified that their statistics are subject to copyright and are for personal use and not publication!  I await clarification and will report once they explain themselves.

At least someone in power loves Tullos.  When the fires were blazing in May of this year, Fraser Burr of Grampian Fire (Risk Reduction) told the BBC:

“It would be a shame to see such a beautiful area of the city, enjoyed by hundreds throughout the year, ruined by wilful fire raising”. – (BBC News 22 May 2011)

I spoke to a New York-based former fire department captain; he seriously disputes Talboy’s contention that young or mature trees are relatively safe from fire. California for one example habitually fights forest fires that are vast in area; the size of the trees makes the fire considerably more dangerous than a few burning gorse bushes.  Wind makes the problem far worse.

Fact:  Tullos Hill is extremely windy at times.  People often need to be evacuated from their homes when the fires rage (also seen in Europe) – who will promise this will not happen here with 40,000 trees virtually on top of residential and industrial areas as Tullos is?  My fire-fighter source said ‘there is no magic plant that doesn’t burn’.

He also posed a hypothetical question and asked me why these people are so fixed on planting these trees in this location.  I have asked, but I have no answer.  He then jokingly said ‘who’s getting kickback?’  We both laughed.

Your Community Councils at work

When the truth came out about the secret cull plans, community councils and citizens (in their thousands) condemned the plan and the way the City handled the public ‘phase 2’ consultation.  How did your local community council react?

I am writing this piece on the 13th of July.  The Minute of the Housing & Environment Committee meeting of May 10 is still not available on the Council’s website a mere 2 months after the fact.  It was at this meeting that Andy Finlayson and I had both put in delegations to speak about the deer cull and Tullos Hill, for all the reasons that had emerged since the cull was first brought up.

It was because there was no written report on the deer – only a verbal one which had been requested by Malone – that we were not automatically allowed to speak.  Abuse of process springs to mind.  In the event, the matter of our delegations was put to a vote and only a handful of councillors supported letting the truth be heard.

I have been waiting to check the accuracy of these Minutes; for one thing I admit I got confused as to whether Andy Finlayson was from Nigg or rather from Cove (which I now understand to be the truth).  Finlayson was the other would-be speaker.  Maybe after another two months have passed, the Minutes will be published and I can double-check this point.

But take note:  in another two months it will be the season for the cull:  could our City be deliberately stalling us until it is too late for the deer?

Community Councils are your elected local representatives.  The City has a duty to consult with them on local issues – something sadly lacking on this issue, let alone the massive Loirston AFC football ground which will fragment the greenbelt.  Nigg CC is very busy with this important issue.

The City is not consulting, and it is certainly not listening.  Here are what the Councils are saying – how did yours react?

Kincorth (population 8,300) –  ‘Abhorrence’

Kincorth Community Council resolved at its May 2011 meeting:

“Item 10.1 The City Council has agreed to the killing of the deer on Tullos Hill but have stated it will be done as humanely as possible. The Chair asked the Secretary to write indication our abhorrence at this decision”.

Kincorth spokesperson Graham Bennett, quoted in the Press & Journal, 13 May:

“We are all united.  We deplore the willingness of the City Council to cull the deer.  We all agreed we didn’t want a tree planted for every citizen.  These are defenceless animals.  We would rather do without the trees and have the deer.”

I spoke to a member of Kincorth CC; they are all outraged and want the hill to remain as it is, with the deer continuing to live there.  My contact cites the fact that the ‘phase 2 consultation’ said nothing about the deer cull, yet mentioned rabbit fencing.

This is one of the strongest points of contention – the public and community councils were deliberately kept in the dark about the deer cull.  This is proved clearly in the 25 November letter the SNH sent to the City Council, stating the need to ‘manage’ the public over the cull.

It seems SNH are fully aware that culling these animals in general is an issue – but to kill animals in order to protect non-existent trees is ‘abhorrent’.  (More about the SNH and its recent deer consultation next week).  The word ‘abhorrent’ is also how the Scottish Society for the Protection of Animals and Kincorth Community Council describe this LibDem plan.

Torry  (population c 9,400) –  Unanimous condemnation of the cull

Torry Community Council allowed me to speak at its meeting in May on the cull; they had been informed about the trees in some detail – minus the crucial detail of the deer cull.  

The 14 members present voted unanimously to condemn the cull and to write to the City to protest the cull and the lack of consultation.  Talboys specifically communicated with Torry about the trees, without ever mentioning a deer cull.

To put it mildly, the Council and the residents of Torry are Not Happy.

Cove & Altens (population 7,100) –  Chairman gagged by Malone

On 10th May Cove’s Chairman Andy Finlayson attempted to address the Housing & Environment Committee over the cull and all the issues which had arisen (lack of consultation with CCs, no reference made in the public consultation documents, etc.).

Aileen Malone initially referred to him as the ‘gentleman from Cove Community Centre’ as opposed to his status as duly-elected Council member.  On the technicality of there being no written report on the deer – only a verbal one – Cove’s representative was unable to raise the many points which the Council had kept out of the public domain which were relevant to the tree scheme.

“We are totally against it, basically… the community council is unanimous and everyone in the area we speak to is against it…the message is, stuff the trees – we would rather have the deer.” – Andy Finlayson, Chair, Cove & Altens CC, Press & Journal 13 May 2011

Nigg  (population 8,200)  – a history of concern for animal welfare

“I think the majority of the Community Council are against it (the cull)” – James Brownhill, Nigg CC – Press & Journal, 13 May 2011

Nigg is committed to preserving its greenbelt land as its actions and its website attest.  It is doing all it can to stop the ridiculous AFC stadium plans which will see a 21,000 seat stadium plunked in the middle of the greenbelt to its permanent injury.  A year ago, the Nigg Community Council April Minutes had this entry:

“Lochinch Visitors Centre Deer-  thanks to activity of Cllr Cooney, Nigg CC, Jenny Gall and Vivienne McCulloch, deer had been saved from culling and will live out their lives in their current (but reduced) enclosure.”

Before the furore broke out over Tullos Hill, Councillor Neil Cooney and others from Nigg were already going to bat against needless slaughter of our indigenous animals when tame deer were earmarked for needless slaughter.

One year later at its 14 April 2011 meeting, Nigg CC resolved:

“Proposed Deer Cull Tullos Hill – Majority against proposal. Lack of deer management policy holding up planting of trees under ‘tree for every citizen’ scheme.”

Nigg’s Council met again on 12 May 2011 after the Housing Committee’s undemocratic debacle over the deer and would-be speakers.  Nigg’s minutes read:

“Proposed Deer Cull Tullos Hill. Decision to cull deer city-wide approved by ACC Councillors. SNH recommended cull to save deer from starvation. Nigg CC still not happy with this decision”.

I disagree with the comment about starvation, and wonder if SNH have actually said the deer at Tullos will starve – they are in no present danger of that as things stand.  But this is a very minor point concerning the minutes.  When it comes to accuracy in Minute taking, Cults has managed to create an interesting document indeed.

Cults:  (population 10,824)  – An important debate with Cllr Aileen Malone

I spoke to Cults Bieldside Milltimber Community Council on 26 May where Aileen Malone and I finally had the debate she had so far resisted (again, she would not let me speak to the Housing committee which she convenes; and she was too busy one Sunday morning in May to spare 20 minutes to debate the issue with me on Northsound).

In my initial request to speak to Cults, I sent them newspaper cuttings that Torry, Kincorth, Nigg and Cove & Altens Community Councils were opposed to the scheme, as well as the Scottish SPCA.  I sent them articles on the SNH letter which shows the City wanted to keep the cull quiet.  In these circumstances I was asking Cults CC to let me address its May meeting and specifically to follow suit.

The community council meeting that ensued was interesting (and heated) on several points.  Mike Shepherd of Friends of Union Terrace Gardens was there to discuss the future of the gardens, and Aileen Malone stated that there would definitely be a public vote on whether to go ahead with any scheme for Union Terrace Gardens.

At my request she repeated this was the truth, and that the only question unresolved was whether residents in the shire as well as the city would get a vote.

I wrote an article on this Cults BM CC meeting.  I wrote it that night and the next day with my own shorthand notes taken on the night (amongst other things, I have been a secretary minuting meetings for some 25 years, and like to think I have some skill and experience in this area).

My notes reflect that Cults BM CC was going to write to Aberdeen City Council to express a position opposed to the Tullos Cull; I asked the secretary on the night if I could have a copy of any letter they sent; the secretary agreed.
See: you’re-shooting-yourself-in-the-foot-cults-cc-tells-malone

This is what came out in the Cults BM CC Minutes for that meeting:

“Tullos Hill Deer Cull (Peter Reiss)

The Community Council had been made aware of resentment in parts of the city towards the plans to cull some of the local roe deer, seemingly triggered by the need to limit damage to new trees to be planted on Tullos Hill. Suzanne Kelly a Torry resident had written to CBMCC to ask if the CC would take a position on this matter.

In discussion the following points were made:

– The tree planting drive is an election commitment of the current LibDem administration

– Funding from EU and other sources requires best practice and best value for money.

– Due to problems with earlier plantings, City will not get any more funding for tree planting unless a robust roe deer management programme is in place,

– Deer have no natural predators in Scotland. Aberdeenshire, Moray and private estates have a deer cull policy in place. Aberdeen City has management programmes for several other wild animals – e.g., rabbits – but not one for deer.

– A management programme that includes an annual deer cull of about 30 animals has been agreed recently by the City’s Environment Committee. This is a city wide programme but will help to reduce damage to new plantings in Tullos  where some 10 to 15 deer will be culled.

– Objectors say that there has been insufficient consultation on this programme. They would prefer fencing or other positive tree protection rather than killing deer. They are extremely unhappy about the Committee’s request to them to raise £225 000 for 10 years deer fencing as there is no council money to pay for that alternative.

The CC resolved that the deer culling policy appears to be a separate issue not just related to the planting of trees.

Post –meeting note: City tree specialists have been invited to speak in the next community council meeting.”

(Cults Bieldside Milltimber Community Council Minute 26 May 2011)

I have added italics to the excerpt above where the minutes have gone back to repeating verbatim the City Council’s double-speak, sweeping statements about deer culls in general.  Readers of previous stories or Council documents will find a familiar ring to the Cults minutes.

General tree planting issues aside, the Tullos Hill deer have survived in the existing ecosystem – an ecosystem enjoyed by the public as well which the neighbouring Community Councils have clearly said they want kept as is.

I have  also italicised the ‘post meeting note’ wherein someone has invited tree specialists to speak at the June meeting (I would have gone to that had I been informed or had I seen these May minutes in time).  So, without any counterpoint some ‘tree experts’ were called in to explain the City’s perspective on killing deer and planting trees.  Again, who was there to explain all of the issues specific to Tullos?

I will look at those minutes when they are issued.   

It now transpires that Peter Leonard, council officer, is deploying council tree experts to speak to the community councils.  This is what Leonard has to say (I have put the particularly objectionable phrases in bold) in a Freedom of Information Request answer:

“The Community Councils who have objected have not been in possession of the full picture of the project, some who have no planting areas within their areas will have had no information about the project from the team delivering the project as there was no requirement to consult on a project that was not within their area.

“Officers from Housing and Environment have offered to attend the community councils who have written in opposing the cull (Kincorth & Leggart and Cults Bieldside and Milltimber, Cove and Altens Community Councils) to present the full picture about The Tree for Every Citizen Project including the deer management proposals so they can make an informed decision.

“To date any decision they will have made will have been based on the information published in the media which has not given the full and balanced picture. Officers will be prepared to undertake similar presentations to other community councils covering areas where there are sites proposed for tree planting if invited.”

Personally, I find his comments about the community councils’ decision-making process extremely patronising: how does he know where these elected groups got information from and why does he assume it is only from the media? If people are not in full possession of all the facts this is the Council’s fault – they launched the ‘phase 2 consultation’ over six months ago, and it was a very flawed document. I certainly have been asking for information since then, largely without any real answer.

There is currently no plantation of young trees on Tullos requiring a cull.  The whole point is that there do not need to be this number of trees there, and the local community councils representing some 25,000 people said they do not want the trees.

Attention city officials and councillors:

These two reasons alone should be enough to stop your plans.  But if this is not enough for you, then we will examine your past planting failure and your cavalier attitude towards facts as well as other issues next week. 

Do feel free to weigh in – remember, Aberdeen Voice wants articles from all points of view.  Nothing is stopping you from making your point.

 

Old ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ No. 43: Cloak And Dagger Special

 Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, Creative Writing, Information, Opinion, Satire and Humour  No Responses »
Jul 052011
 

Old Susannah tries to get her head around the Council’s secrecy and finds them much more transparent than they had thought they were.  By Suzanne Kelly.

robert-the-bruce
Firstly, I trust we are all excited about the discovery of a giant wombat’s fossil in Australia!

This lumbering, hulking, ungainly creature could not move with the times, and so faded into history. Its great big head only had a pea-sized brain which was useful only for more primitive functioning. It spent its time hoarding nuts and drinking at its favourite watering holes.

Any relation to Councillors K ♦♦♦ D♦♦♦ or N♦♦♦ F ♦♦♦♦♦♦ is curiously coincidental.

While I may have spent most  of this past week enjoying the sun as well as well as a pleasant afternoon or  two in Brewdog, I’ve not been oblivious to the things that the City Council,  local institutions and mainstream press want me to be oblivious to.  While I enjoyed champagne and plenty of Pimms  with my friends ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ and ♦♦♦♦♦♦  in the great outdoors, I’ve been informed of a few developments.

Despite the summer sun, there are shadowy  figures behind the scenes, keeping secrets, denying facts, and trying (with  little success) to keep people and stories quiet – some innocent, some not so  innocent.

‘No news is good news’ – so  the saying goes, but whoever came up with this particular phrase probably had  too much of Brewdog’s ‘Sink The Bismarck’ ultra-strong beer.  Here in Aberdeen ‘no news’ seems to mean the local,  mainstream press have decided to play things down.  So – listen very carefully, I will say this  only once…

Redacted: (adjective) – obscured,  covered up, deleted, censored.

Some months ago, I attended a special meeting of Torry Community Council at which  the Friends of Union Terrace Gardens presented their case, and a very nice lady  named Jan represented ACC (Gordon McIntosh  had been invited, but was having dinner instead).  Jan told us how everything was going to be  wonderful, and how the entire matter was going to be handled ‘in a transparent  manner’.

In fact, she used the word  ‘transparent’ half a dozen times.  I left the meeting with a warm, fuzzy feeling that if something were going on about  the gardens, it would all be transparent.  What a relief.

How very strange it was  then to open up a P&J this week and find our new Council Leader McCaig asking why the minutes of one of the Garden-related groups (and there are many  I can assure you) has been redacted.  Over the weekend I’d emailed him asking why the text had been redacted; he’s not slow off the mark, our Mr McCaig.

But what group is this redacting its papers?  It’s the City Gardens Project Monitoring  Group.  What do they do?  According to the City’s website,

“The role of the Project Monitoring Group is to oversee the City Garden project’s progress and ensure that Council’s interests, and  that of the majority of Aberdeen citizens, are protected as the project
progresses”.

I take it that makes it  quite clear why they must act in secret. It’s not a question of whether or not something will be done with the gardens – they are overseeing progress.  So – the Council’s interests are not the same  as the interests of Aberdeen citizens (minority or majority).  In all my years I never would have guessed  that.  Perhaps they should have redacted  this mission statement as well.

Who is in this group?  Who attends the meetings?  If you go to the city’s website, you can  download the minutes and reports – where you will see that all the names of  attendees have been blacked out, or in council-speak ‘redacted’, together with  lots of text.

The City was trying to keep this top secret information a closely guarded secret.  Perhaps the Monitoring Group is made up of  MI6, the CIA, Lord Lucan and Spiderman?  Whoever it is, I bet they have a dual identity, a good cover story – and probably a costume with a cape.  I hear they all meet at midnight and each have limos with blacked-out windows.

 From now on I hear that anyone in a Council committee which discusses  Union Terrace Gardens will sign the Official Secrets Act, be security-vetted,  be given a cover identity and undergo survival and torture training.

Mr McCaig has no  recollection of agreeing to this group’s identity being protected, and he wants  some answers.  Let’s hope he gets  them.  Why on earth would this be secret, and what do they wish to hide?  Answers  on a postcard please (preferably in a secret code).

Alas for our poor Council:  their secrets are out.  That nice Danny Law over at STV has announced that a simple bit of cutting and pasting reveals all.  Visit STV for further information.

http://local.stv.tv/aberdeen/news/261573-council-blunder-means-concealed-minutes-from-union-terrace-gardens-meetings-can-still-be-read/

You might also want to visit the (excellent) blogspot Other Aberdeen:-
http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/

It’s hard to imagine that  the City didn’t give due care and attention to this life-or-death matter of who’s going to meetings and what they are saying about our gardens.  I am stunned.  From now on I hear that anyone in a Council committee which discusses  Union Terrace Gardens will sign the Official Secrets Act, be security-vetted,  be given a cover identity and undergo survival and torture training.

For my part, one of my trusted sources told me how to spy at the hidden text a while ago, and I was sworn to secrecy – which I kept.  My secret hope was that the Council would continue to keep thinking it had successfully blacked out text that could actually be read.  We could have been onto a winner with this one.

My sympathies to the Garden Monitoring Group at this unfortunate point in time, and in particular to one of those in the group:  our very own old friend, Ms Aileen HoMalone.  Not only is the debacle an embarrassment in itself, but my very own spies tell me that since the balance of power shift, this and other committees will be re-arranged over the summer, shedding a few LibDems in favour of SNP councillors along the way.

Gag:
1.  noun – a joke or stunt designed to cause laughter or possibly embarrassment.
2.  Verb – to make another remain silent via coercion or force. 

A gag can  be a stupid remark, like John Stewart’s saying Aberdeen needs a monorail, or a  stunt — like holding a design competition for ‘transforming’ a cherished  garden into a car park/mall.  On the more  sinister side of the coin, this week both Aberdeen City Council and Robert  Gordon University stand accused of gagging their staff.

Now, obviously the opinion  of staff at ACC is held in the highest esteem by management, and at an institution of higher learning such as RGU, nothing can be held more important  than the right to free expression and intellectual debate.  There is absolutely nothing ‘Big Brother’  about Aberdeen City Council rounding up four of its less-than-grateful staff as  it did this week to tell them off.

What had the four done?  They said mean things about the City and their bosses on something called ‘Facebook’, which apparently all the young people are using.  I hope these four ingrates have apologised for having opinions.  I do know that they have been issued with a set of guidelines as to what they can or can’t say.  Sounds like a great move.

In fact, back when the cuts were being  proposed in 2008, the City very wisely told its staff that they should in no way protest against the City’s school and service closures.  Many of them did so anyway.  You might think such people are brave in standing up for education and health services, but you must remember, when you take a job for the City, you lose all your human rights.  Fair trade, I’d say.

I hope these four people are at home right  now, reading their new behaviour guidelines and composing letters of apology.  I’d certainly hate to think they’d be sending  me copies of the city’s newest Kafkaesque policies.  Or even worse – they might be creating anonymous Facebook identities so they can continue to keep us posted with City developments and dark doings.

As to that bastion of higher education, Robert Gordon University: they are also gagging for it.  You may have seen the news that RGU want the Trade Unions to go away and stop bothering them. 

This institution of higher learning has announced that since the unions are now ‘smaller’, they shouldn’t have to recognise them at all. Quite right.  Just because the University has shed a few jobs and has a few less people, there is no reason the unions should have shrunk as well.  Staff and educators alike are overjoyed by this move on RGU’s part, as they won’t have to go to any more tedious union meetings.

The staff won’t publicly say how happy they are, because RGU is, according to STV “accused of ‘gagging’ staff as dozens protest over de-recognition decision”.  I know staff who have been asked to take on more work with no pay, who have had pensions cut, and who work weekends with no extra money to show for it.  I’m sure union representation is the furthest thing from their minds.

RGU wanted the whole episode to be treated as Top Secret:  staff were told not to discuss these special Trump security arrangements

It might be worth mentioning that RGU held its staff’s safety particularly important during Donald Trump’s visit for his honorary degree.  RGU management were so concerned about the safety of its people who would be in the same building as ‘the Donald’ that they let Trump’s private security people search bags, set up security checks, and made sure no one left the building until the great man himself had gone.

Some people say that their mobile phones were looked at, and they weren’t allowed to take any photos (which would have been the first thing on my mind), but this remains unconfirmed.

Those who did get in touch told me that RGU wanted the whole episode to be treated as Top Secret:  staff were told not to discuss these special Trump security arrangements.  I would be happy for the RGU administration to confirm or deny that private, American security was given power over its staff.

Maybe they could have done what Robert Gordon’s College did, and simply lock any bothersome people up in cupboards (congratulations to Ms Michie for winning her case against the College where she was indeed locked in a cupboard.  I await news of the dismissal of the person who did this, but it hasn’t appeared yet).

News Blackout: (modern English phrase) – to deliberately ignore or censor news events. (See also ‘P&J’)

The local press simply  don’t have the time and space to tell you the entire goings on.  The P&J may have covered the story of the City Council’s ‘redacting’ text (see below), as Cllr McCaig came forward with the story.

However, if you put ‘Robert Gordon University’ into the Press & Journal’s online search feature, you’ll see a collection of innocent PR stories about boat races and an RGU student appearing in something called ‘Glee’ (whatever that is).  No RGU bashing in the P&J; they don’t want to upset that nice Mr Wood and his friends.  No word of gagging staff or staff being kettled by American private scurity.

You might also search the P&J website for the story of guitar hero Richard Thompson’s honorary degree from Aberdeen University granted  on the 5th July (congratulations by the way). 

I’ll give you that Richard Thompson is no Donald Trump (who got his degree from Ian Wood’s RGU for services to money).  Thompson has only enjoyed a successful international musical career since the 1960s, released award-winning albums, and made a particularly important collection, ‘1000 years of popular music’.  I doubt the man even has his own jet.

Don’t bother searching for news of his honorary degree award in the local rags – it’s not there.

Just as Anthony Baxter never got any newspaper coverage for his documentary ‘you’ve been trumped’ about Trump and the Menie Estate (it was held over twice and had unprecedented demand at the Belmont), the local press are making life easier for us by deciding what’s newsworthy and what isn’t.

I for one am far more interested in petty burglaries, minor football matches and cute baby photo competitions than the workings of secrecy in local government and the schemes of our local millionaires.

It is the editors at the local papers who decide what goes in (or possibly a few of the city’s richercitizens), not the reporters.

At least we don’t have a ‘News of the World’ situation.  Several newspapers stand accused of hacking mobile phone conversations – of murder victims and their families. Potential evidence has been lost and Milly Dowler’s family wrongly believed she might still have been alive since her voicemail was being accessed.  If you can think of anything lower than this, don’t let me know.

PS – the Murdoch Empire isclosing the News of the World after Sunday!  Result!  However, Murdoch is looking to take over BskyB completely.  If you somehow think this might lead to a  monopoly over news coverage, speak now.

RGU, millionaires, the  future of our Gardens, quangos, dodgy deals, secret deer cull plans:  somewhere the truth is out there.  Just don’t hold your breath waiting for it. 

Speaking of holding your breath, I’d best go  close the windows.  The wind must have changed, and the scent drifting through my open windows in Torry is decidedly not roses and violets.   Old Susannah is off for a short but much needed holiday.  I am going to turn 50 on ♦♦♦♦♦♦ and will fly to  ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ on ♦♦♦♦♦ and will stay with ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ where I hope very much to see ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦My best wishes to ♦♦♦♦♦ ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦.

Old Susannah’s Journal – Reels, Roles, Rules And Reds

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Creative Writing, Information, Opinion, Satire and Humour  No Responses »
Jul 012011
 

Voice’s Old Susannah casts her eye over recent events, stories, and terms and phrases familiar as well as freshly ‘spun’, which will be forever etched in the consciousness of the people of Aberdeen and the Northeast.

dictionary
Old Susannah is still reeling from the Friends of Union Terrace Gardens Ceilidh held last Friday night at the Hilton Treetops.  The ‘vocal minority’ as the Council likes to call the Friends was certainly vocal on the night, and the excellent Ceilidh band was ‘vibrant and dynamic’ –  so much so that we upset the party in the next room, which happened to be Aberdeen Football Club!

A red-faced man from AFC was ever so slightly angry and spent his entire night yelling at the hotel staff that; ‘he had spent a lot of money’, and ‘’didn’t expect to hear a band’ during his event.

Actually, I could barely hear the band over this refined gentleman for most of the night. He was obviously very important, because he kept saying who he was.

Eventually many of us took our drinks out of our room and sat on sofas watching his endless tirade.  If AFC players had his stamina, then there would be more silverware in their trophy cabinet.  I can only hope we have not inconvenienced Mr Milne himself.

Anyway, the Friends raised lots of money; Anne Begg made a moving speech and everyone (except the AFC man) had a fantastic night.

On Sunday I took advantage of the opportunity to watch ‘you’ve been trumped’ again.

Anthony Baxter did another Q&A session and was joined by Menie resident, Susan Munroe.  The giant mound of earth and sand those nice Trump people left next to her house, (no doubt for a very important reason) is having a wonderful effect on her garden and her car.  The garden is dying (so less work for her to tend it) and the car is clogged with sand (so that means less C02 emissions – another result).

The Q&A session wound up in the Belmont’s bar and continued for quite some time.  Anthony is looking forward to his New York film premier, as you might well expect.

I suspect in reality he’s just hoping Trump will show up and bring his lovely young wife Melania with him – I’m sure Anthony is hoping for an introduction.  Then again, I may be wrong about that.  Anthony definitely sends his thanks to the Belmont and the people in Aberdeen who have turned out for the film.

But the real story of this past week was the rise of 26 year-old Callum McCaig, now installed as the new leader of Aberdeen City Council.  It is pointless to make jokes about his youth; he is bringing his year of experience to the job.  Rumours that he wants to turn Union Terrace Gardens into a skateboard park are (so far) unfounded.

I am actually going to give him the benefit of the doubt for the present.  To be honest, when I was 26 my interests lay in other directions, but the less said about that the better.  He says he wants to listen to what the people are saying.  Is it possible he is embracing….

Community Engagement:

(modern English phrase) involvement of a group of people in decision-making processes.

If you read the many wonderful booklets and reports the City and its army of quangos and consultants have written over the past 10 years (well, a girl has to have a hobby), you will realise what lengths the City has gone to in its quest to ensure we are all given a voice in planning.  The City might not actually listen to that voice (viz Union Terrace Gardens, the Tullos Hill Deer Cull, school closures, etc etc). – but it’s awfully nice of them to give us a voice all the same.  To quote from some of their literature, here is what the city kindly does with us:-

Effective Community Engagement means:

  • Ensuring that people are made aware of proposals that affect them as early as possible.
  • Appropriate systems are in place to allow their opinions to be made, shared, and considered.
  • To allow better explanations to be made by the Council as to how and why specific decisions on design issues have been arrived at.
  • Help to implement the principles of Inclusive Design.
  • Help develop greater interest and transparency in the planning system.
  • Involving people across the whole public spectrum.

The ‘Inclusive Design’ implementation has long been a personal favourite.  I don’t understand what this phrase means in the slightest but it certainly sounds both important and beneficial.  Please feel free to send me some examples of Inclusive Design the City has put in place.

I could be forgiven for thinking that in its haste to improve our lives; the City might have forgotten these principles on a few occasions. Let’s look at these points again as applied to the Tullos Hill and other current situations (my comments are in bluish):-

  • Ensuring that people are made aware of proposals that affect them as early as possible.

I don’t remember the part when the City told us a deer cull was coming for their tree programme, but I do remember they and SNH wanted to keep the cull quiet.

  • Appropriate systems are in place to allow their opinions to be made, shared, and considered.  

The public were allowed to comment on the tree planting until the end of January.  This was the ‘phase 2 consultation’.  However, once we found out that the cull was part of this phase 2 plan and that it had been kept secret, we were told we could not share our opinions.  That nice Ms Aileen Malone and other Lib Dems refused to let me and the Nigg Community Council representative address the May Housing Committee with this new information:  because she had only asked for a verbal report on the cull, not a written one.
Democracy in action!  Or is that Democracy inaction?   You could be forgiven for thinking it was a sneaky, underhanded, undemocratic ploy on (HoMalone’s) part– but if the City says it has systems in place for public opinion sharing then who are we to question it?

  • To allow better explanations to be made by the Council as to how and why specific decisions on design issues have been arrived at.

The deer campaigners keep asking why the cull was kept secret, why we can’t have non-lethal measures, why the trees have to be there at all.  The Council either ignore these questions, or keep repeating that a cull ‘…is standard practice for maintaining woodlands throughout Scotland.’  It doesn’t seem to matter much that there is no woodland on the hill at present, just the deer.

  • Help to implement the principles of Inclusive Design.  

Again, Inclusive Design is fantastic.  This is being shown to great effect in the ongoing Union Terrace Gardens saga.  The inclusivity seems a bit limited to a few millionaires, ACSEF and Scottish Enterprise, but hey ho.

  • Help develop greater interest and transparency in the planning system.

I have to say I find the planning system very very transparent:  I can see straight through it when it comes to Union Terrace Gardens, Loirston Loch, and Tullos Hill.

  • Involving people across the whole public spectrum.

Fantastic!  Four Community Councils at least have condemned the cull and its handling.  Two thousand five hundred local people signed petitions against it.  And what does the City’s Chief Executive say?
It says  that this only represents a small number of people.
It seems inclusion doesn’t mean including groups of only a few thousand members.  I’ll get the hang of who does and doesn’t get included yet.

Now that we have seen how Community Engagement works, I hope we can all appreciate just how important our opinions as taxpayers and residents are to our City.

Maybe this is one engagement that should be broken off.

Open Plan:

(adjective) description of a style of interior layout, particularly in an office situation, characterised by the lack of walls.

The idea was to create an open area where information would free-flow.  The reality however is that people in such areas have no privacy and are under pressure to conform.  Most companies are getting rid of such uncomfortable, noisy interior layouts.  But not our City.

Inside the new Marischal College, aesthetic sensibility rules OK.

Staff who were lucky enough to be moved to this open plan nirvana had been told they could bring a maximum of two packing crates of their files / work with them – and one of those crates was for their computer (unless a  new machine had been laid on).  Thankfully architectural and interior design principles will continue to guide how things operate – staff cannot have any personal mementos or – heaven forbid – plants on their desks!

What would it look like if people could have their desk look the way they wanted?  Chaos would ensue and things would not look as uniform as a factory.  There is a horrible fear that someone will spill something on the new carpets.

I am sure our 65 million pound wonder building won’t have any acoustic problems; no doubt there are acoustic tiles and such in place.  Since shouting, swearing and screaming are rarely heard in the City’s hallowed halls, I’m sure everyone will get on in the new office just fine.

Other staff members are being moved around from building to building; it certainly keeps things lively.

Next week: Definitions, Deer info, and I attempt to contact Neil Fletcher again with a civil question.

 

Old Susannah’s Journal No.39 – Maths! (After A Fashion)

 Articles, Community, Creative Writing, Information, Opinion, Satire and Humour  No Responses »
Jun 102011
 

Voice’s Old Susannah casts her eye over recent events, stories, and terms and phrases familiar as well as freshly ‘spun’, which will be forever etched in the consciousness of the people of Aberdeen and the Northeast.

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Summer in Aberdeen.  Lighting the barbeque (rain permitting) then standing around it (to warm your hands up) while someone inevitably insists on taking over the cooking, ensuring you get a burger burnt on the outside yet still frozen inside.

Old Susannah is off for a spray-tan tomorrow so she’ll be bright orange (or maybe not) for the season’s most important event – the Friends of Union Terrace Gardens picnic.  My picnic basket has been dusted off, a few brewdogs put in the deep freeze, and raingear laid out (just in case) for the big day Saturday.

If you think the City’s economic future doesn’t depend on putting a carpark where the verdant remnant of the Denburn Valley is, then I will see you there Saturday.

Old Susannah was at the RGU students’ fashion show last Thursday as a guest of one of the lecturers; the designs on show were impressively creative and individualistic.  It was a professional, enjoyable show, but I hope they do better on the drink front next time.  I guess it is possible to have clothing that’s not been sewn in the third world by children in sweatshops after all.

The mini bottle of unchilled white wine however was not to my group’s taste, and we made a break for it to Cafe 52 for some cold beer and wine.  Since then, I’ve had a wee bit of my time taken up looking into the deer cull.  It’s not too late (I hope) to stop this madness.

But now it’s time for a definition or two.

Mathematics: (noun) classical discipline encompassing algebra, geometry, trigonometry; numeracy.

Maths was never my strongpoint.  I still haven’t figured out how we can guarantee our economic future by getting a TIF loan for £100 million or more while being £50 million in debt to get rid of Union Terrace Gardens.

Thankfully, that’s what ACSEF and the Council tell me will happen, and I’m quite prepared to take their word for it.  I’m not even smart enough to figure out how a Stadium at Loirston Loch for 21,000 people can work on 1400 parking places (or how the stadium’s plan to have 80 buses reach Loirston from College Street in 15 minutes flat is feasible.  I personally can’t get a bus from Torry to Nigg when it’s busy that takes less than half an hour.  Obviously I’m doing something wrong.).

I’m working on my math skills in the hopes I too can see how black and white our city’s thinking must be.

I guess I also have to work on the mathematics behind the Haudagain Roundabout situation and the proposed Paper mill housing development.  It is good to know that Aberdeen is the best in the UK at something – and it’s official:  we are the best at roundabout traffic jams.  I’d always thought traffic moved just a wee bit slowly in the part of town as people stopped to admire the lovely roundabout itself.  However, as ever:  the City has a plan.

And here is the mathematical sense behind it:

Take: 1 x congested roundabout

Subtract: 100 nearby Middlefield houses to be bulldozed

Add: 900 private dwellings (builder:  one Mr S Milne) near congested roundabout

Add: shops, offices, a medical centre, business units and riverside bistro (builder:  Mr Milne)

Equals = minimal impact on roundabout traffic.

That’s right.  There will be minimal impact on the roundabout per our Council.

Personally I would have thought that the massive number of people trying to get a table at the riverside bistro alone would have led to traffic standstill; I hope to have an invitation to the opening night.  The medical centre makes a nice addition to any housing scheme of this size; it is the Vaseline that lets these great housing plans slide through planning departments.  It will be an extremely useful medical centre, as all of the people stuck on the roundabout will need treatment for C02 inhalation and dehydration.

My other mathematical ignorance concerns the Tullos Hill deer:

Take: 30 deer (Council’s estimate) which normally live 5-7 years

Subtract: (I mean ‘kill’ – sorry, I mean ‘cull’) 9 male deer this year

Balance: 21 deer

Plant: 40,000 trees

Number of trees left for each deer to eat =  1,904

Old Susannah can eat and drink with the best of them, but had no idea how hungry these tiny little deer must be:  1,904 trees is a fair amount per deer.  If each deer ate only 5% of this figure, that’s still 95.2 saplings for each deer (of the remaining herd after we’ve ‘managed’ 9 males as the City wishes).  It is a complete mystery to me how these hungry critters manage to survive on Tullos at all given the lack of trees.  Alas, I have no degree in forestry, so it looks like I must take the experts’ advice:  deer are dangerous vermin which if left unchecked will eat.

Not in Crisis: (mod English phrase) – phrase used to reassure others that a given situation is under control or no cause for concern.

If you follow football (a game somewhat similar to what they do at Pittodrie), then you will know that FIFA is ‘not in crisis’.  For you or me allegations of corruption, vote-rigging, bribery and dishonesty might spell a bit of trouble.  For the Federation Internationale de Football Associations, such issues can be shrugged off.  It is because of FIFA’s high moral stance that footballers the world ‘round behave with such dignity, ethics and honesty.

Behind every great organisation there is a great man.

Milne Homes has Stewart; the Wood Group PSN has Sir Ian, and FIFA has President Blatter.  Mr Blatter is so very popular that no one ran against him in the latest FIFA presidential election.  Or something like that.  I guess the question is does a mere £100 million ‘inducement’ really amount to a bribe?  I think not.  FIFA does have a ‘Standards Statute’, which is a modern fiction classic.  It reads in part:

“The Standard Statues contain all the provisions that are intrinsic to any constitutive texts worthy of such description.  We are therefore calling upon the Associations to examine these statutes meticulously and incorporate all of the articles and principles covered into their own statutes – for their own benefit and for the Good of the Game” – Joseph S Blatter

I love a good read, and gave the Statues a once-over.  However, I did not find the proper etiquette for accepting brown envelopes filled with money.  Perhaps someone here in Aberdeen can help with that.  In any event, it is hoped that all the world’s football associations will soon behave as Mr Blatter wishes.  Heaven forbid anything happens to put the beautiful game into disrepute.

Quasi-serious note

Last Christmas I put in a serious note about the holidays not having to be the beautiful family and friend-filled affairs that the TV commercials present.

Not everyone had 20 friends round their tree drinking eggnog before a horse-drawn sleigh ride.  Summer is rather the same.  The media tells you that you must look fantastic in your bathing suit (if it ever gets warm enough to put it on).  You must play volleyball on a sandy sunny beach and drink orange soda the same colour as your skin.

Don’t for a moment assume that everyone will be having tropical holidays and drinking cocktails from coconut shells under palm trees.  The economy is not great (despite the best efforts of ACSEF and ACC).  You might have your worries.  Take a ‘staycation’.  Visit Scotland.  Visit Tullos Hill for that matter.

But don’t let some false media advertising imagery fool you.  And if you are like many people struggling with one thing and another, remember:  at least you’re not Ryan Giggs.

Failed Tree Planting Costs City Council ‘Deer’

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Jun 082011
 

Aberdeen Council “could be liable for a reclaim of up to £120,333.91” if trees to be planted fail according to Forestry Commission Scotland. The entire ‘tree for every citizen’ scheme is now mired down in controversy, misinformation, mismanagement and cost implications  says campaigner Suzanne Kelly as she urges councillors to stop the cull plans and get the facts right.

One Persons Beautiful Landscape Is Anothers Development Opportunity
Aberdeen City launched a scheme to plant a tree for every citizen.  This was, in  Aileen Malone’s words (at the 26 May Cults community Council meeting) a “Liberal Democrat election promise”.
This ‘Tree for Every Citizen’ scheme had attached to it a cull of deer living on Tullos Hill.  This cull was planned as long ago as November 2010, but the City did not put it in the consultation for Phase 2, which closed at the end of January.

The Torry Community Council was likewise not consulted over any cull, and voted unanimously to condemn it.

Other community councils followed suit, protestors in their thousands registered their disapproval, and the council remained unrepentant and unwilling to consider any changes or compromise to their scheme.

I launched a formal protest following my researches.  I found no fewer than 10 main points, which I felt the Council should be called to account on.
See: https://aberdeenvoice.com/2010/12/10-more-reasons-to-call-off-the-deer-cull/

On 6 June I received Aberdeen City’s Chief Executive Valerie Watt’s response to this complaint (her letter was dated 2 June).  Perhaps the City thought this reply was going to be swallowed whole without question.

My formal reply will be sent to her shortly.

While drafting my reply to Ms Watts, one of the thousands of cull opponents came up with a startling letter from the Forestry Commission to The City:  it discredits  claims the City has put in writing.   I subsequently spoke to the author who confirmed the letter and who had some other interesting points.

This article examines the controversy and contradiction surrounding only the first two points of my complaint:  there will be subsequent coverage of the remaining issues in the near future.

Did Aberdeen City Council owe money for a previous failed tree planting? This was the first of the ten points making up my formal complaint  (The document, with responses from Aberdeen City Council Chief Exec. Valerie Watts can be viewed here: https://aberdeenvoice.com/?p=8978 )

My question:

“I would like to ask:  is it true that the Council owes a sum for previous, failed planting?  I was told that £44,000 approximately is owed by the City in this regard – please clarify.”

Council Response:

“Aberdeen City Council does not owe any amount to any organisation relating to a previous failed planting scheme.”

Forestry Commission Letter:

“ Tullos Community Woodland

“This is a failed WGS planting scheme.  The scheme failed due to inadequate protection from deer and weeds.  On the 4th November 2010 we issued Aberdeen City Council with an invoice for £43,831.90 – the reclaim of monies paid out under the above contract.  This invoice was to be paid within 30 days.  The monies have not been received.  This invoice is now accruing interest and has led to a payment ban being put in place over your Business Reference Number.”

The invoice per the letter writer was paid on 15 March 2011.  The argument could be made that Ms Watts was being truthful:  after all, no money was still owed when I made my complaint.  However – I specifically asked for clarification.  Do we really believe that the City’s answer to me was an honest clarification?

The letter from FCS can be viewed here: failed-tree-planting

The second point I raised in my letter of complaint concerned the ‘invitation’ for those concerned to raise £225,000 for alternative measures. Why ask the public to come up with a quarter of a million pounds within some 11 weeks if, as we now know, a cull was still going to be ‘required’?

My question:

“Despite the demand for £225,000, Pete Leonard, Head of Housing and Environment has written to say a cull would still be required. In an email to Suzanne Kelly, Pete Leonard has stated it is SNH’s position that a cull would still be required. Therefore, the demand for money made by a committee to its electorate is shown to be completely misleading.”

Council Response:

“The £225,000 was for alternative means of planting the trees (not just for fencing) from deer damage. To quote from the Committee minute for the Housing and Environment Committee of 1st March 2011, the additional recommendation stated

‘(in relation to Tullos Hill) that an invitation be extended to the individuals and organisations who have objected to these deer control measures to raise the sums necessary to provide and maintain alternative measures, including fencing and rehousing of deer by no later than 10 May 2011 (the sum to be approximately £225,000).’

“Also as stated in the minute of this meeting that prior to the division

‘The Head of Environmental Services highlighted to the Committee paragraph 3.2 of the report which advised that the progression of option four (tree planting within smaller deer fenced enclosures surrounding individual planting blocks) would not mitigate culling on Tullos Hill altogether, as a reduction cull of deer locally due to loss of habitat from approx 60 hectares of this site would still be required, in the view of SNH.’

“The whole Tree for Every Citizen Project is being funded from grants and contributions from businesses. As the majority of this funding is from the Scottish Rural Development Programme which is public money from the European Union, the EU require that best practice and best value methodologies are used. The grant rates available are based on these terms. For a tree-planting scheme on the scale of that proposed for Tullos Hill, the use of individual tree shelters or deer fencing (which still requires a deer cull to reduce the population) does not represent best value or best practice. To spend money on these alternative means would require funding that was not from the public purse.”

Ms Watts’ reply also contradicts itself in terms of the money demanded by the public to save the deer:  they were always going to kill deer anyway – whether or not the public paid up.  I can find no instance of the City counteracting the many press articles and media stories that their demand was in order to save the deer:  they had a chance to say that some killing would still be required.  They did not take this chance as far as I can see.

From beginning to end the proposed tree planting and resultant Tullos Hill Roe deer cull plan has been plagued by misinformation and lack of consultation.

These have been highlighted in Aberdeen Voice (“shhh! don’t mention the secret deer cull” and other articles) and by the BBC, STV, local radio Northsound and SHMU, and so on.   The biggest mystery remains why they will not consider any compromises.  A Forestry spokesperson confirms that our Council can plant elsewhere if they want to.

Perhaps it is time for them to consider a plantation that is not in an arson hotspot where deer currently live?

More on this issue to follow…

 

 

Old Susannah’s Journal No.38 – Special Deer Email Supplement

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Information, Opinion, Satire and Humour  No Responses »
Jun 032011
 

Voice’s Old Susannah shares with readers an recent email exchange with a prominent Aberdeen City councillor which has raised many more questions than answers.

dictionary
A long, long time ago people learned about reasoned debate, how to structure logical arguments, and what the difference was between the rational and irrational.

Then again, some of us must have skipped school that day.

Let me share a recent chain of emails between me and Councillor Neil Fletcher with you. It started as a correspondence on the subject of the Tullos Hill Roe deer, and turned into something else.

First let’s just review how our elder statesmen – our experienced, mature elected officials – have handled the whole deer cull and tree issue. At first, we were happy: a tree for every citizen was an election pledge of the Liberal Democrats.

There were no worries, no costs, no deer cull – just trees. The tree planting phase 2 consultation passed with barely a word; after all, the consultation only said we might have to move some rabbits – deer didn’t get a look in.

Then March arrived and Cllr. Aileen Malone’s Housing & Environment Committee comes up with a new promise: give us £225,000 by 10 May or we promise to start shooting deer. No one knew about a cull before then; animal charities and sensible people were outraged, and most of us pledged not to give in to this blackmail. Protests and petitions were launched, but nothing would sway the Lib Dems. Democratic debate was stifled – at least until 26 May when the Cults, Bieldside and Milltimber Community Council let the issue be discussed.
See: https://aberdeenvoice.com/2011/05/you’re-shooting-yourself-in-the-foot-cults-cc-tells-malone/

Coming out of these discussions we learnt directly from the horse’s mouth (as it were) that unless the trees all reach a certain height in 2 years, the City has to pay back the grant money!

So there it is at the end of May – the most important factor in whether or not to plant trees on an arson target.

I wonder whether someone should have mentioned this just a wee bit earlier? Then we could have all laughed away any thought of Tullos Hill being suitable for the trees. The Council and its ‘experts’ don’t seem concerned about arson – the deer might nibble the trees, making them shorter – and you and I would have to stump up for the tree stumps. Tree planting – best to leaf it out, I think. But the Lib Dems are now out on a limb, as they are now saying in effect ‘well, we did ask for quarter of a million, but we have to shoot the deer anyway’.

What kind of people can come up with such disorganised, illogical, constantly shifting set of priorities? Old Susannah is on hand to answer that question.

I think Ms. Malone has shown us the kind of person she is: trustworthy, open, sensible and not at all stubborn. But what of our other guiding lights on the Council? How are they handling the pressure to stick to their moral high ground faced with ‘people like me?’

Let’s look at some correspondence between me and Mr Cool, aka Cllr. Neil Fletcher. I’d been copying him on email and occasionally writing directly to him. I’m not so sure he kens the difference.

Here are three emails:-

1. Neil Fletcher’s response to an email from myself (he is only on my email as a ‘CC’ not as addressee:

Dear Ms Kelly
I’m afraid we will simply not agree on this issue.
I see the culling of deer as a necessary, if unpleasant, measure to control a
species of animal in a non-natural environment, which has no natural predators. (I)
I believe that a cull is preferable to allowing the deer numbers in any area to
control themselves by starvation.
Culls happen all the time in Scotland, including Aberdeen, and I’m disappointed
that on this occasion, what is a widely accepted measure of animal control, is
being used to oppose the largest re-forrestation project the City has ever seen.

Additionally, this project is at practically no cost to the tax-payer. (II)
As you are not a constituent of mine, I do not intend to continue any further
correspondence with you on this matter.
Yours sincerely
Neil Fletcher

2. My reply to the above, sent on the morning of Sunday 29 May:

Good morning Mr Fletcher

Firstly the email was merely copied to you; you were not an addressee. I was doing so merely as a courtesy – and in the slim hope that as a Liberal Democrat you will realise that, in the words of the Cults Community Council leader ‘you do not have the people with you’ over this Tullos Hill affair.

Still thank you for your reply. It is regrettable that you are either unwilling or unable to separate the general, wide-ranging of culling from the specific Tullos Hill situation – a stable population of deer are to be decimated to turn their ecosystem into a forest – in an arson hotspot. Whether or not culling is required on a larger picture, a whole host of animal charities, no less the Scottish SPCA are condemning the plan to kill the Tullos Hill deer to transform Tullos Hill into a forest from an open, windswept meadow.

You still seem able to grasp that in terms of transparency, democratic process and duplicity, the handling of this situation is unacceptable.

I do have one unrelated question for you Councillor – is your Register of Interests up-to-date and correct? I only ask as a. you had absolutely no hospitality entries for the whole of 2010, and b. someone had told me – obviously they must be wrong – that you might have been involved in some way in a business which was doing some work for the City Council.

You list no directorships under ‘Section 3 Contracts’ (which for some reason has sub points numbered from 4.15). I am happy to accept that you had no hospitality in 2010 and have absolutely no connection whatsoever to a business or consultancy which is/was doing any business with the Council if you confirm this is true. Again, if the Register is completely correct on these two points, then I thank you in advance for clarifying that for me.

Yours sincerely

Suzanne Kelly

3.  And then – Cllr. Fletcher to me this past Sunday evening:-

Dear Ms Kelly

My register of interests is correct.

I admire your logic. He doesn’t agree with me, so he must be corrupt and I’ll
get him. (III)

I now avoid anything that I can that would require registering an interest.
Precisely because of emails like yours. (IV)

I used to go to various events to represent the Council, and when these were
registered, people like you pointed fingers. (V)

The Lord Provost now has trouble getting Councillors to go to such things, but
as I’d rather be in the pub or community centre with my mates than attend a
stuffy evening with a bunch of strangers, its a great excuse not to go. (VI)
As regards your allegations about me not registering a previous business
interest, I haven’t spoke to that gentleman for over 2 years, so it’s unlikely
I’d have anything to declare now. (VII)

Interestingly, Cllr Willie Young, who publicised my perfectly legitimate
interest in the hope that folk like you would jump to certain conclusions,
recently sold Oakbank School to that property developer at a price significantly
lower than it is worth with the housing that will be build there. He is also a
property developer himself. (VIII)

However, the Labour Group, whilst initially supporting the need for a cull, have
done a few somersaults to appear to be backing you now. So I doubt you’d be
interested raising doubts about his honesty. (IX)

Neil Fletcher

For the record, I have omitted nothing. I was being polite, but it looks as if I have hit a nerve or opened an old wound which I truly didn’t know existed – until just recently that is.

When I asked about a consultancy, I was referring to some new piece of information a source had suggested might be true. It is time to look into some of his wilder statements. In the emails above I have added Roman numerals in places, and would comment as follows:-

(I) Cllr. Fletcher keeps going to the general statement ‘culls are needed / culls happen’.

This has nothing to do with killing the Tullos Hill deer to turn their ecosystem into a forest. I have been to the Hill; I have no idea what Fletcher means when he says the deer live in an ‘unnatural’ environment. The laws of physics apply on Tullos Hill, and plants were growing. It seemed to be an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. No, the deer have no natural predators on the hill (except arsonists). Fact: Roe Deer bucks rarely exceed 5 years, does 6 to 7 years.

(II) Cllr. Fletcher says this tree-planting is at ‘practically no cost to the taxpayer.

If the trees reach a certain height that is true. If you don’t count the cost of a minimum £2,000 annually to kill 8 or 9 of the 30 deer (Council quote – other quotes are higher) for at least 3-5 years. And if the arsonists burn enough trees – we return all the grant money. Money of course does not grow on trees (however you protect them). The grant money is coming from the public purse. Hands up who knows how the money gets into the public purse in the first place.

(III) Cllr Fletcher is annoyed. The Register of Interests is a mandatory document all councillors have to keep accurate, up-to-date, and public (have a look – his is here – http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=150&T=6 )

I don’t know where to start as to the accuracy of the document and its contents. Its first page says it was updated in January 2011. On the last few pages there is an unsigned space for signature for Jan MacEachran (democratic services) and Neil – the dates for their non-existent signatures are 2007. Cllr. Fletcherl’s record shows he attended not a single solitary event in 2010 for the council or as hospitality. He did get to dozens of events in 2009 – I was merely wondering if the absence of 2010 was another error in the document.

The numbering is interesting. Item No. 3 – concerning Contracts – is sub-numbered starting with no. 4.15. Not how we do it where I work. Hmm.

(IV) Cllr. Fletcher says he is avoiding going to events.

Well, he did avoid going to any events he’d have to register in 2010. He’s lost this reluctance now – the document was prepared (apparently) in January 2011. The last two hospitality entries are for January 2011 – a cruise on a ship, and an evening at an arts centre. I do note that barely a single event – even those where the ticket price would have been printed on the ticket – is shown.  If the average price of a ticket at AECC is £20, and he is getting at least two tickets or more a time, he is a lucky man.

(V) ‘People like me’ Cllr. Fletcher writes.

I would quite like to have a description of ‘people like me’ from Mr Fletcher. I doubt he would like to be stereotyped.

(VI) Ah, yes: pity the poor councillor who’d rather be in the pub with his mates.

Instead, he was forced in 2009 to represent his constituents at approximately 20 events – mainly concerts at the AECC. Official regulations say that councillors should not accept a large number of invites/tickets from one source (like the AECC), These dull events included Eddie Izzard, Neil Young, Britain’s Got Talent, Gladys Knight, Kasabian, Proclaimers, Simple Minds….. the sound you can hear is my heart going out to him.

(VII) ‘That gentleman’ – What gentleman? I wondered what on earth he was talking about – it wasn’t the story I was trying to follow up on.

So –it was time for a bit of research. It seems that some time ago, shortly after being elected, Cllr. Fletcher set up a company and did a wee bit of consultancy work (for about £7,000) for Carlton Rock. There was talk of this not being declared during a potentially related council vote. Nothing came of it – but it made headlines. But this story came out of left field for me. If I thought that was out of the blue, there was more to come.

(VIII) Well. The last thing I expected in my dealings with Neil Fletcher was for him to bring up Cllr. Willie Young. It was something of a shock I must say. What I did to raise Cllr. Young is beyond me.

(IX) It looks as if Neil Fletcher is implying that Labour councillors are wrong to have changed their minds over the tree situation.

I can’t find a single record of Labour councillors saying ‘we need to kill the Tullos Deer’ – it looked as if they were trying to find an alternative, even when the blackmail money was first mooted. If Labour is going back on the idea of the tree planting – it may be for two reasons. One – the overwhelming evidence now out in the open that the plan is deeply, deeply flawed – and that relevant material was not made public until after the consultation closed.

The other reason is they may be sensitive to the thousands who have signed petitions and sent letters begging for the cull to be averted and humane deer control methods to be used – and expressing the view that Tullos Hill is not the best location for tree planting. If Labour have indeed ‘done somersaults’ and are on the side of the people – I fail to see what’s wrong with that.

Sorry to have been so long-winded – but this is information Aberdeen voters and citizens should be made party to.

When the results of my complaint about Councillor Fletcher’s email are made known – I will write on this subject again.

Picnic On Tullos Hill – Deerwatch

 Articles, Community, Environment, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
May 272011
 

On Sunday 22 May, people gathered on Tullos Hill for the first of what will be many picnics and outings to protest against Aberdeen City Council’s proposed cull of the area’s roe deer. Voice representatives were there, Suzanne Kelly among them, and she reports.

One Persons Beautiful Landscape Is Anothers Development Opportunity
 

The decision to cull deer for the next several years has caused widespread outrage for its lack of compassion, lack of scientific basis and the complete lack of any kind of democratic process.

People came by car, bus and foot (I got drenched in the rain and some unexpected hailstones – which was refreshing actually) to see for themselves why Councillor Aileen Malone and others insist that deer be killed to plant forty thousand trees.

Within five minutes of hiking up the gentle slope to the Hill, it became crystal clear to everyone present that making any change to this unspoilt, natural paradise would be nothing short of the vandalism that local arsonists are already practicing.

There were around 30 people, young and old and all had an amazing day out, despite gusty wind and showers of light rain.  The hillside was alive with flowering gorse, delicate wildflowers, and the beautiful white and blue Dame’s Violets.  Views of the city were dramatic, and the Baron’s Cairn and other bronze age tumuli reminded everyone that these features are found in few locations anywhere in the world.  This hill is Scottish Natural Heritage embodied and it should be preserved as it is.

The Council used to value this natural resource.  Last year our City Council saw fit to have tours and archaeological talks about this area, and wrote:-

“Tullos Hill has long been known as an important archaeological site because of the four Bronze Age burial cairns there: Cat Cairn; Baron’s Cairn; Crab’s Cairn; and Tullos Cairn, which are scheduled as monuments of national significance”. – Aberdeen City website

Camping Out On Tullos Hill
Precisely what forty thousand trees will mean to the area’s archaeology is unclear.  What is clear is that the City has decided the Tullos Hill Roe Deer must be culled (that means shot and killed to you and me) to make way for the non-existent trees.

What will become of the wildflowers and increasingly rare native orchids – and the existing trees which constitute the ecosystem that is already there?  Were these features suddenly less important than planting a tree for every citizen?  No one on the picnic thought so.

I hope these photos will go some way to making people think what is at stake here.  The views are beautiful; the plants and cairns amazing.  Those who stayed all night got fantastic sunset photos as well.

Charred bush and lager can.
The photos of the burnt gorse are interesting.  Some of our party thought this was normal council burning – but the presence of burnt tins of beer made me think otherwise.

Arsonists have long sought out this area and it is a wonder anything survives at all.  Forty-thousand trees will make an inevitable, eventual conflagration with far more serious consequences than any previous ‘Gramps’ fire.

I personally put this eventual disaster at the door of Ms Malone and Pete Leonard of Aberdeen City Council.

There has been no word forthcoming from our City Council about the misleading consultation, the prejudice of SNH towards lethal deer control, and the undemocratic dismissal of the local Community Councils – and the thousands of petitioners pleading for the deer to be left alone – and hopefully for the area to be respected.  (see other articles in the Aberdeen Voice and other publications for details).

Dame's Violets
Since Ms Malone – arguably the most responsible party for this ‘tree for every citizen’ scheme – has not issued any explanation for her poor conducting of this affair – let alone an apology to the many people whose wishes and rights have been overwritten – it is time for more action.

I would call on everyone who loves nature to visit Tullos Hill if they can.

If after seeing this site (or just the photos if you cannot visit), you agree it should be left in peace and protected, then please write to your city councillors, your MP, your MSP and MEP and tell them what you think.

I will be sending a letter to the  Council asking for Ms Malone’s resignation.  I doubt my lone action will have the slightest impact, however – if anyone joins me there is some chance this monstrous idea can be halted. The city needs trees – but it also needs Tullos Hill’s unique oasis which supports man and nature in its current form.

Tullos At Twilight
The trees might have made a suitable addition to Loirston Loch’s less windswept fields – but these are now marked for another destructive scheme – a 21,000-seat stadium. That is another story altogether – one which might seem a bit quiet now, but which is assuredly going to be another hard-fought battle.

Our City’s resources are going to the highest bidder with no concern for your wishes or mine. The time to change that situation is now – and the battleground is Tullos Hill.

( Note – To fully enjoy the  photographs, click on the image to enlarge. Thanks To Suzanne Kelly and Clare Rochford for the pictures. )

 

 

Old Susannah’s Journal No. 37 – Open Space Oddity

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Creative Writing, Information, Opinion, Satire and Humour  No Responses »
May 272011
 

Voice’s Old Susannah casts her eye over recent events, stories, and terms and phrases familiar as well as freshly ‘spun’, which will be forever etched in the consciousness of the people of Aberdeen and the Northeast.

dictionary

To the amazement of the entire City, the Rapture came and went this Saturday without our Council floating away through the skies to heaven. Some American religious-types (who are not nutters at all) believed this past Saturday was the date for the righteous and holy to ascend to heaven.

However, since Kate Dean, Donald Trump, Stewart Milne and HoMalone have been seen walking the earth since Saturday, we can conclude that the Rapture was nonsense (or the date was wrong anyway).

Those who believed in the Rapture also believed that Hell on Earth would follow for those left behind. I hear the Council is working on it.

Then again, that’s maybe why Dean, Trump, Milne and Malone are still among us. Any similarity between these four local dignitaries and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse is purely coincidental. Some say Hell doesn’t exist except as a state of mind. If it does exist, I’ll be its got lots of concrete, parking, chain stores – and level access from all sides.

So the Rapture didn’t come Saturday.  But then when my mini polytunnel started floating out of my garden to the skies with the high winds on Monday night (along with a few roof slates), I wondered if the Rapture hadn’t just been delayed by a day or two.

Speaking of delay, I am told that Marischal College is not exactly up and running yet, despite Monday being the official opening date. It’s just not like our Council to be imprecise or miss deadlines, I admit. I guess if even the Council aren’t reliable 100% of the time, then God can be a few days late with his Rapture too.

I have a friend in Torry who is most concerned about Marischal being delayed – he is more than happy to have waited a couple of years for the Council to fix the leaky roof over his head, knowing that Marischal was given priority.

Even if the great building isn’t fully functional, citizens are still overjoyed that any ruts in the road surrounding Marischal have been smoothed over. After all, we wouldn’t want visitors to Aberdeen to get the wrong idea and think we had any potholes. And it’s only cost you and me £60 million, £80 million or somewhere in between, depending on whom you talk to.

This next definition may not fully make up for the Rapture not happening – but it’s the next best thing. I bring glad tidings of great joy: Aberdeen has launched another Consultation!

Open Space Audit: noun – another consultation.

Yes, another one. The Open Space Audit is a specific consultation asking for public opinion and which like previous consultations leaves a wearying feeling of deja vu.

Open Space: the final frontier. These are the consultation papers of the Flagship Enterprise Committee, whose continuing mission to seek out new green spaces and destroy ecosystems – to boldly develop what no council has developed before.

I hadn’t realised it, but there are still one or two green spaces that haven’t been carved up by developers – I mean which still need connectivity and improvement. You should feel very flattered: these important people want to know your opinions on these ‘new’ green spaces.

I only hope this time we are smart enough to give them the opinions they want, unlike when we turned down the opportunity to improve and ‘connect’ Union Terrace Gardens (which will still be ‘improved anyway – don’t worry). If previous consultation exercises are anything to go by then I’m happy to help. After all, it is a privilege to give up a few hours to read massive consultation documents, digest hundreds of pages of council-speak, set my thoughts on paper – and still be totally ignored.

“How do they always get it so right?” I hear you ask. Well, there is a scientific scale the Council uses to decide what the results of a consultation mean:-

  • if 300+ people want something left alone, and 2 people want the same thing changed – then change it  (like the comments on Union Terrace Gardens made during the last local development plan)
  • if people don’t object to a deer cull they didn’t know about – then get on with the deer cull, however many thousands of people and community councils beg you not to.
  • if more than half of respondents to a consultation (let’s say about gardens for instance) don’t  give the answers that the council or ACSEF want- then it means the consultants should have ‘massaged’ the results better – and it means the people didn’t understand what they were supposed to do.

Anyway, back to this exciting Consultation at hand.

Right: we have these ‘new’ green spaces, which obviously can’t be left as they are – we have to improve them. Some of them are even hard to get to. I therefore hope we will be building carparks in the Cairngorms and some connectivity enablers (shopping malls) on Loch Ness, which would increase the economic viability of the region as well.

What good is an open space if you can’t park, shop and eat at it? But rest assured – this is a local plan for local people. If you wish to read the 43 page main document, then please be my guest.

I was fascinated to learn Union Terrace Gardens is not really a city centre park (as if you need me to tell you). It is obviously a local park that “generally serves a smaller catchment area than city parks but can contain specific attractions. Most visitors will be from the immediate locality but some will travel further to use specialist facilities, e.g. sports centres or horticultural features in season.” (Aberdeen City Council Parks Hierarchy document, 1998). Glad to have helped with that.

Here is a highlight to entice you into reading the consultation papers:-

The Open Space Strategy has very close links with other strategies such as Aberdeen City’s Nature Conservation Strategy and should not be considered as a standalone document for delivering wider environmental benefits. Links to the various relevant policies and strategies are provided in Figure 1.

Supplementary Guidance on Open Space has been developed in parallel with this strategy, and sets outs the Council’s approach towards planning and development of new open spaces.
See www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/openspace

I think they are really going for a literary prize with this one. Again, I don’t understand what makes green spaces with bronze age burial grounds or Victorian garden features ‘new’ green spaces – even after reading all the helpful literature.

You will be pleased to find a fetching diagram with arrows, nice colours and shapes and soundbites at ‘Figure 1’. A free Brewdog to anyone who can explain it to me.

Whatever it means, it links to the Nature Conservation Strategy, so that’s OK then. Presumably this strategy includes taking a beautiful, unspoilt hill like Tullos, letting people set it on fire for a few decades, suddenly calling it new, saying it’s under-used, killing (“managing”) whatever lives on it, and putting 40,000 trees on it for the benefit of future arsonists.

Nature Conservation: noun – to find any remaining land, cull or ‘manage’ any nature that’s there, change it into something else, and to act like a Conservative who’s smelled money.

So you see, some of these green spaces have wildlife – which will consume the green stuff on the green spaces – so we need to ‘manage’ the wildlife. With guns.

How Nature ever managed in the past without HoMalone’s help is anyone’s guess. There are even ‘birds of prey’ which go after the captivity-bred, helpless, battery game birds found on some estate without paying for what they eat. Quite rightly we are continuing to poison these freeloaders, as witnessed recently at the Glenbuchat Estate in Strathdon.

Accidentally of course, a golden eagle got hold of a banned pesticide, carbofuran, and was ‘managed’ successfully by a painful death. Thankfully this kind of event will soon be a thing of the past, as we’re ‘managing’ to finish off the birds of prey quite nicely.

The fox which Mr Forbes bravely killed – sorry – – sorry ‘managed’ at his golf club was a dangerous wild beast.  A wild beast which normally would have eaten worms, and which was the size of my cat.

But we do have an even more serious issue: Ms Malone is still ‘desperate’ to plant her tree for every citizen. First things first, right?  The deer might eat some of the trees. Just for your reckoning, 40,000 trees divided by the 30 deer the City says live on the hill is equal to each deer consuming 1,333.33 trees. Food for thought.

When there are conflicts like this in nature between deer and vicious predatory beasts, there can be only one solution. However Ms Malone hasn’t resigned yet. Please keep your complaints to the City Council coming. You might want to ask HoMalone what’s going to stop people burning the new trees for that matter.

I eagerly anticipate sending in my response to this Open Space consultation. But once again, I must put up my hand and admit I am not smart enough to have any opinions until I have read the ‘Supplementary Guidance’ document. At only 38 pages, it’s a really brief read. It starts by telling you

“Access to good quality open or green spaces is important in contributing to a greener, healthier, smarter, safer, stronger, wealthier and fairer city”

How this city could get any fairer is beyond me. Still, you start by reading that sentence, and by the end of the document you’re brain hurts so much you’re ready to get a gun and start blasting seagulls like Mervyn New, or culling deer like HoMalone. This set of consultation documents is hypnotic persuasion at its best.

I am not sure I can handle waiting – but in due course there will be ‘The Open Space Strategy Strategic Environmental Assessment Report.’

When this is released, expect scenes reminiscent of when the final Harry Potter book was released as people queue in the streets to be the first to get their copy. To tell the truth, I can’t even figure out what the title means.

To sum up, our Aberdeen City plan is inclusive (unless you are an endangered species, fox, gull chick or deer), and your opinion counts. Tell the Council what you’d like it to do with its consultation. And its trees for every citizen.

Community Signature: noun – a positive outreach project which makes people in Torry feel a great sense of community.

People colour code triangles on a piece of paper. A valuable (£25,000 at my last count some years ago) exercise which isn’t in the least bit preposterous or patronising.

Let’s start defining this wonderful initiative by visiting its description on the City Council’s web page:-

“So what is a Community Signature?

“The Community Signature is a picture of the community. It’s built up by people sharing their views on what Torry is like as a place to live and work. The discussion’s really important because we all have lots of different views and experiences. The group also colour in a grid with green, yellow or red to reflect what works (community strength), where there is room for improvement (community opportunity) and what does not work at present (community barrier)”.

As you can see, nothing patronising there at all. The police, the city (that’s you and me as taxpayers), and the Foyer have spent tens of thousands of pounds on this colouring-in exercise. Not that we would have spent the money on saving the Tullos Hill Deer, had we been given any choice.

Once a Torry quine or loon has used a few coloured pencils, they are part of the community, are involved, and get a warm, fuzzy feeling. The fuzzy feeling may be a symptom from the logic employed by this scheme. But I don’t want to ruin the experience for you.

Get yourself some paper and coloured pens. Make some triangles – green for strengths the Council has, Yellow for what’s not quite great, and red for what is completely beyond the pale of what any reasonable, rational person should put up with. On second thoughts, just get yourself a green pen. Draw a few triangles. Talk about your feelings. That’ll be £25,000 please.

There is a newsletter, too. Value for money indeed. It reminds me of the guy in the States who’s made a small fortune from the Rapture – he took money to look after your pet dog or cat once you’d floated up to the clouds. Very creative and enterprising indeed – and not at all a rip-off.  I offer a similar service to anyone who’s going to be drinking flaming mojitos on the lake of fire instead of going to the pearly gates.

That’s all I can cope with. I’m going to get some green pens, start drawing triangles, and then read nearly 80 pages of the Open Spaces consultation. Definitely time to leave Brewdog tonight – there is a giant Stoat behind the bar that says it’s his birthday. Perhaps the Council has some policy covering stoats – Ms Malone should be told.

Next week (unless Rapture happens) – appeasing volcano gods, register of interests, and conflict of interests.

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