Mar 242017
 

‘Diversification from Oil, Arms and Nuclear to Alternative Energy’ will be the subject of a public Meeting this Saturday at Aberdeen University. With thanks to Jonathan Russell, Chair of Aberdeen District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and member of Aberdeen Climate Action.

As part of Climate Action Week, Aberdeen Climate Action and Aberdeen and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will be holding a public meeting on Saturday 25th March at New Kings 10 at the University of Aberdeen from 2.30 to 4.30pm.
The Aberdeen and North-east Economy is in crisis due to the downturn in the price of Oil.

Climate Change, a major part of which is caused by Fossil fuels is a veritable threat to the future sustainability of our planet.

With Trump in the Whitehouse and as tensions mount in the world the potential use of Nuclear weapons becomes much more likely. The use of Nuclear weapons would be devastating to our planet not only having the direct effect of killing millions but the indirect effect of leading to a Nuclear Winter with crops being ruined leading to mass starvation.

The Scottish Parliament has voted by a large majority to get rid of the Trident Nuclear system from Scotland. All over the world but particularly in China there is a massive growth in the use of Alternative Energy technologies. Is it not time that the Scottish and UK economy moves away from destructive technologies to alternative energy which would provide a non-harmful future.

What can the Anti-Nuclear and Climate Change movements learn from each other? Could Aberdeen be at the forefront of a move to Alternative Energy. Why given the concerns about Oil and Nuclear is this not happening to the extent it needs to? How would we move from the destructive technologies of Oil and Nuclear to Alternative Energy?

The aim of the meeting will be to kick start this process and get participants involved in thinking how could we make this happen.

The organisers intend this to lead onto larger meetings in the Autumn which would help in the process to change both in Aberdeen and across Scotland and the UK.

The meeting will start with the showing of an historic film on how a group of workers in the 1970’s when faced with redundancy at Lucas Aerospace put forward a plan to stop making armaments and move to making more socially useful products and will be followed by short presentations by a panel of four followed by a wider discussion with the audience.

The event will be Chaired by Fiona Napier Trade Unionist and Activist and the panel will consist of Veronika Tudhope Organiser with Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Jelte Hammeijer Hutton Institute, expert on community renewable energy, Erik Dalhuijsen, Aberdeen Climate Action and Myshele Haywood from the Green Party.

  • Comments enabled – see comments box below. Note, all comments will be moderated.
Nov 252011
 

Voice’s Old Susannah takes a look at the week that was in Aberdeen and beyond and concludes that this is no country for old men (nor for old women, people with special abilities, school children and infants or animals either).

Old Susannah has been busy this past week.  There was an excellent two-day conference at Fyvie Castle.  The speakers seemed to believe our heritage, buildings, archaeology and environment are being affected by something they called ‘climate change’. Hard to believe, but some of these speakers think that our weather and climate are changing.

I’ve no idea why they would come to such a conclusion.  There was some person from the Met Office (whatever that is), who seems to think a case can be made for climate change because he has statistics that show it’s happening now.

Stranger still, he thinks this climate change might be somehow linked to people burning lots of ‘fossil fuel’.  If anyone hears any news about this unlikely story, please let me know.

The general thrust of the conference was that our ancient buildings are under moisture and temperature stresses they’ve not faced before, and many are at risk of actually crumbling.  Something called ‘Skara Brae’ in the Orkneys might get washed out to sea before long.

This would not be a huge loss. As far as I can see, it just a bunch of old stones.  The site is crying out for a nice high rise building, holiday homes, shops and parking – if not a monolith and a giant glass worm.  As to our wildlife, seasons are getting wetter and warmer, affecting growth and breeding cycles.  This is no time to be a bird of prey (or any other type of wild creature either.  Just don’t mention deer).

Despite the fact these animals are protected, we still have people who poison, shoot, and loot eggs.  Mixed with the changing seasons and related change in availability of food, things look rather bad for these creatures.

This two-day course was run at Fyvie Castle by the Scottish Traditional Building Skills Centre, an organisation which trains people (of all abilities) in the skills needed to maintain our historic built heritage.  The Traditional Skills people seem to think preserving Scotland’s historic buildings and monuments is a worthwhile thing to do.  (If certain local developers have their way, this centre won’t be needed much longer).

Further information is available on their website:
http://www.traditionalskills.com/

We must have skilled craftspeople in future who can ensure the glass worm/teletubbieland, concrete ramps, etc.  will remain beautiful, as I’m sure they will be when they are built.

I couldn’t help going away from the conference thinking what I’d do if I had £50 million burning a hole in my pocket.  It might involve a little bit of BrewDog, but it would not involve getting rid of listed trees to build a carpark with decorative worm.

It would have been very hard for staff to figure out that this frail woman had a wound so deep you could see her bone

I was glad of the two-day course and its speakers, if for no other reason than there’s not much else going on in the wider world for me to write about this week.  I think I heard something about an American policeman offering some protesters a peppery snack treat, and there may be one or two minor problems in Europe and the Middle East.

I also get the feeling that there might be some financial issues concerning our European economic paradise.  Other than that, I’ve not much to say just now.

Close to home, news these past few weeks has been short on happy endings.  For one thing, the Monolith was not shortlisted as a Union Terrace Garden design.  But looking through recent news items, I conclude this is no country for old men.  Or old women, women, people with special abilities, school children and infants.  And this is definitely no country for animals.

For example take the case of 87 year-old Jamesina Mackenzie who died from a bedsore which became so exposed you could see the bone.  This didn’t happen in the ‘dark’ or middle ages; it’s just happened.

So let’s move on to a definition or two.

Bedsore: (compound noun, English) A type of pressure sore caused by the sufferer lying prone in one position without movement over time.  A wholly avoidable type of ailment.

The owner of the Highland ‘care home’ where Ms Mackenzie suffered with the sore that killed her told an inquiry into the death that his staff ‘did the best they could’.   According to this  manager, the problem was that ‘…there had been some errors in staff’s record keeping’.  What would have been the result if they were negligent or slacked off, Old Susannah wonders.

I was glad to hear the staff did the best they could.  After all, paperwork can be pretty heavy going.  It would have been very hard for staff to figure out that this frail woman, who must have been in excruciating pain, had a wound so deep you could see her bone.  You would have to have some kind of medical background to work that out.

Older people are always happy to sell up their own homes

My granny had been head nurse of a hospital in Massachusetts.  The old-fashioned, primitive way to prevent bedsores was to encourage movement and if necessary, actually help people to move.

This hospital was very inefficient in that it had more nurses and doctors than managers.  Far too much money was spent on patients’ food, and far too much time was spent on actually caring for people.  I’ll bet the place didn’t even have a good profit margin.

Care Home(compound noun, English) a residential institution dedicated to long-term care offering rest and re-cooperation of infirm people, usually elderly.

‘Care home’ – the word even sounds warm, safe and snug.  The problem is running these homes costs money which could be put to other use.  Older people are always happy to sell up their own homes so they will be able to afford a care home of the type which looked after Ms Mackenzie so well.

Saving money and keeping a home in order to have something to leave to your children is so passe.  Sure you might get one or two dozen stories a month about older, frail people being abused in care homes, but who are you going to believe – them and their relatives, or the highly-paid (sorry – highly-trained) caring staff who run these places for profit.

Since most regional authorities and councils decided to ‘outsource’ their care responsibilities, there may have been a few minor hiccups or injuries and deaths.  But outsourcing is here to stay.

Still our City council knows best, and despite the collapse of a major private care home operator, Aberdeen is still looking into privatising more of its homes.  Which leads me to a definition I might have already done, but seems to need updating.

Outsourcing: (noun; modern English) To take a service or operation away from its parent/owner and have it run by a third party.

We are desperate to save money in Aberdeen (those portraits and jeans for the Lord Provost don’t pay for themselves, you know) and in order to do so, we are giving our money to consultants.  The totally impartial consultants come in and look at your business.  They decide which services should be outsourced, and then the money saving starts instantly.

clearly they just want to give the best care possible to your grandparents or children.

Coincidentally, they often want to outsource the same services that they are able to provide.  Old Susannah has yet to hear of a consultancy saying ‘let’s hire more people so we can run things better and have nicer schools and care homes’.

This just proves that the consultancies are impartial businesses which have to make tough choices.  It must be very hard for them indeed.

After the consultants have been paid a modest sum for their expertise, the city fires/lets go/lays off its existing staff who initially performed the services.  That’s a saving right there in salary expense.  In the case of childcare or nursing homes, this may upset the clients initially (the word ‘client’ as used by the City is an old, infirm or young human being to the rest of us).

The ‘clients’ may lose any relationship they’ve built up with their previous carers, but never mind.  If you play your cards right, you might even fire enough people to pay part of the consultant’s bill.

The economics of outsourcing get greater for the city involved.  Now that they are no longer providing a non-profit service with taxpayer money, they turn the taxpayer money over to people who exist to make a profit.  It might seem as if these private operators would cut a corner or two to make money, but clearly they just want to give the best care possible to your grandparents or children.

In the old days you might have thought the purpose of paying tax was so that the government could provide you the services you needed, but which were not designed to be money-making businesses.  If we read the odd case of an older person abused (or given a salt shaker instead of an asthma inhaler as happened recently), then that’s the breaks.  The other breaks often involve bones.

Thankfully in these modern, enlightened times, we realise that making money is more important than anything else.  Including poor Mrs Mackenzie and the other stories that don’t make the paper.

Stop Press!  Aberdeen City Council has approved its budget! Read all about it here in this unbiased City Council report:  
http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/CouncilNews/ci_cns/pr_budgetrevcap_100211.asp

It’s all central government’s fault for not giving us lots more dosh.  This might be in part because we waste so much of the stuff on monolith research, portraits and so on, but hey.  You will I’m sure be happy to know that only a few hundred posts will either go unfilled (keeps the existing staff busy covering lots of jobs – they enjoy it) or will go altogether.

Re-roofing an unfit building makes as much sense as anything else going on here

We’re holding on to teaching assistants, which is interesting because we’ll be cutting expensive, boring music and art lessons for children.  If you don’t have time to visit the city’s website, then just rest assured of one thing:  the 50 metre swimming pool is still very much in the cards.  Result!

We may pay for it from the Common Good Fund (remember the good old days when this was c. £35 million? Things have changed).  To help balance the books, it looks as if Tullos Swimming Pool will stay shut.

Old Susannah is told that it recently had brand new lights installed, and its roof is brand new.  Which is odd, because the city now say the building is unstable.  Re-roofing an unfit building makes as much sense as anything else going on here.

Consultants have also produced a brilliant 10 page report (took about a year to do, as you can imagine), showing that Aberdeen has many more swimming pools per population than other parts of Scotland.  Of course these consultants counted in all the pools we’ve got:  Ardoe, Palm Court, etc. etc.  I guess the families of Torry will just have to hop into their BMWs and pay to swim for a day at a hotel pool once Tullos is gone.

Still, we’ll have saved money, and we may eventually produce a swimmer who may win a shiny medal.  If Aberdeen wins an Olympic medal in a few decades, we’ll all agree it’s been worth it.

Nov 042011
 

“Politics for beginners…with a green edge”. As a ‘young person’…this expression I always feel is a little condescending but nevertheless…as a ‘young person’ the world of politics can seem both inaccessible and unapproachable. So I was pleasantly surprised this weekend when I made the effort to go along to the Scottish Green Party conference which was held at the University of Aberdeen. Bex Holmes reports. 

So, what was this conference all about, you maybe asking?

Well every year like most political parties’, the Scottish Greens hold an annual conference in which members can get together and have a good old natter about the world’s pressing issues including those happening locally.

There is of course a bit more to it than that, such as getting your head around voting for new policy motions and various other in-house processes. Most of which baffled me, but I’m ‘young’ so I can get away with being a bit clueless now and again!

Aside from all these formalities however Patrick Harvie MSP gave a keynote speech which really made me stop and think. Everything he said reminded me of why I had not only sought to become more active in politics in the first place but why I choose to join to the Scottish Greens over all others.

He highlighted the Scottish Government’s contradictory policies on energy and climate change. Yes, our climate change targets are awesome and a step in the right direction. But (and that’s a big but) they are completely undermined by our continued support of the fossil fuel industry. Simple as!

More eloquently put of course by Mr Harvie:

“Alex Salmond now has a very clear and simple choice – he must either fail on Scotland’s much-vaunted climate change targets, or he must drop his unconditional support for the fossil fuel industries…First, the new coal-fired power station at Hunterston must be blocked. Then he must rule out shale gas extraction, which his Energy Minister has refused to do.

“Then, because CCS can never be applied to most uses of oil anyway, he must drop his support for dangerous deepwater oil drilling in Scottish waters…The challenge with fossil fuels is not to burn all the reserves we already know about, let alone to go looking for more. The priority has to be energy efficiency and renewables.”

Basically, it’s a bit loony of the SNP to think that they can run a high-carbon and low-carbon economy at the same time. They have to choose.

You maybe thinking at this point…ah what does she know? She’s young and evidently a bit naive. Well, I maybe naive in the ins and outs of politics but I know enough as an Environmental Scientist that Scotland has a responsibility to curb our emissions. Both for the sake of those in developing countries who unfortunately will bare the brunt of climate change but also our children, and our children’s children.

We need to take action now which must be integrated into the whole of society including our financial system. This brings me onto another thing that reiterated my choice in the Scottish Greens. I was delighted that an emergency motion was passed supporting the Occupy movement.

Speaking at the conference and representing Edinburgh’s Green Councillors Cllr Steve Burgess said;

“Greens support Occupy Edinburgh in their call for a new economic system that will reduce inequality and protect the planet’s shared resources that we all depend on.  It’s early days for this movement but this up welling of dissatisfaction is a welcome indication that even people in democratic countries are feeling disenfranchised.”

Yes indeed, there are load of us ‘young people’ out there who are disenfranchised. I dare say maybe ‘young people’ have always been disenfranchised but with few job prospects and soaring higher education fees, is it any wonder that we tend to be a grumpy bunch?! So I was also glad there was a fringe event with the ‘young greens’ whose main aim is to support members between the ages of 13-30 and discuss their problems and concerns.

Having a network of ‘young people’ across the country will help enable us to raise the profile of issues which disproportionately effect young people, including social housing, jobs and education. As well as the dire state of our health as a nation…there’s that big ‘A’ word that just won’t go away…alcohol.

Other activities included workshops on canvassing, which basically means being very smiley, saying hello and actually talking to you out there…the voters.

To sum up my experience of the Scottish Greens conference as a ‘young person’ and political novice – it was fun!

I learnt a lot and more importantly it has motivated me to become even more involved with politics. To these ends I will endeavour to stop hiding behind my veil of cluelessness and get savvy about things because frankly, there’s a lot of stuff that affects me and my future which I think most politicians completely miss.

Not because they don’t care but because they are privileged having never come across these issues in their own lives.

So this is my small call to arms. ‘Young people’ we do actually need you! You can actually make a difference! Register to vote. Do a little reading on political parties…as a member of the Scottish Greens of course I will be biased here but seriously look at what the parties are actually saying in their manifestos. How will it affect you?

Most importantly, VOTE. And if one day you’re wondering what more you can do, why not join a political party and become actively involved? I took that leap and for me it was well worth the effort. 

 For further info, contact: Scottish Greens Aberdeen And Aberdeenshire Working Group

Oct 212011
 

Former RGU Principal Dr David Kennedy, whose background is in the sciences has believed for a long time that we are destroying the world around us. In another extract from his conversation with Voice’s Suzanne Kelly he talks of his horror at what we are destroying in the name of progress.

Dr Kennedy and I discussed where the world may be heading, and I mentioned Albert Einstein, who said:

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Dr Kennedy Continues:

“Emily Spence of Massachusetts  http://smirkingchimp.com/author/emily_spence and I corresponded on a number of issues: global warming, environment, overpopulation. The sad thing is the only sustainable communities we know of are the primitive ones we have destroyed. People on some of the remote Philippine islands lived entirely sustainably. They met their needs until the outside world impinged on and destroyed their way of life.

“However, we want more and it doesn’t matter how much we get, we still want more. It comes from the pleasure centres of the brain. Gambling and winning gives you a kick and so you go on. How can a man like Bill Gates, whose wealth could feed his family for generations, still want more? This causes me to despair. There is a weakness in the human brain or perhaps it is how nature defends itself and we may be on the way to destroying ourselves.

“How quickly is it all going to come? People talk about planning and planning horizons. The Romans had the idea of looking at things after every 5 years. As a manager in education I had to plan ahead as to what we needed, what courses we would offer, how many students would there be, and what resources would be needed. I took the areas I knew most about, and looked at 10-yearly intervals. At the time I did this, the changes in education were colossal and totally unpredictable. In the 70s there were ten colleges of higher education in Scotland, and they were like sacred cows. Scotland was proud of having had the highest literacy rate in the world.

“On coming to the 80s, dramatic changes were occurring in education. For a start, demographics – the birth rate. In the 1980s the number of colleges of education began to shrink. Some closed; some merged. In the 90s, most had disappeared, Northern College of Education here in Aberdeen being the last survivor. Now there are none.

“The same was true in nursing. I came to the conclusion that you might be able to guess what would happen in five years, but accurately forecasting for ten years ahead was absolutely impossible. The rate of change in technology is so incredible only a fool would predict what things will look like ten years from now.”

Dr Kennedy has a track record of concern for the environment and ecology. Apart from protesting over Trump’s honorary degree award, what are some of the issues that concern him most, locally and further afield?

“I’m very interested in what happens internationally. Governments swither over the issue of global warming. Scientists tell them that it is real; big business tells them it is a myth, and governments sit and fiddle while the earth warms and climates change dramatically.”

“As you might have guessed, I am a strong environmentalist with a long and deep concern about what we are doing to the biosphere on which all life depends. Biologists have known for decades about the acidification of the oceans and consequential damage to coral reefs and the communities that live on them.

“Likewise, we are poisoning the land by excessive use of chemicals, the production of which depends heavily on fossil fuel energy. With a rapidly rising population, human life will soon find it difficult to feed itself. Hence one of my concerns is about the short-sighted use of good farmland for house building.

“Just as disastrous is the pollution of the atmosphere with harmful radiation from nuclear power stations, by depleted uranium and gases emitted when burning fossil fuels, while at the same time tropical rainforests that absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen are being destroyed. Lack of rainfall in the Amazon basin, because of climate change, could result in its eventual desertification and the release of trillions of tons of carbon dioxide presently bound up as wood cellulose.”

In future extracts from this interview, we will carry Dr Kennedy’s views on how personal standards and values have had far-reaching consequences. No interview with this former university principal would be complete without establishing his views on education. That too will feature in Voice soon.