Aug 102012
 

By Bob Smith.

The warld’s noo an affa place
Is the spik ye fyles div hear
The planet itsel’s nae tae blame
Jist some fowk fa’s on’t a fear 

Oor warld’s there tae be enjoyed
It’s faar aabody’s born and bred
It keeps us aa fed an wattered
In Aiberdeen or aroon the Med 

Heich snaw capped muntins
Faar ower valleys ye can look
In clear an crystal rivers
Brave fowk can hae a dook 

There’s buttercups an ither flooers
In leys aa ower oor  sphere
Wild animals an bonnie birdies
As weel as aa kines o deer 

Noo aathing’s nae hunky dory
Aat a div ken richt weel
We hiv a puckle greedy fowk
Fa tell lees or try tae steal

Politicians and bunker chiels
They fair div tap ma list
An bliddy big business diddy men
Fa only wint tae full their kist

Tak nae heed o sic buggers
There are fowk far mair genteel
Fa dee a lot o unsung gweed
An dinna parley wi the deil

Lit’s here it for iss warld o oors
An the gweed fowk on iss planet
Ignore the Trumps an their like
Listen tae yer auld Auntie Janet

© Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2012
Image Credit: Beautiful Alps © Hwee Fuan Tey | Dreamstime.com

Jul 262012
 

By Bob Smith. 

I dinna myn a bittie rain
It fresh’ns aathing up
A haill month’s rain in a day
Fyles noo is bein dumped

Watter rins doon the streets
Drains canna tak the strain
Ony mair sic wachty shooers
Watter’s gurglin back oot again

Flooers are lookin drookit
Heids low wi the wecht
Wi aa the watter fae the sky
The bird bath sees nae fecht

Birdies look a bit bedraiglt
They’re hidin in the trees
Waitin for the sun tae shine
An feathers dry in the breeze

Fin the sun braks throwe again
An stame rises fae the grun
Kids’ll splash throwe the puddles
They’ll be haein lots o fun

Nae doot the morn wull be fine
Birds aa wull tweet and trill
Next wikk o coorse it’ll be pissin doon
O rain maist fowk hiv hid their fill

©Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2012
 Image Credit: SKY MOUNTAIN 1 © Alexandru Mitrea | Dreamstime.com

Feb 102012
 

By Belle Mont.

Oh stunning is the vision that the CGP has shown
Of a futuristic plaza where the land that we all own
Lies waiting for the digger to tear it all asunder
It’s Mounthooly in the firmament, with parking spaces under

A theatre. A forest. Gardens by the acre.
A rowie tree with sponsorship by Aitken’s, Torry’s baker?
Trips on ships on Denburn’s tides from the former Trainie Park
On noble graceful clippers just like the Cutty Sark?

A cottage made of gingerbread? A Lagavulin fountain?
A petting zoo – with unicorns – below Malteser Mountain?
It never rains, the breeze is warm, one never needs a brolly
Thanks to Callum, Oban’s is a poorer McCaig’s Folly

A Granite Web, renowned world-wide, or is that even wider?
A web designed and realised by a maniacal spider
High-maintenance, and dear to clean, with all those nooks and crannies
Nodded through for me and you, by feart brown-nosing mannies

A monolithic Concrete Web with a permanence of gales
Shops with garish frontages proclaiming last chance sales
Litter in the flower beds, the ramps a ‘boarder’s dream
The urine of a Friday night in constant steaming stream.

Think forward two decades or more and stroll along its edges
And tell your bairns or grandchild, “Here once grew flowers and hedges
Ripped apart, the verdant heart, to leave this barren hole
A city, formerly in bloom, now a town without a soul”.

Feb 032012
 

January and February always seem to represent a low time in the year. Christmas and New Year have been and gone and there seems little to look forward to. The days remain short and the nights long. It’s usually raw cold. Unwelcoming. The opening months of the year always cause something of a gloom to hang over Mick Miller’s household. Bung in a global recession for good measure and things seem pretty bleak. Then it got worse. What’s up, Mick?

The post arrived on Monday and out of the two-for-one pizza offer junk mail fell a gaudy catalogue.
Only it wasn’t a catalogue – it had “VOTE” written on it. Promotional blurb for the City Gardens Development.

How profoundly depressing. The front ‘cover’ illustration is of some futuristic landscape from another place.
Only on closer inspection it isn’t. It’s Aberdeen, or, more accurately, a version of Aberdeen which can only have be conceived in cloud cuckoo land.

Real people, in a REAL garden.       

It’s lurid, horribly-coloured, glib and vacuous. It is pervaded by a complete sense of the unreal. Semi-transparent people wander aimlessly inside a cartoon-flowered version of reality. Children trample unrestrained, yet the flowers survive.

Out-of-scale human forms laze in some sort of airborne meadow whilst below them, in a throwback connection to the real world, trade waste bins lurk ominously. A woman of Amazonian proportions accesses a laptop whilst sitting on surprisingly unbending grass stems. The remnant spire of the Triple Kirks emerges from a scrubland of low growth stock image shrubbery.

It all looks vaguely ill-tended, neglected, as if within this futuristic vision lie the discards of the past. Or perhaps its a tacit admission that should, god forbid, this monstrosity go ahead, there is just no way that the upkeep will be affordable. Delving deeper, the background is found to comprise of a realigned His Majesty’s Theatre and a hugely-inflated and decapitated William Wallace. A victim of the guillotine perhaps?

But the history, like the whole of this charade, is just plain wrong. Landscape dressed up as farce. A cityscape for Anywhereville. Inaccurate. Disjointed. A cut-and-paste pastiche.

Opening up, things don’t improve. A drab labyrinth of pathways which look like bridges over a motorway, criss-cross manicured lawns and monoculture grasslands. In one image the sun sets….or does it rise? Either way, it’s in the wrong place. What on earth, if we are still on earth, is going on? This is lazy work, a Standard Grade project gone catastrophically wrong. Everything is confusing.

The front page image shows a gaudy flower bed appearing to lie on a lower level of the structure. Moving inside the pamphlet the same floral, er…..’bombshell’, is miraculously elevated. Or is it that those bloody bins are just absolutely HUGE? I’m confused, disturbed even.

   I’m going to have a lie down, maybe I’ll feel better and ‘it’ will all have been a bad dream. Only it won’t. It isn’t.

In the sunset image, an oddly-inclined piece of lawn totters precariously into the largely obliterated Denburn valley. In Woody Allen’s Manhatten, a character in a TV show is observed to have a toupee so badly-placed on his scalp that it looks like it has been dropped on to his head from a great height in an uncontrolled way.

This elevated savanna has the same feeling about it. There will be a need for avalanche warnings in the snowy depths of winter.

In another image, a pipe band plays beneath a Formica-lined dome with random cut-outs that give the feeling that the design is based on half a panelled football booted around Pittodrie of a Saturday afternoon. Below this, a winter scene shows people so cold they have started to vapourise as, it would appear, has the Formica football, associated terraces and denuded trees, miraculously large for such a recent planting.

A lone child in a blue jacket has something so contagious that the populace in the foreground seek to distance themselves as quickly as possible. Is he the cause of the vapourisations? Oh I get it – we’re on the set of War of the Worlds and soon tattered clothing will rain down upon us from the sky. I know that was the only good bit. It all has an apocalyptic feel. I’m going to have a lie down, maybe I’ll feel better and ‘it’ will all have been a bad dream. Only it won’t. It isn’t.

Aberdeen is a beautiful city, notwithstanding some recent disastrous architectural additions. It doesn’t need or deserve such ill-thought out attentions as this abomination.

Union Terrace Gardens are an integral part of what allows Aberdeen to maintain its architectural, cultural and civic dignity. The Gardens need some tender loving care, but they don’t need annihalation by the ‘solution’ that this tacky pamphlet proposes.

A heartfelt plea. Please, people, don’t let this thing go ahead. Make sure you vote to retain Union Terrace Gardens.

Nov 142011
 

Controversial plans to plant 89,000 trees on Tullos Hill backed by Aberdeen City Council are under fire from the public, community councils, animal charities and experts. A new initiative to preserve this crucial wildlife habitat as meadowland was launched today by Councillor Neil Cooney and campaigner Suzanne Kelly.

The Tullos Hill Roe Deer, approximately 30 in number, have survived on the Hill for over 30 years but will face years of culling if the tree scheme goes ahead.  The deer normally live for 6 to 7 years.

This cull would cost the taxpayer approximately £8,000 over 2010-11, £14,000 over the following 4 years, according to Aberdeen City Council.

The scheme has already seen the City hand back £43,800 of grant money, as the previous planting failed for a number of reasons.

Reports show that the wrong size tree guards were used (120cm size had been recommended; 90cm had been used instead) and that soil issues and weeds were to blame in part for the failure.  The deer were not the only factor in the tree failure, but the council stresses the need to use the ‘most economical’ means to plant the trees. 

Vandalism has hit planting sites as well.

Some members of the Council now claim that  culling is a normal part of land management and is required – this claim had not been made prior to the tree planting scheme as far as any research can demonstrate.  The deer are not starving or suffering, and with 30 deer on the hill and 89,000 saplings proposed, humane methods of having tree and deer are possible, according to experts.

The council omitted mention of the deer cull from its public consultation which closed in January 2011, although this document went into detail about managing rabbits by means of fences.  The council also omitted to say the planting would require 2-3 years of weed killer being sprayed on the hill.

The cost of this spraying, the effects on the existing wildflowers, animals and the public (housing, a school and factories are nearby) has never been fully explained.  Tullos Hill also has soil issues  and there are dozens of small archaeological remains which would be threatened or could even be destroyed by the tree planting.

After the cull plan was discovered and made public, the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals branded the move ‘abhorrent and absurd’, although the Society recognises the needs for deer culls for reasons of animal welfare.

However, the idea to kill deer for this scheme was strongly condemned by the Scottish SPCA and other animal welfare organisations including Animal Concern.

A move was made to ask the public for money to avoid the cull by the City’s Housing & Environment Committee.
This move was called ‘blackmail’ by citizens and animal charities.  Dame Anne Begg, MP, wrote at the time of the move saying that to ask the public for £225,000 to avoid the cull was “an appalling attempt to fudge their (the Housing Committee cull proponents’) responsibility.”

Suzanne Kelly, campaigner against the tree planting and the cull said,

“We have a beautiful meadow filled with plants and animals – it is a biodiversity haven.  Nearby meadowlands at Cove are being given over for housing and development, and lands at Loirston which are grass and meadow will be turned into a football stadium. Aberdeen stands to lose a huge portion of its meadows south of the city centre, and yet wants to turn this meadow ecosystem into a forest. 

“Thousands of concerned residents objected to the tree scheme by letter and petition once the cull was made public – and that was before we knew about the returned grant money and the weed killer.  Four community councils are on record as opposing the scheme representing thousands more people.  (Torry Community Council voted unanimously to condemn the cull and the scheme – but their letter somehow never reached the City). 

“Yet the City refuses to listen.  The City has been saying the scheme is ‘cost neutral.’  It now emerges that the application is not even finalised, and £43,800 in grant money had to be paid back for a previous failed planting on Tullos.  This is hardly ‘cost neutral’ – in fact, calling this scheme ‘cost neutral’ seems positively misleading 

“We hope this alternative – a meadowland – will capture the public’s imagination. In fact, the idea has come up again and again from the many people getting in touch – it is really a public initiative.   The hill can be left as it is or perhaps enhanced with more wildflowers and the future of the deer and other animals can be ensured. 

“The deer are most certainly not starving as some in the City would claim.  In fact, some nearby residents tell me the deer are nearly tame.  Meddling in the Hill’s ecology has not worked in the past, and our cash-strapped Council should just end their planting scheme forthwith.”

Councillor Neil Cooney asked crucial questions and presented facts previously omitted at the most recent Aberdeen City Housing & Environment Committee meeting held this month.  Councillor Cooney said :

“Tullos Hill offers some of the finest views over the city. You don’t block out viewpoints by planting trees to hide the view. Nature created Tullos Hill. It is an area rich in wildlife, it is an important archaeological site and there are 4 important cairns there that were designed to be seen from each other and to dominate the landscape.

“It would make a lovely meadowland. Meadows are our most threatened habitats. Tullos Hill already supports fragile wild flower species, the Dames Violets are particularly spectacular when in bloom. Meadows also play a key role in carbon capture. We have a precious natural asset at Tullos Hill, if we destroy in now we can never reclaim it again. We have a duty to the next generation to preserve for them the environmental treasures that we enjoyed.

We can save money, save the deer, preserve the viewpoint, leave the archaeology open to enjoyment, and enhance Tullos Hill. This is far preferable to a dodgy tree planting project stained in blood.”

The value of this meadowlands scheme is supported by Saving our Magnificent Meadows, a campaign backed by Natural England, Countryside Council for Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage, and Northern Ireland Environment Agency, and by Plantlife, as project host.

Ms Susan Kerry Bedell of Saving Our Magnificent Meadows had this to say:

“Wildflower meadows are the UK’s most threatened habitat. Since the 1930s, we have lost 98% (over three million hectares) of them across England and Wales and intense pressures continue to impact on remaining sites. There has been a similar scale of loss across the Scottish lowlands.

“These beautiful meadows are central to our national heritage. They are rich in wildlife, including many rare and threatened species, landscape character, folklore and archaeology, and they offer a range of ‘services’ to society, such as reducing flood risk. They are seen as vital to the long-term survival of bees, through whose pollination of crops much of our food production depends.

“Unless we act now to build a greater appreciation of remaining sites and promote sympathetic management, these ‘magnificent meadows’ and the rare plants and animals associated with them, will be lost forever”.

The Tullos Hill Meadowlands petition will launch online and by paper copy early the week commencing 14 November 2011.  Suzanne Kelly is confident that the tree planting scheme would be put aside for the more economical, beneficial meadowlands scheme.

“There is pressure on Government budgets right now, and throwing good money after bad – particularly on such an unpopular and destructive scheme – is simply illogical. 

“I await detailed budget information from the City, and a further press release will go into detail about how the City has handled this affair from start to finish.  With an election looming, I would urge those councillors who have supported this scheme to ask themselves if they really are doing the right thing by Tullos Hill and the electorate.”

Petition can be accessed here: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/tullos-hill-meadowlands-deer-park.html 

Further information on Saving Our Magnificent Meadows can be found at:
http://www.plantlife.org.uk/campaigns/saving_our_magnificent_meadows/ 

Further information and updates on Tullos Hill can be obtained by writing to:
tullosdeer@yahoo.co.uk

Contact Suzanne Kelly:
Email sgvk27@aol.com
Tel. 07752 356 455

Nov 042011
 

An Editorial and suggestion for a better plan for Tullos Hill. By Suzanne Kelly.

For nearly a year many people have attempted to get Aberdeen City Council to see sense over its planned cull of the Tullos Hill roe deer.  The City insists the archaeology-rich, bio diverse meadows of Tullos must be turned into an 89,000 tree forest.  They will not budge.

It makes no difference that the area has a history of arson and that there are explosion hazard sites on the hill (there is a dangerous old waste tip and escaping gas areas, protected by warning signs and barbed wire fence).
Aileen Malone (Liberal Democrat Councillor), Valerie Watts (Chief Executive), Pete Leonard (Officer) and Ian Tallboys (ranger) have all been corresponding with me and others.  These emails often contradict other correspondence.

They also often quote an unnamed expert or two, and the writers refuse to so much as listen to any dissenting expert opinions, even if offered free of charge.  This puts to rest any feeble excuse that there is a robust scientific approach to the hill’s future.

For me, there are just too many contradictions, omissions and flawed logic for the plan and its supporters to retain any credibility on this matter.  It is time to examine some of the conflicting information these four people have been offering.  It is also time to examine whether or not everything they say is accurate, and to ask why we have spent council time, money and energy on this plan.

For what we were once told was a ‘cost-neutral.’ sound plan ready to implement turns out to be nothing more than a draft proposal to the Forestry Commission.   But more importantly it is time to secure Tullos Hill’s future and preserve what we already have:  a beautiful, changing meadowland and grassland habitat which supports animals including deer.

Who has said and done what?  To completely detail all of the misinformation and seemingly misleading statements would require a book.  Instead I prepared a chart which highlights some of the contradictions.  It can be accessed here, but is in no way exhaustive of the ever-changing information slowly leaking out concerning this scheme. Click Link

Past articles have highlighted that £43,800 was already wasted on a failed tree planting at Tullos.  Even though I formally asked the City to clarify this had happened, Valerie Watts at first effectively denied any such thing had occurred.  When presented with proof positive (in the form of a letter from the Forestry Commisison demanding the £43,800) Ms Watts said that ‘there was no relation’ between my request to clarify that money was owed – and that since I asked my question in May and the bill was paid in March, there was no need to clarify the position.  The public and I beg to differ.

New Revelations

The Evening Express (itself accused by Valerie Watts alongside the P&J of getting the story wrong over time) revealed that there is actually no budget in place.  All this time Aileen Malone and others have insisted the scheme is cost neutral and that we must shoot the deer as it would be the most cost effective way to grow trees.

Never mind that the scheme will destroy what is already on the hill or that this argument is wholly immoral – which led to the public outcry – there is no money in place.  This one revelation alone calls into question reports issued by the City which claim the scheme had funding.  It does not.

Asking the City to clarify the funding picture has so far been fruitless, but I have since learned that only a draft application for the tree scheme is in place.  All the press releases and sweeping statements about the trees are, just a little bit, premature.  Months ago I asked Ms Watts for the financials.  She eventually wrote back to ask what I meant – which in case you were wondering meant the financials for the tree plan (money in, money out, costs, expenses).

Rather than answering me, she has sent my question (months after first being asked) to her Freedom of Information department.   The Council recently complained that its FOI staff were inundated with work:  perhaps those who hold information should release it without the need to burden this department.

( Stop Press – Financial information. Click Link )

 Mystery of the Missing Postcards

With funds kindly raised largely by Lush (which had a cycle event – their team from Edinburgh gave up personal time and cycled to Aberdeen to highlight the deer’s plight), some dramatic, effective pre-printed postcards were produced.
They were so popular that a re-print was done, and 700 such postcards were made in all.

I have some photos of the backs of pre-printed postcards.  These were signed after a meeting of anti-cull people was held at the end of September.  A few nights later, I obtained more cards from other people, and handed a total of 63 cards protesting the cull to a security guard at the City’s Town House.  The guard told me:

“we got loads of these in this week, and even more came in the week before.”

In a recent letter to me, Ms Watts says that 35 postcards were received.

Ms Watts and the City somehow are not getting items sent through the regular post:  Torry Community Council’s letter protesting the cull never arrived, as Watts confirmed in the same letter which mentions the postcards.  I spoke to the Torry CC Secretary on 2 November, and she said ‘the letter was definitely sent, but the City didn’t receive it.’  This letter was the result of Torry’s CC voting unanimously to protest the cull and complain about how the whole affair was handled.

Perhaps I can understand the City not receiving post through the mail – something the City claimed to have posted to me never arrived, and an email they sent never showed up either (which conveniently for them put the cull protest off by weeks).  However, I most definitely dropped 63 signed postcards from different individuals at the Town House:  there is no logical excuse for the cards ‘disappearing’.

‘The Media is to blame’ (Really?)

The City’s position, according to its Chief Executive Ms Watts is as follows (from two different letters):-

“Aberdeen City Council has no control over how the media report Council meetings.  In this case the media did not accurately report on decisions of the Committee and have continued to publish inaccurate information about the project.  They have published their interpretation of the committee decisions.”

I do not personally believe that the reports I read in print or saw on television misconstrued the Committee’s decisions at the time it decided to press ahead with the cull, having read the committee reports and minutes.

In an even stronger attack on the media, last week Valerie Watts wrote to me the following, which I believe must have been based in part on the Evening Express front page article of 30 September by you, Mr Ewen:

“In terms of media coverage, Aberdeen City Council’s Media Team has on several occasions sought to correct the media’s assumption that our deer management programme would necessarily begin on or around the first day of the season for controlling the numbers of roe deer hinds.

“Both the Evening Express and the Press & Journal have reported that the roe hind seasons begins on 01 October – the season in fact commences on 21 October – and that deer management would begin on or near that date. Both newspapers were informed as to the correct date of the start of the season and were reminded that no date had in fact been set by the Council for the start of our management programme. 

“The newspapers were also informed that their stories had raised false expectations that the start of deer management was imminent.  They have been told that details will only be finalised once funding is in place and when the trees are about to be planted.”

I spoke to an Evening Express reporter on the 2nd of November about this issue; they replied

“I am in contact very often with the City’s media team, and it’s never come up.”

Perhaps the media is misleading me, as Ms Watts would have me believe, or perhaps the media team has not contacted reporters who write about the cull.  In fact, now that I have published a number of articles on the cull, I can confirm the city has never once been in touch to suggest I have any facts wrong.

Moving on:  to a Meadow

This week the Housing & Environment Committee met (2 November); Neil Cooney called the whole dubious scheme into question.  Not only did he bring up the absolute lack of funding, but he also mentioned the soil report.

To say that Tullos is not ideal for tree planting is accurate.  But the City never did publicise this additional fact:  they have been asked to spray weed killer on Tullos for two to three years until the trees are established.  There is no detail on the cost, damage potential for plants and animals, and even potential health risks for people.

Neil Cooney, many concerned residents and I are now working to get the hill preserved (or perhaps even enhanced) as a meadow.   If you have ever seen the Dame’s Violets in bloom you would wonder why anyone would disturb their balance.  The gorse (being unceremoniously ripped out on occasion – and burnt) is essential for many forms of wildlife year round, providing food and shelter.

It is this gorse Ian Tallboys says is of limited value and which he wants ripped out.  At present there are beautiful forms of delicate (probably rather rare) fungi growing – any change in soil PH balance could kill them, not to mention the damage planting would do to the underground network from which these mushrooms grow.

You probably know there are three Bronze Age Cairns on the hill; they are set off in a striking fashion.

A forest will forever obscure them and the amazing views of the city and sea.  You might not know that over a dozen other smaller sites, many bronze age, are in the planting area.  It is unclear whether the appropriate government agencies have been contacted about this aspect of the tree plan.

If you want more information on why a meadow is such a better idea for Tullos, then please read the article on meadows in this issue of Aberdeen Voice. ( Click link )

Also – remember that we are about to build hundreds of homes and a football stadium where we currently have meadows.  This will spell the end for the wildlife that depended on these fields – to also change Tullos is an environmental disaster as far as I am concerned.  Perhaps now that the City’s ranger service is expected to turn a profit (yes, they are told to generate income streams with the very odd finance system at work in our city), they hope to have timber income from the trees – which according to the aforementioned soil report, will never achieve maturity.

How much quicker, efficient and simpler it would be to conduct nature tours of what is an amazing hill.  Environmental tourism is a growing area, and we with our resources should be getting on it.

This article and the accompanying table contain my personal opinions as well as quotations from the City’s documents.  I invite you to draw your own conclusions, to ask the City and Aileen Malone (once so keen to be quoted in press releases) why a meadow is not the best future for this hill.

If you would like to help lobby for a meadow, please get in touch via the Aberdeen Voice for further information.  We can avert an environmental tragedy if we act now.  This plan is still in a very early stage – but we will come up with a plan that will support the existing flora, fauna – and especially the deer.

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.

 

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

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.

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).

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.

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. )