Economics Archives - Page 6 of 7

Shop Till Ye Drap

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

Sep 162011

By Bob Smith.

The fitfa’s up in yon Union Square
Aboot iss news I dinna really care
Wi material wealth I’ll hae nae truck
Fae me thae malls winna mak a faist buck

Tho’ fowk can spend ony wye they wint
At times a think their brains hiv got tint
Fair fleein aboot fae here ti there
Iss lemming like steer is hard ti square

Shoppies are placies I dinna like ti dally
So’s aa their spiel I dinna hae ti swally
A buy fit a wint then oot the door
Syne “faar ye gyaan” ma wife’ll roar

Some fowk o coorse wid bide aa day
Gyaan in blonde an cumin oot grey
They’re in the malls for aat lang
Peerin at windas throwe the thrang

Fashions noo are fair aa the rage
Ye maun hae the richt gear fitivver yer age
Wifies in ticht troosers wi erses richt fat
Some mannies ye winner fit the hell they’re at

Shoptill ye drap iss aa the malls cry
Even thingies nae nott they wint ye ti buy
Jist shove it aa on ti aat wee plastic card
Hiv some fowk’s brains aa turned ti lard?

Shoppin it wid seem is a national obsession
It’s aa aboot spendin an gettin possession
O as muckle stuff yer hairt dis desire
Afore oot yer body yer last breath dis expire

Aa the stuff fit ye’ve githered
Efter the money ye’ve shelled oot
A doot eence yer deid an beeriet
A fair puckle micht be chucked oot

©Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2011
Image Credit: © Brent Wong | Dreamstime.com

Aberdeen Bucks The Unemployment Trend

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Information No Responses »

Aug 162011

Carlo Pandian highlights the fact we Aberdonians are fortunate with regard to latest employment figures

While the rest of Scotland suffers, Aberdeen is bucking the unemployment trend.
The Office for National Statistics released a new unemployment report this week that will no doubt trigger many a debate down the local pub.

The report highlights the national employment black-holes where job vacancies are scarce, numbers of benefit claimants are high, and opportunity is generally low.

Northern English cities and smaller Scottish and Welsh cities dominate the black hole list. Which poses the question: should job seekers in places like Hull & Motherwell be willing to up sticks and find employment in other more prosperous UK cities – or should they be grafting away in their local economies?

The good news for Aberdeen is – the city’s employment market is currently flying.

The data from the Office for National Statistics has been cross-referenced with job search engine Adzuna to show that for every 1.6 employment benefit claimants in Aberdeen, there is 1 open vacancy. “Almost” enough jobs to go around for everyone in the city!

This is in no way representative of the rest of Scotland (or the British Isles for that matter), but in these dark economic times, the oil and gas industry appears to be keeping Aberdeen alive. Demand for engineers in the city is higher than ever, and Aberdeen’s economy seems blissfully insulated from the economic turmoil other cities are experiencing.

The full set of job opportunity below can be seen in the infographic here.

Cyclists’ Spokesman Urges Gearing Up for Bike Week

Aberdeen City, Community, Environment, Featured, Information, News, Sport No Responses »

Jun 032011

The results of Aberdeen Cycle Forum’s annual cycle count show a big increase in levels of cycling in the city. Derek Williams, chair of Aberdeen Cycle Forum told Aberdeen Voice, “Aberdeen‘s commuters are increasingly turning to pedal power. People have been saying that there seem to be more people cycling and this has been confirmed by our count. This is a very impressive year-on-year increase.”

The number of cyclists recorded during the morning rush hour at sites across Aberdeen rose by 18% compared to 2010. The busiest location was King Street, followed by Union Street and the Deeside Line.

ACF has been carrying out annual cycle counts since 2008. Cyclists are counted at eleven key locations around the city between 0730 and 0900, the objective being to gain a metric of cycle activity. Since the first count in 2008, cycling levels have gone up by almost 30%.

See: http://www.aberdeencycleforum.org.uk/index.php?pf=news.php&nid=128

Derek Williams added:

“Investment in cycling is paying off. The upgrading of the Deeside Line and the cycle lane along King Street are encouraging people to take to their bikes. Measures like better cycle parking and the advance stop boxes at junctions all help too.

“Cycling will also have had a boost as people want to avoid rocketing fuel costs and sitting in traffic queues.”

Aberdeen Cycle Forum is an independent voluntary body set up in 2003 by a group of cyclists and environmentally-aware people who decided that cyclists in Aberdeen should be better represented.

“We believe that Aberdeen can become a truly cycle-friendly city and this count shows we are making steady progress. It is crucial that investment in cycling is maintained.”

The group’s aim is to encourage cycling – for pleasure, cycling to work and to school, to the shops, off-road or on-road. The majority of the Forum’s work is campaigning for better facilities for cyclists in the city.

It also produces the Aberdeen cycle map and run Try Cycling sessions for those who have not been on a bike for a while. Anyone who supports these aims is welcome to join.

To celebrate Bike Week, the UK’s annual festival of cycling, running from 18-26 June 2011, the regular ACF/Get-About Bike to Work challenge is back.

Employers register for the challenge and compete for the Get-About trophy. Journeys by employees during bike week are logged on the challenge’s website and count towards employers’ scores, there are bonus points to be won for people cycling for the first time.

To learn more and to register, see: http://www.aberdeencycleforum.org.uk/challenge

The Treaty of Union of 1707 – Part 3

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Apr 152011

Voice’s Alex Mitchell presents the third and final part of an account of the key events which informed and influenced the Union Of Parliament between Scotland and England in 1707, and in doing so, impartially debunks some commonly held and perpetuated views on the issue.

The English certainly believed that the advantages of union would be “much greater for Scotland”, mainly in terms of an “Increase of Trade and Money”, and that England would gain from it only “the Security of its Northern Borders” and a “Source of Men for our Common Wars”.

Again, Seton of Pitmedden remarks that “England secures an old and dangerous Enemy to be their Friend”, and that, in military terms, England would also gain by “a considerable addition of brave and courageous Men to their Fleet, Armies and Plantations”, and that for Scotland: “We send our Commodities and Manufactures to them, and have Money or other Necessities remitted to us”.

The military aspect was certainly significant. The population of Scotland was then about one million compared with five million in England and Wales; Scotland thus had about one-fifth the population of England, compared with less than one-tenth nowadays.

Demographically, and in terms of its labour force and military manpower, Scotland was twice as important as a component of the British Union in 1707 than in 2007. In addition, a huge proportion of Scots had extensive campaigning experience in European theatres of war. The familiar image of “the Scottish soldier” rests on the historical fact that a great many Scots were soldiers, albeit in other nations’ wars. Thus, from an English military perspective, Scotland could be a useful ally, or a very troublesome enemy.

The 25 Articles agreed by the joint Commissioners were to be presented first to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in October 1706, then to the English Parliament in London. Of the 25 Articles, which were debated and approved one by one, no fewer than fifteen were concerned with economic issues, of trade, taxation and industry, and it was these which generated the most heated debate.

The Court made major concessions on Scottish access to the English market, and later put through a separate Act protecting the Church of Scotland. The indications are, therefore, that the Scottish side fought long and hard for the best possible deal for Scotland, and for one which preserved distinctively Scottish institutions – the separate and distinct church, and legal and education systems – such that Scotland was never to become a mere province of England, a kind of “Scotland-shire”.

The entire Treaty was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 16 January 1707, by 110 votes to 69. There was a clear majority in each of the three estates, being the church, the nobility and the burgesses, that amongst the nobility being greatest. The mass of the common people were violently opposed to union with England, but their views counted for little in 18th century politicking. The Scottish Parliament had voted itself out of existence, and was formally dissolved on 28April. The new Parliament of Great Britain came into being on 1 May 1707.

This doubtless contributed to the patronising attitude of the English majority towards the Scots in London

In retrospect, the least acceptable part of the Treaty was that the Scottish representation in the new Parliament of Great Britain was reckoned according to the ratio, not of populations – about 5:1 in favour of England – but of tax revenues, being about 40:1 in favour of England.

This suggests that tax revenues per capita in Scotland were only about one-eighth of those in England, which may be an indication of how much poorer a country Scotland was relative to England in the years before Union. Taxation, however, did not need to be as high in Scotland as in England, for the simple reason that Scotland consistently avoided getting into military conflict with other nations. At any rate, Scotland sent only 16 peers to join the 190 English peers in London, and 45 commoners to join the 513 from England & Wales.

This doubtless contributed to the patronising attitude of the English majority towards the Scots in London, and the widespread belief, in London as in Scotland, that the Scottish nobility had not merely “sold out”, but that they had sold out for a derisory price.

In the end, the Union was achieved largely because the wiser men on both sides dreaded the consequences of failure, and there were the basic elements of a bargain. England, at war with France, could not risk a hostile Scotland under a Jacobite king, and demanded a complete, incorporating Union and acceptance of the Hanoverian succession.

The Scots wanted free trade at home and abroad. They would have preferred a federal arrangement to the complete, incorporating Union, but could not insist on it because the English were adamant, and they knew that failure of the Treaty might result in renewed economic sanctions, civil war within Scotland and the possibility of military invasion by England to suppress a Jacobite uprising in support of the “Pretender”, the self-styled King James VIII, or his son, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, later known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

by this time the Union was largely accepted as a done deal. The centre of economic activity had shifted from east to west.

The economic benefits expected for Scotland took some decades to become manifest. This and other early disappointments contributed to the widespread support for the Jacobite Rising of 1715. But free trade and full participation in rampant English colonialism were of immense advantage to the Scots.

This became plainly apparent by the mid-point of the century – hence the comparative lack of support, especially in the Lowlands, for the last Jacobite Rising of 1745. And by this time the Union was largely accepted as a done deal. The centre of economic activity had shifted from east to west.

Glasgow was geographically nearer than any other British port to the English colony of Virginia and opportunities opened up in the trade in Virginian tobacco, Caribbean sugar and in the service of the London-based East India Company. Hence the spectacular expansion of Glasgow from the “pretty little town” described by Daniel Defoe of around 1700 to its (self-styled) eminence as Second City of Empire by around 1900.

Edinburgh, always a city of lawyers rather than merchants, had lost its Royal Court in 1603 and its Parliament by the Act of 1707 and was, to an extent, eclipsed by Glasgow; but its financial and legal expertise sustained it in the longer term.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

The Oligarchy Dream

Articles, Creative Writing, Opinion No Responses »

Apr 082011

By John David Fraser.

Shop shop shop shop till you drop.
Dont ever think, dont ever stop
but wait a minute, here’s a thought.
What are these things that you have bought?
What benefits do they bring?
The hi-tech phones, the diamond rings,
and all the other pointless bling,
they are all tools of mass distraction
to distort true human interaction.

Its BUY BUY BUY, SALE SALE SALE!
75% discount on your thoughts derailed.
Nike trainers, Adidas hat.
Wheres your logo? Whats with that?
I ask what are the deeper meanings?
Behind the scenes there is a scheming.
Something which most neither see nor understand.
The false logos. The hidden hand.

For material life, I’ve heard it say
is but a game of monopoly.
For when our souls leave this plane,
the pieces go back in the box again.

But people do not want to see it seems.
They ignore the truth to feed the meme.
The elitist oligarchy dream
to tear our souls from seam to seam.
Some people say the devil is in the detail.
I say the devil is in the retail

The Treaty of Union of 1707 – Part 2

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Apr 072011

Voice’s Alex Mitchell presents part 2 of an account of the key events which informed and influenced the Union Of Parliament between Scotland and England in 1707, and in doing so, impartially debunks some commonly held and perpetuated views on the issue.

In September 1705, the Scottish Parliament agreed to authorise Queen Anne to nominate Commissioners who were to ‘treat’ or negotiate for Union. She naturally nominated persons sympathetic to that objective, thirty-one from each country.

The English Commissioners were almost all Whigs; the Scots mostly so, such as John Campbell, the Duke of Argyll; but including some critics of the proposed incorporating union, notably the Jacobite George Lockhart of Carnwath, who favoured a federal union such as would have retained the Scottish Parliament as a political institution.

However, the English negotiators insisted that an incorporating union was the only acceptable solution, that nothing less would secure England’s northern borders against foreign aggression; to them, a federal union was simply out of the question and was directly vetoed by Queen Anne herself.

Queen Anne was a Tory whereas King William III’s advisers, if not William himself, had been Whigs; the Union was essentially a Whig project. Queen Anne was herself popular and untainted by Glencoe and the Darien failure. She had, obviously, a familial affection for the Stuarts, being herself, as it turned out, the last of the Stuart monarchs; but she was strongly committed to the Church of England and could not for that reason support her much younger Catholic half-brother James’ claim to the succession. She could not form an alliance with the (Tory) Jacobites without effectively uncrowning herself. She therefore had to press ahead with Williamite (Whig) policies such as the Union. The clauses of the Alien Act which were more offensive to the Scots were thus repealed before Christmas 1705.

The Union of 1707 may be described as an exchange, or surrender, of Scottish parliamentary sovereignty in return for the benefits of free trade with England and her colonies; specifically, of access to English markets. The population of England was four to five times that of Scotland, and richer, with greater per capita spending power. The Union has thus been described as a political necessity for England and a commercial necessity for Scotland. The arguments presented for and against Scotland’s membership of the British Union were strikingly similar to the more recent debate concerning Britain’s membership of the European Union.

Over the 17th century, Scotland’s economy had become increasingly dependent on the English market. Half of Scotland’s exports, mainly of black cattle, linen, wool, coal and sheep, went to England; of this total, cattle accounted for 40% by 1703. The war with France disrupted trade with that country. There were severe grain harvest failures in the “Lean Years” of the 1690s which led to increased mortality, massive emigration to Ulster and an overall loss of about one-fifth of the population.

Although Scotland’s cost-base, mainly in terms of wages, was lower than England’s, it was feared that wealth would be drawn from Scotland to England

The failure of the Darien scheme in 1700 had consumed about a quarter of Scotland’s liquid capital. Scotland had no standing army and her navy consisted of two frigates. Scotland was poor, relatively backward and divided between Highlands and Lowlands, and suffered the many disadvantages of a semi-autonomous commercial and trading position within the context of the 1603 Union of Crowns in which the more powerful partner, England, was vigorously protective of its own trading and colonial interests.

The brutal fact was that, in an age of rampant mercantilism backed by military and naval power, the Scots could trade overseas only with English acquiescence and with access to English markets and colonies. William Seton of Pitmedden, who represented Aberdeenshire in the last Scottish Parliament of 1703-07, argued that:

“This Nation being Poor and without Force to protect its Commerce, it cannot survive, let alone become richer, ‘till it partake of the Trade and Protection of some powerful Neighbour Nation”

– and the only realistic partner for Scotland was England.

Free trade, of course, cuts both ways. Although Scotland’s cost-base, mainly in terms of wages, was lower than England’s, it was feared that wealth would be drawn from Scotland to England and that Scottish manufactures, which were often of poor quality would be unable to withstand competition from superior English merchandise – superior mainly in the sense that it was improving faster.

In general, the Scottish market accepted poorer, shabbier products than would the English or Continentals. The problem was one of low incomes, a stagnant population and a limited demand for luxury goods which Scots artisans could not produce or not to a competitive standard. Of the twenty five Articles comprising the Treaty of Union, fifteen related to trade and economic issues such as industry and taxation. Scottish interests were protected through reductions in taxes, e.g., on Scottish coal and salt, and various concessions were applied to Scottish exports of herring, beef, pork and grain.

It is often alleged that many of the Scottish parliamentarians who supported the Union did so for a variety of self-interested motives, were bribed and coerced, arms were twisted and so on.

Robert Burns famously wrote:

“Bought and sold for English gold … such a parcel of rogues in a nation”.

This may not have been Rabbie’s most insightful observation and it appeals more to a paranoid mindset than to historical fact. There is little evidence of outright bribery. More significant was a lack of unity amongst the opposition to Union.

The Tomb Of Adam Smith, Canongate, Edinburgh

In England, the final thrust towards the Union of 1707 came from Whig politicians who realised that, in a united British Parliament, their party would stand to gain from the arrival in London of Scottish MPs, most of whom would be Whigs, thus shifting the (narrow) majority in the House of Commons from Tory to Whig.

The evidence is, in both England and Scotland, of highly sophisticated arguments deployed by mostly conscientious people who voted according to what they perceived to be their best long-term interests.

Having said this, we do not have to go all the way with Adam Smith to argue, as he did, that persons motivated by self-interest may nonetheless serve or further a wider, national interest.

– Next week, Alex Mitchell presents the third and final part of this informative and fascinating story.

The Treaty of Union of 1707 – Part 1

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Apr 032011

Voice’s Alex Mitchell recounts the key events which informed and influenced the Union Of Parliament between Scotland and England in 1707, and in doing so, impartially debunks some commonly held and perpetuated views on the issue.

Recently, in 2007, we saw the tercentenary of the Act of Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England.

The Treaty of 1707 was not the first attempt to unite England and Scotland. King Edward I of England tried to colonise Scotland in the 1290s. King Henry VIII embarked on another such venture, with his “rough wooing” of 1544-50.

Since the Union of Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland had succeeded to the throne of England, a single monarch had ruled the two nations, but this was not a sustainable situation, comparable with trying to ride two unruly horses at once.

The Union of Crowns made the Union of Parliaments almost inevitable. In 1650-51, Oliver Cromwell invaded and conquered Scotland, imposing a short-lived unified Commonwealth, with a single British Parliament. Scotland had benefited from the trading privileges this entailed, but the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the person of King Charles II in 1660 had swept all these aside, specifically by the Navigation Act of 1670.

The geographical proximity of England and Scotland made some sort of accommodation essential.

But English ministers showed little interest in a closer constitutional relationship with Scotland during most of the seventeenth century. Their position changed for dynastic reasons. Under the 1689 Bill of Rights, the line of succession to the English throne was limited to the descendants of Queen Mary II and her younger sister Anne, the (Protestant) daughters of the deposed (Catholic) King James II/VII.

Mary died childless, aged 32, in 1694, and her husband (and first cousin) William III, William of Orange, did not remarry. On his death in 1702, the throne passed to his sister-in-law Anne, whose last surviving child out of some nineteen pregnancies, William, Duke of Gloucester, had died aged eleven in 1700, leaving no direct heir.

The English Parliament favoured the (Protestant) Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover and granddaughter to King James I/VI, and an Act of Settlement was passed to that effect in 1701. It laid down that, in the likely event of Queen Anne dying without surviving issue, the English throne would pass to the Electress Sophia and her (Protestant) descendants.

The 1701 Act of Settlement was extended to Scotland as part of the 1707 Treaty of Union. To this day, only Protestant heirs of Princess Sophia can succeed to the British throne. Neither Catholics, nor those who marry a Catholic, nor those born out of wedlock, may remain in the line of succession.

In the event, Sophia died just before Queen Anne, in 1714, and thus Sophia’s eldest son George succeeded as Elector of Hanover and as King George I of Great Britain, commencing the long “Georgian” era, which extended until the death of King George IV in 1830.

But the English feared that the Scots would prefer Anne’s half-brother, James Edward Stuart (1688-1766), the Roman Catholic son of King James II, in exile since the “Glorious Revolution” of 1689.

A major factor pushing England in the direction of Union was her heavy military involvement in Europe, specifically in the War of the Spanish Succession, from 1702 until 1713. England and the Habsburg Empire were allied against Louis XIV’s France, which at this time had a population of about 19 million compared with less than 5 million in England & Wales, and the military struggle between England and France continued, on-and-off, until Waterloo in 1815.

The English feared that the French could open a second front by inciting Jacobite rebellion, threatening England’s security on her northern frontier. Thus in 1702, Queen Anne assented to an Act of the English Parliament empowering her to appoint Commissioners to “treat” or negotiate for Union.

Otherwise, Scotland had little to offer England. The Scottish state was effectively bankrupt.

English ministers suspected that Scotland would be a financial liability; that the country would cost more to administer, police and defend than could be raised from it in tax revenues. And although England and Scotland were both Protestant countries, opposed in terms of religion to Catholic France, it was feared by English Tories that the more radical elements within Scottish Presbyterianism would have a destabilising effect on the (Episcopalian) Church of England, with its hierarchical structure of bishops and archbishops, appointed by the Monarch.

From a Scottish perspective, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun favoured “nearer union with our neighbours of England”, but in terms of a federal union in which Scotland and England would retain their own Parliaments. He feared the loss of sovereignty an incorporating union would involve.

The Scottish Parliament passed a succession of Acts deemed contrary to English interests, notably the Act anent (concerning) Peace and War

Scottish opinion turned against union in the period after 1689, mainly because of the Glencoe massacre in 1692 and the failure of the Darien scheme, for both of which King William III was held partly responsible. The abolition of the Lords of Articles in 1690 – formerly a means of royal influence in Scotland – transferred substantial powers to the Scottish Parliament, newly elected in 1703, which began to act with new-found vigour and confidence, adopting a position of aggressive constitutional nationalism.

The Scottish Parliament passed a succession of Acts deemed contrary to English interests, notably the Act anent (concerning) Peace and War, which laid down that no successor to Queen Anne should declare a war involving Scotland without first consulting the Scottish Parliament; also the Act of Security, which asserted that the Scottish Parliament, twenty days after Anne’s death, should name as her successor a Protestant member of the House of Stuart.

To England, it seemed that the prospects of Union were slipping away.

With her forces now locked into the War of the Spanish Succession, and unable to risk the withdrawal of Scottish regiments from the north European theatre of war, plus rumours that arms from France were on their way to Scotland, London took the view that the unruly Scots had to be brought to heel and made to discuss the twin issues of the Hanoverian succession and the Union of Parliaments.

This resulted in the formidable economic bludgeon of the Alien Act of March 1705, which proposed that, unless progress had been made on the twin issues by Christmas – specifically that unless Scotland had accepted the Hanoverian succession by Christmas Day 1705 – all of Scotland’s exports to England, being linen, wool, coal, cattle & sheep, would be embargoed or banned, and all Scots would be declared and treated as aliens.

– Next week, Alex Mitchell presents Part 2 of this 3 part account.

What is Urban Sprawl and Why Should I Care?

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Environment, Featured, Information Comments Off

Mar 042011

The Aberdeen City and Shire landscape today bears little resemblance to the landscape of the past. Voice’s Suzanne Kelly asks – Is this progress, or is this progress towards ill health, lack of biodiversity, and urban sprawl?

Back in the late 1950s, NASA (the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration) started its missions and started photographing our planet from space.

Over the decades a major change in our planet became apparent to the NASA scientists: we were rapidly destroying green areas, quickly expanding the surface area our cities, and covering previously green areas with non-porous material – usually asphalt and concrete.
The face of the planet was visibly changing, and the term ‘Urban Sprawl’ came into being.

Urban Sprawl is not just an ambiguous catchphrase – it is a very real phenomenon recognised by scientists and environmentalists from NASA through National Geographic.

If any of these items sound familiar to you, you will understand Urban Sprawl and why it has to be slowed if not halted:-

increased air pollution and ‘particulates’ from car use, and associated health problems (asthma, heart disease, effects on unborn, types of cancers)
Increases in other forms of pollution, including light pollution
Inadequate facilities, e.g.: cultural, emergency, healthcare, and so forth for population size
Inefficient street layouts
Inflated costs for public transportation
Lost time and productivity due to time spent commuting; less personal time for relaxation and recreation
High levels of racial and socioeconomic segregation; deprived neighbourhoods
Low diversity of housing and business types (identikit houses packed closely together)
Health problem increases e.g. obesity due to less exercise and more time in cars
Less space for conservation and parks
High per-capita use of energy, land, and water
Loss of biodiversity

Urban Sprawl is changing Aberdeen and the Shire – and it is virtually irreversible

Last week I received an email from J Leonard, an Aberdeen Planning official. He explains that we need to kill (or cull if you prefer) the small number of deer on Tullos Hill in order to protect trees the City has a grant to plant (£200k value in total). He explained that when the trees are grown, deer and squirrels can then live in the area (thankfully the deer have been spared), and that Tullos Hill is ‘in the heart of an urban environment’.

This is what Urban Sprawl does – it takes over the greenbelt land bit by bit, until there is only a bubble of natural land left here and there, or what builders euphemistically call ‘wildlife corridors’ – small areas of land connecting remaining green areas. I was speaking to an older Aberdeen resident who distinctly remembers a time before the Altens Industrial Estate existed, and tells me of a green paradise teeming with many types of wildlife.

Now we have a few open areas but notably south of the city centre, we have turned part of the coast into a waste tip we had to cap just recently, and we added a sewage plant to the coast and are planning hundreds of houses in this sensitive area. Aberdeen Football Club intends to put a 21,000-seat stadium on land adjacent to Loirston Loch in the River Dee SAC (Special Area of Conservation).

We are failing to listen to the residents in these areas who currently enjoy a relatively rural area and whose lives will change greatly

The area holds remaining pockets of creatures such as (apparently protected) otters and bats as well as rare plants and animals (as per the Council’s own sign on Loirston Loch). There will be no real environmental benefits associated with this stadium (indeed the pre-planning reports come up with about 40 negative permanent environmental impacts – but says we will get a ‘wildlife corridor’ where we now have open fields and an uninterrupted SAC).

However, we are told we will get ‘job creation’ and an ‘iconic building’ by Margaret Bochel of Aberdeen City Planning who endorsed the stadium plan. Somehow, the only place the Council and AFC are willing to put this building is on greenbelt land, which we will never get back and which will never be the same.

We are told that Aberdeen needs to ‘ensure its future prosperity’, and our elected officials, builders, planners and business organisations tell us we must keep building and expanding. The Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, a new runway / airport extension, the 21,000 seat ‘community’ stadium, and of course transforming the Victorian gardens of Union Terrace Gardens into a ‘public square’ are large examples of proposed new structures — structures which we are meant to believe equate to economic prosperity (despite costing the taxpayer tens of millions or more per project).

The housing developments springing up like mushrooms are, we are told, going to be ‘modern’, ‘competitive’, and ‘attractive to inward investment’. We are failing to listen to the residents in these areas who currently enjoy a relatively rural area and whose lives will change greatly: they have resoundingly said they do not want development. We are told there is a housing shortage (although many homes and office buildings in the city centre are vacant), and these developments are needed from Stonehaven to Inverurie and throughout the shire – on any bit of ground available.

Whether or not such building works will ensure future prosperity (can you ensure future economic success at all?), there is one truth about all of these projects: they are all examples of Urban Sprawl.

What’s so important about Air Pollution, Light Pollution, and Biodiversity? Air Pollution

The link between air pollution and forms of heart and respiratory disease is now well acknowledge and documented.

There are cities such as Los Angeles and Hong Kong which issue daily air quality reports – recognising that bad air quality can directly cause illness such as asthma attacks.

Vehicle exhaust is a considerable factor in creating air pollution; ‘particulates’ created as a product of combustion engines are a part of the air pollution cocktail as are carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur. A brief search of the British Medical Journal yields results such articles as:

And a quote from ‘Air pollution and daily mortality in London: 1987-92 reads:

“The 1952 London smog episode was associated with a twofold to threefold increase in mortality and showed beyond doubt that air pollution episodes could be harmful to health.”

Car parking lots are coated with various chemicals associated with vehicles; these get into the soil with rain and snow. And thus these pollutants can enter the food chain.

Light Pollution: Really?

Until the Industrial Age, the planet was dark at night. Now (as satellite photos demonstrate) city areas emit light all night long. The problem with this is it is definitely affecting the breeding cycle of birds, insects including butterflies and moths, bats and other creatures. We are changing an integral part of our ecosystem. These creatures are largely responsible for pollinating our crops and keeping other insect pests in check.

Light pollution is a real and worrying phenomenon, and we need to reduce night-time lights. If nothing else, saving electricity and energy will help save cities money, and global warming certainly is not helped by lighting up large portions of the night sky. There is also research to show that light pollution can slow down the way in which air pollution breaks down.

It is safe to say that having a red, glow-in-the-dark football stadium on what is now greenbelt open land in Loirston will be detrimental to creatures that can currently live and hunt there.

each new housing estate is eating up our greenbelt land and urban sprawl threatens our health and well-being on several fronts

Mark Parsons, Mark Shardlow and Charlotte Bruce-White are all experts in the fields of insect life and conservation; they have authored an article ‘Light pollution – a menace to moths, and much more for Butterfly Conservation. In it they present strong evidence from around the world that manmade light pollution is interfering in a very negative way with insect ilfe cycles.

Recommendations the article makes include:

Light should be kept to a functional minimum in all areas
Lights that emit a broad spectrum of light with a high UV component should be avoided
Aquatic environments and areas of high conservation value are potentially particularly sensitive to light pollution. Lighting schemes in these areas should be carefully planned to avoid negative impacts

This last point is totally contrary to what is proposed at Loirston Loch.

Biodiversity

Again, the ecosystem is being changed at an alarming rate. We are removing habitat – and without land to live and forage in, we will continue to lose animal populations and whole species.

What alternatives are there to continuous building and more urban sprawl?

How accurate are these assertions we have to keep building and using up the greenbelt? The stadium for instance – how necessary is it? The existing stadium at Pittodrie could be modernised. Norwich FC recently rebuilt its stadium – the same is most definitely possible for Pittodrie. Cities across the UK have lost millions bidding for, and hosting international competitions; prosperity is not automatic with a stadium.

We have to keep pumping money into the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. As to reported housing shortage, we know that there are thousands of empty houses both in the public and private sectors, and rather than new builds, using some of our vast quantities of unused offices and converting these to homes would be the more economical and more ecologically sound way forward.

Aside from the tens millions of pounds of taxpayer money any one of these new structures will drain from the public purse from consultation through to design, execution, use and maintenance, there is another price to be paid. Each of these projects, and each new housing estate is eating up our greenbelt land and urban sprawl threatens our health and well-being on several fronts.

Wildlife tourism could be encouraged – as it is, the RSPB estimate that Scotland is visited by thousands who want to see our unique birds and other wildlife – perhaps we could preserve habitats, encourage our existing wildlife, and promote our natural resources more widely?

The EU is taking this very real problem seriously, and the US is realising the ramifications as well – perhaps it is time for Aberdeen’s planning and development professionals to wake up to urban sprawl’s threats as well.

Further resources:

EU Environment Agency publication, “Urban Sprawl in Europe – the ignored challenge”
Butterfly Conservation (Magazine of the Butterfly Conservation) Issue No. 106 ‘ Light Pollution – a menace to moths, and much more’

Want to take action?: Write to your local community council, city council planning department, MSP and MEP to express concern Visit your local wildlife sanctuaries, the city’s coastal areas, Loirston Loch Support conservation charities such as the RSPB, Butterfly Conservation, the John Muir Trust

Join Aberdeen Against Austerity

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Jan 212011

By Aberdeen Against Austerity.

We need a change in direction, not a return to business as usual.

Since the election, the Tory-led coalition Government has launched the most serious assault on the lives of ordinary people that we have seen in the UK since the 1930s. These cuts will decimate jobs and services across the country and will devastate the lives of untold millions of people. We are not only being made to foot the bill of debts run up by reckless bankers, we are being made to fund their offensively lavish lifestyles.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the austerity agenda is unavoidable or even economically sound, as this is the mantra of much of the mainstream, corporate media. This is, however, simply not the case. The Government’s cuts are ideological and unnecessary, and it is becoming increasingly clear that, far from putting us back on the road to recovery, we are being hurled, blindly and arrogantly, towards disaster.

It is for these reasons that citizens from across the North East of Scotland came together on the 15th of December to found Aberdeen Against Austerity.

We continue to see the financial crisis as an opportunity to change the world. We will not accept our lives and communities being destroyed in order to return to a ‘business as usual’ under which wages stagnate while the cost of living increases, under which the gap between the rich and poor – both within and between countries – reaches ever greater proportions, and under which services which represent a lifeline to millions of people are handed over to faceless, profit-driven corporations.

This crash – the latest in a long line of such crises – should prove for the last time that no system that puts the whim and will of international finance before human need is sustainable. We have the ideas and the numbers; let’s create a better alternative.

Going Wrong Pt. 3 – GDP, GWB And RDF

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Dec 032010

By Alan Gatt.

Last week Aberdeen Voice brought you part 2 of Alan Gatt’s examination of where Aberdeen and Aberdonians are going wrong, and focussed on the Dutch disease, Affluenza and Hyperreality. This week, in part three Alan Takes a look at General Well-being and Reality Distortion Field.

In Powell and Pressberger’s 1945 classic “I Know Where I’m Going”, Wendy Hiller’s stranger-in-a-strange-land banker’s daughter is treated to a lightbulb moment via the indulgence of Roger Livesey’s Hebridean laird:

Hiller: People around here are very poor I suppose.

Livesey: Not poor, they just haven’t got money.

Hiller: It’s the same thing.

Livesey: Oh no, it’s something quite different.

When he was in opposition our new PM David Cameron was keen to promote a similar message. Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference in 2006 he said:

Too often in politics today, we behave as if the only thing that matters is the insider stuff that we politicians love to argue about – economic growth, budget deficits and GDP.

GDP. Gross domestic product. Yes it’s vital. It measures the wealth of our society. But it hardly tells the whole story. Wealth is about so much more than pounds, or euros or dollars can ever measure. It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB – general well-being. Well-being can’t be measured by money or traded in markets. It can’t be required by law or delivered by government. It’s about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, and above all the strength of our relationships.

Improving our society’s sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times. It’s a challenge foreshadowed by one of Britain’s most famous economists – though not someone whose work I usually agree with. Writing in 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by now, society would have “solved its economic problem” – that is, worked out how to create permanently rising standards of living.

Aspiration is insecurity. So we volunteer to place the shackles around our own ankles

In his essay, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, he argued: “For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”

In that essay of Keynes’ which Cameron mentioned, Keynes suggested that by 2030 we’d be about eight times better off economically than we were in 1930. And that once we’d achieved that level of affluence, we’d only find it necessary to work about 15 hours per week. The rest of the time, we could be humans; free to “do one thing to-day and another to-morrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner” as Marx would have it.

Well, since about 1986 Marx has been unmentionable and in our neocon times (which started in 1979) Keynes is perennially unfashionable, but the fact is that we achieved that ‘eight times better off’ quite some time ago. Of course – Keynes posited – there would still be some individuals who would work harder and for longer hours than others in pursuit of greater monetary wealth, but most wouldn’t – seeing the love of money as “one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities”.

So what’s going on? Why do we feel we must work so hard? It seems that as we aspire to the next level on the upgrade cycle – (best not fall behind our neighbours, colleagues, friends and family!) our anxieties are played upon and our insecurities are exploited, and so we give up our freedom to hours greatly in excess of the working time directive, let alone Keynes’ 15 hours. Aspiration is insecurity. So we volunteer to place the shackles around our own ankles. “Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty”.

REALITY DISTORTION FIELD.

So, where’s Aberdeen going wrong? Hyperreality? Dutch Disease? Affluenza? Resource Depletion? All of these things are present. But what I percieve in Aberdeen is a sort of un-founded self-belief. A vainglorious boastfulness which ill-serves us when compared with our peers. In “A Big Boy did it and Ran Away” Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre spells it out as the protagonist mulls the Aberdonian condition:

Europe’s Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he’d assumed it was a bit of self deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town’s utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn’t that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time either.

So even with all these things going wrong all around – the visible decay and the social exclusion; the decline of our elder industries and the planning blight despoiling the town centre – we still think we’re Ertchie! A couple of weeks ago I had an argument with an Aberdeen blogger who claimed that the North East “contributed 24% of all corporation tax to the UK exchequer”. What he’d actually heard at a “business breakfast briefing” was, that, following the recent budget Aberdeen “City and Shire” businesses will be paying UK Corporation tax at the rate of 24%. He grabbed a hold of the wrong end of the stick. And then proceeded to wave it about drawing attention to himself. This sort of thing – this sort of thinking – is typical.

So I think that the biggest thing going wrong in Aberdeen is a sort of self-regarding reality-distortion-field. A shame. Because it is actually a really attractive modestly-sized town that needs no overenthusiastic boosterism. We should recognise and celebrate Aberdeen for what it is; not for what the reality-distortion-field of some has convinced them it should be.

The affluenza-driven self-regard of the pompous reality-distortion-field is trapping us in an illusion of Aberdeen which is compounded by our condition of hyperreality. That vainglorious self-reverence which confuses surface with substance is yet another example of our lack of freedom. Voltaire said something like: “It’s hard to free people from the chains they revere”.

Obama said: “Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty”.

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