City Square, Lower Layer?

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Jun 182011
 

Members of the City Square Board are currently scratching their heads as to a possible use for the large concourse space which will be created if Union Terrace Gardens is decked over. One possibility under consideration is that it could be used for a new conference centre. However, this does put into question the continuing viability of Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC) at Bridge of Don and the major problems which will come about if the AECC is shut down as a result.

Mike Shepherd highlights the problems that the Council is having with the AECC and what could happen next.

aeccpic2
The AECC was conceived as a joint venture between Grampian Regional Council and Spearhead Exhibitions Ltd. Aberdeen City Council became its sole owner on the demise of the regional council, and now holds all its shares.
It was opened in 1985 by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The centre includes a 4800 seat arena, conference facilities and a hotel.

In 2003, the AECC was refurbished at a cost of £18m, with the conference facilities being completely re-built. A large viewing tower was also constructed, one of the tallest structures in Aberdeen.
The AECC is host to Offshore Europe, an event which brings millions of pounds into the local economy. Indeed, I have taken part in conferences and exhibitions there and there is no doubt that the AECC is a major boost to the local economy.

Three major conferences are planned for 2012 – the European Optical Society Annual Symposium 2012, The World Heavy Oil Congress 2012, and The Society of Core Analysts Symposium 2012. As a concert venue it has seen the likes of Bob Dylan and Neil Young play there.

However, the finances of the AECC are a mess.

Although the turnover is about £5M annually, The Press & Journal reported in November 2010 that the Council had provided loans of £28m to the centre in the last five years, as well as £8.85m in subsidies since 1998.
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2002662

Although the AECC has made losses, the Council justifies keeping it going on the basis that it brings a great deal of investment to the region.

Recent years have seen turmoil over audit reports, a restructuring of the Board and talk about receivership. One highly-controversial proposal was that the council should take over a project to build a four-star hotel on the site.

In February 2010 councillors approved plans to underwrite the construction of the hotel.

“AECC bosses have long believed the Centre cannot compete for important international conferences without such a hotel, and want one built in time for its flagship conference, Offshore Europe, next year. The hotel could then be sold for a net profit of between £14million and £20million, which would place the Centre on a firmer financial footing and help clear its debts.”
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1594201#ixzz1Og7YQrIC

Later in the year, they had second thoughts. The Council website reported:

“The full Council meeting accepted that the intended financial package to deliver AECC’s proposed hotel development carried too much risk for the Council because of the current economic climate – and voted by 24 votes to nine that alternative financial structures to deliver the facility should now be sought.

“Aberdeen City Council Leader Councillor John Stewart said: ‘The Full Council today reaffirmed its support for the region’s major conference centre and its commitment to secure a four-star hotel at the venue. However, it has been necessary to re-work the hotel project to minimise risk to the council’.

“The decision follows four months of strenuous efforts to negotiate a deal to create a hotel, involving the City Council, AECC, financial institutions, a construction company, a hotel operator, and legal and technical advisers. The negotiations were carried out following an instruction to Council officers at the February full Council meeting to continue to work with AECC on its hotel proposal, subject to any agreement being acceptable to the Council.”

Many considered the idea of the City Council getting involved in supporting and building a luxury hotel to be somewhat bizarre, one councillor bemoaning,

“The people of Aberdeen will be horrified we are now not only a local authority, but a hotelier as well”.

However, the hotel proposal collapsed as a proposition.

In December 2010, The Press & Journal revealed the conclusions of a secret audit report on the performance of the AECC. Describing its lack of accountability to taxpayers and the City Council as a “critical” risk, the report discovered an unauthorised £1.3m overspend of public money on the failed hotel project.

“The auditors found:

Monitoring of the hotel project by the AECC Board was “weak” – the directors approved £1million but £2.3million was spent.

Only £184,000 of the total was subjected to market testing to ensure best value for money, and no contracts were in place with key parties.

Overall control of the AECC was “weak” and lack of accountability to the Council a “critical” risk.

The report also warned a “significant improvement” in profitability was needed for the AECC to repay £27.7m in loans to the Council in 2017 and 2021.”
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2043746#ixzz1Og7Oq2RA

Since then, attempts have been made to try to recoup some of the debt. Parking charges at the AECC are now £5 per car and £10 per coach.

aeccpic1
The agenda for a Council committee in January this year also mentioned a report which recommended transferring all property and land assets currently owned or leased by the AECC to the City Council.

This would allow the Council to assume full responsibility for the future development of these assets and investigate the potential for developing the land and property assets through the creation of a joint venture development company charged with developing the assets.

The future of the AECC is moot. The big problem is the £28m debt owed to the Council. If the AECC is shut down, this debt will need to be transferred directly to the Council and I’m told it would be allocated to the revenue budget. Given the severe strain currently on that budget, this would cause major financial problems for the Council.

It seems odd, therefore, that the City Square Board is considering building a convention centre under the City Square (John Stewart, Footdee Community Council meeting, 30/3/11). This could easily bring about the demise of the AECC with the debt problems that would ensue.

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…

 

 

Tax Incremental Funding And The City Square

 Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Nov 122010
 

By Mike Miller.

greenheartpic_0
When the City Square Project was originally considered by Aberdeen City Full Council on 19th May 2010 little was known about Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) and indeed, at that time,  it was not even a legal mechanism for funding regenerative projects. The origins of TIF are in the United States where it has been a mechanism for funding regenerative project for the past 50 years or so.

Indeed so widespread is its use that the the term ‘regeneration’ is virtually interchangeable with that of TIF.

Its widespread use in the States has led to somewhat strange situations with regeneration centring on a single shed in a field in order for one state to lure WalMart in at the expense of another! This is one of the flaws associated with TIF; potentially all it does is move business from one area in need of regeneration to another as incentives, by way of paid for infrastructure, lure commercial companies across State boundaries.

So is it suitable for the funding proposition that is the ‘regeneration’ of Aberdeen City centre? Well the first question is; does the city centre require regeneration? Sir Ian Wood obviously believes that it does and has proposed to gift the City some £50 million to support the claim. He describes the city centre as ‘second-rate’. The regeneration proposed is very specific – it must be a city square (well actually now a city garden since the public rejected the square concept in the deeply flawed consultation process earlier this year that was driven by ACSEF) with walk on access from all four sides. This will require the engineering of a raised platform thus obliterating the Denburn Valley and destroy the existing city garden in the process. But then you know all this. The key is that the City Square is essentially a civic project and, this is important, will not generate in its own right enough commercial ‘revenue’ to repay any TIF loan (because that is what TIF is – a loan that has to be repaid ) required to fund the infrastructure build.

So how will the TIF borrowing be re-paid? Well the original proposition was that a variety of sites dotted around the city would suddenly become attractive to developers, as a result of the City Square, and the business rates so generated would be used, in part, to repay the TIF. The other element that would contribute would come from the increased business rates generated in areas adjacent to the City Square. Now business rates can only go up because  any given business is more profitable as a result of the regenerative project.  All sounds good. Apart from its not good at all.

even with the Edinburgh proposals there are risks, more so with a stagnant economy because TIF relies heavily on business taking up the cudgels to build

Firstly the proposal that you can use business rates from properties that have no connection whatsoever with the City Square (for example the Oakbank school site, an original candidate for TIF loan repayment) is nonsense. This author has had conversations with TIF experts at the British Property Federation (whose job, amongst other things, is to promote the use of TIF where appropriate) who indicate quite clearly that you cannot repay TIF in this way.

Interestingly someone at the City Council must have picked up on this too because in the report to the City Council Finance Committee of September 28th it seems to have disappeared as a TIF repayment proposal.

This leaves the mechanism of the increased rates from adjacent businesses. Such TIF repayment is known as loose-coupling.  In TIF terms loose-coupling is highly risky. This is because the linkage between TIF funded project and the surrounding rates increases is far from guaranteed. It is worth stressing this as all other TIF proposals in Scotland  are closely-coupled. Close coupling is far less risky because the TIF funded infrastructure is directly linked to the development with which it is associated. Here’s an example. In Edinburgh infrastructure (roads, a pier, a marina, etc) are to be built in order to attract in developers to the brown field Leith waterfront to build (note that additional build is happening) some 2,800 homes and 900,000 commercial square footage of new properties that result specifically because of the TIF funded infrastructure.

Hopefully the difference between loose-coupling and close-coupling is clear and  the greater viability of what is proposed in Edinburgh self evident. There is (unless you hate development of any kind) nothing wrong with TIF when it is correctly and sensibly applied. Even so everything is not clear cut. John Handley, a regeneration expert, writing in the Scotsman newspaper earlier this year quite clearly indicates that even with the Edinburgh proposals there are risks, more so with a stagnant economy because TIF relies heavily on business taking up the cudgels to build; more uncertain at a time when money is scarce and the need for new office space dubious.

Loose coupling has its place too, where there is blight in an area (i.e. the area is so undesirable and decrepit people have moved out and so have businesses and no one will touch development in its present state as it is completely non-viable), then TIF infrastructure can act to pump-prime an area so that business and residents return and start paying rates and council tax that then repays the loan – but there are still risks. For Aberdeen it makes no sense as no one would describe the centre of Aberdeen as ‘blighted’. There are some empty shop spaces but this is largely normal ‘churn’ and to some extent might actually indicate the over-representation of retail space in the city –  is there more capacity than there are shops to fill the available space?

At the Finance committee of 28 September 2010 a paper was presented that sought to indicate that TIF could still be applied to a variety of projects within the city irrespective of whether the City Square project were to proceed.

The frailty of the TIF business case for the Aberdeen City projects has recently been alluded to in an article in Holyrood Magazine

There was some debate regarding the proposals as well there should have been as there are some fundamental flaws in what is being proposed. One potential scheme was for construction of infrastructure by way of a “high quality pedestrian route” with absolutely no indication of how the construction costs of this facility might be repaid; does building a pavement lead to increased business activity in an already prosperous city?

Worryingly for the citizens of Aberdeen, the Council, at a time when swinging budget cuts are to the fore, are seeking to borrow some £200m using TIF. The belief being that they can do so at zero risk to the Council. One presumes that they will seek a commercial sector 3rd party to under-write the borrowing, perhaps by way of a Special Purpose Vehicle, to which assets,including Union Terrace Gardens will be transferred. One cannot help but feel that the proposals are speculative at best and at worst could leave half completed construction projects scattered across Aberdeen – that’ll help the City’s image no end.

The frailty of the TIF business case for the Aberdeen City projects has recently been alluded to in an article in Holyrood Magazine. In the article, The TIF Factor in the 15 October issue, the City Council’s Project Director for Economic and Business Development indicates the risks associated with what is being proposed; the basis of which is that because of the City Square/Garden project, people will suddenly be more inclined to linger in the city centre and spend more (even more!) money. Such a model is dubious at the best of times but with a recession under-way and massive cuts still to come to the pubic sector, this could well be completely the wrong time to attempt such a tenuous approach.

Upper St Nicholas Centre
As the Council scuttles around trying to jump onto the TIF bandwagon, bemused citizens are left to look on wondering just what could be achieved with Sir Ian Wood’s generous offer that would genuinely help the city without huge debts being incurred. Union Terrace Gardens could be improved and better access facilitated. St Nicholas House could be demolished and a new city square enabled by the closure of Broad Street; the Wallace Tower could be returned from the oblivion of Seaton Park and the upper deck of the St Nicholas Centre (a precursor of the City Square?) re-invigorated with connection to the new St Nicholas civic space.

This ‘second- rate ‘ blight if cleaned up and  removed could give Aberdeen a city centre a face-lift without re-course to the potentially financially crippling projects that the TIF proposals seek to enable. It would also mean that the much loved Union Terrace Gardens need not be lost by insensitive development thus placating the majority who voted in favour of their retention all those months ago.

Mike Miller November 2010

A Rough Guide To Funding Strategies

 Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion  No Responses »
Oct 222010
 

By Dave Guthrie.

Aberdeen Open Day
As the public purse-strings draw tighter, local government has been looking at alternative financing to carry through development and redevelopment projects. After many years of borrowing and spending beyond their means, the obvious – perhaps the only – source remaining is the private sector.

Last year Oxford Economics, in a report on Aberdeen, said that during the economic downturn opportunities would present themselves with quality resources being available to businesses and organisations much cheaper than at the city’s economic peak in 2007 and that a lower cost-base could be achieved without trade-off against quality of location or accommodation.

By definition the private sector – business and commercial interests – exist to make a profit, expand and pay dividends to shareholders. There can be public benefits – increased employment etc. – but these are essentially by-products. Any public/private partnership will therefore involve some compromise on both sides. Aberdeen City Council has been exploring several innovative funding mechanisms with the aim of carrying through their City Masterplan.

The three main ones are:

Tax Incremental Funding [TIF],

The City Development Company [CDC],

and the Business Improvement District [BID].

TIF.

This is a financial model pioneered and now widely used in the US. It allows a local authority to borrow money for specific infrastructure developments. The loan is secured against expected tax revenue increases resulting from the development. [new businesses attracted to the area, higher taxes etc.] allowing repayment over a 10 to 20 year period. The Scottish Government has sent out encouraging signals about this scheme and in January of this year Edinburgh City Council’s proposal to borrow £84m for the redevelopment of Leith Port was approved. Glasgow City Council and North Lanarkshire Council have similar plans in the pipeline. As does Aberdeen City Council.

Borrowing against future unknown tax revenues is not without its risks, however. Responsibility for any shortfall would be an important issue and councils are likely to choose partnership with a commercial developer thus sharing the risk. Another danger is that a TIF-supported development may not actually produce increased tax revenue, just move it from one area to another. In the US, TIF projects compete with one another. [In Chicago there are now 500 such schemes].

So, TIF is a tried and tested model for kick-starting large development schemes but like other funding models it is complex and not without its dangers.

CDC:

A City Development Company is a mechanism which allows local authorities to use their assets to attract long-term investment from the private sector to finance regeneration projects. Also known as a Local Asset Based Vehicle [LABV], it provides a route whereby public and private sectors pool land, finance, expertise and powers and allocate risks and returns from targeted projects

An Aberdeen CDC [AC/DC?] would seek to identify and ‘remediate’ pockets of ‘market failure’ within the city, capturing value for targeted beneficiaries. Suggested examples so far include; Union Terrace Gardens, Bon Accord Baths, Denburn Health Centre and Park, St Nicholas House, Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, Chapel Street Car Park, Summerhill Education Centre, Granitehill and Greenferns. The City Council would be encouraged to ‘leverage’ these assets through the CDC in partnership with the private sector.

BID

Aberdeen Business Improvement District is a proposal being implemented by Aberdeen City Centre Association in partnership with the City Council. Funded jointly by a compulsory levy on businesses within the area supplemented by the local authority, the BID aims to provide a more vibrant and viable town centre and encourage more input from business managers and owners towards regeneration of the area.

The area covered by BID is likely to include Union Street and most of the city centre from Union Square and Guild Street in the south to John Street in the North.

Lost Headlines

 Articles, Creative Writing, Featured, Opinion, Satire and Humour  No Responses »
Oct 012010
 

By Dave Watt.

Ever wonder how a city council of one of the most prosperous regions of Britain contrived to find itself £55 million in debt in 2007? Aberdeen Voice – courtesy of its home made time machine fearlessly delves into the newspapers of the past/future and brings you those stories that never quite made the front pages.

14th April 1746 – Council Defends Investing This Year’s Entire Pauper’s Budget in a civic reception for Bonnie Prince Charlie.

no images were found

Amidst an outcry from distressed Aberdeen Citizens Lord Provost Erasmus Stephen defended the council’s decision of spending the annual Pauper’s Fund on a Banquet for Bonnie Prince Charlie and his court. Lord Provost Stephen said that the money was well spent as His Royal Highness’s army would undoubtedly defeat the government forces during tomorrow’s battle at Culloden and that the prince’s gratitude would ensure that the city would be Scotland’s main port for trade with the continent.

Replying to those critics who pointed out that the Duke of Cumberland’s forces had the Jacobite army out numbered two to one and that the Prince had all the tactical awareness of a brain damaged tadpole, the Provost said that he would have actually backed Cumberland’s army but he ‘was afraid that people would laugh at him’.

July 13th 1789 – Council Delighted With Purchase in French Property Market Boom

Lord Provost Bampfylde Stephen assured Aberdeen citizens that cash spent in acquiring the Bastille in Paris as a hotel in the city centre is money well spent and pointed out that the fortress is in good repair, is on a major trade route and ‘is very handy for the shops’. He said the council expects a large return on their investment next year when crowds will be flocking into Paris for popular monarch Louis XVI’s jubilee.

January 29th 1843 – Council Invests Yearly Budget on Oak Plantation for Shipbuilding Futures

Aberdeen Harbour

Provost Diggory Stephen says future of wooden ships are the way to go and dismisses hare brained schemes for iron ships. Council passed motion of censure on local shipbuilders AJ Hall and J Lewis for being led astray by crackpot inventors like Isambard Kingdom Brunel and derided the ludicrous notion that iron ships can float on water.

December 27th 1879 – Council Denies Financial Outlay in Railway Stock is Rash Move

The city council, fresh from their Yuletide festivities, were involved in an unseemly disturbance this morning as hundreds of outraged citizens objected to the 1880 Fund for Widows and Orphans being invested in the North British Railway Company. Lord Provost Siegfried Stephen, however, dismissed the complaint saying that there were only a few troublemaking protestors and that the money invested was as safe as Sir Thomas Bouch’s railway bridge over the Tay – recently built for the North British Railway Company.

October 28th 1929 – “We’re In The Money”, says Lord Provost

Council leader says ‘Happy days are here again’ as investing of entire Social Welfare Fund floats huge share portfolio on Wall Street. Lord Provost Rufus T. Firefly Stephen lit a huge cigar as he told assembled journalists this morning that the city’s financial future was assured now that Aberdeen’s wealth was there up on the big board on Wall Street. He dismissed complaints from impoverished citizens as being  the work of a few disgruntled Bolsheviks and malcontents.

Jan 3rd 1972 – Oil Finds off Aberdeen ‘Just Pie In The Sky’ says Provost

Consequently the city had been on the edge of total bankruptcy with only twenty thousand pounds left in the kitty

Aberdeen’s Provost Hiram J Stephen yesterday dismissed the notion of the city becoming a centre for the oil industry in the North Sea and assured citizens that rumours of large oil finds off the Scottish coast were ‘just so much moonshine’.

In addition, he congratulated the council on its perspicacious decision to invest the Community Welfare Budget on potato recycling. ‘There are vast deposits of tatties in the Grampian Region just waiting to be turned into fossil fuels’ he said.

And now – back to the future…..

September 30th 2020 – Granite City Saved from Destitution At Last Minute

Aberdeen Provost, head honcho and big enchilada, John Moonchild Fifi Trixibelle Stephen III and his ruling junta gave a collective sigh of relief as he announced that the apparently doomed city had saved by a last minute financial deal. To the angry and increasingly desperate crowds outside the Town House he declared that despite the concreting over of Union Terrace Gardens, the Duthie Park, and the construction of a golf course on the site of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, visitors to the Granite City just hadn’t appeared in the hoped for numbers. Consequently the city had been on the edge of total bankruptcy with only twenty thousand pounds left in the kitty. Fortunately, however, he had that very morning received an e-mail from a multi-millionaire in Nigeria who wished to clear all his vast funds through a bank in the UK and only needed all of the city’s bank details whereupon which he would immediately send the city fifty percent of his account. Provost Stephen stated that our future was therefore assured…..

 Newer Entries