UTG Archives - Page 9 of 21

Old Susannah No 82: Arts and Craftiness

Jun 222012

Voice’s Old Susannah comments on current events and enlightens us with definitions of some tricky terms with a locally topical taste. By Suzanne Kelly.

Tally Ho! I’m not sure if this past week was more vibrant than it was dynamic or more dynamic than it was vibrant – but it’s been good on the whole. Gray’s School of Art degree and fashion shows took place, I went along to the Sunday movie at The Moorings, and there were lots of cocktails.

RGU was interesting; for some reason just as we arrived, I was puzzled as my friends abruptly scarpered in different directions. I was told later that I’d been standing next to HoMalone, and my friends didn’t want to see what would happen next. Not that I would have confronted her; I would have said “Hello! My deer!”, or asked her where she got the fluorescent mustard coloured blazer she wore at the vote count.

She was probably searching for the Gray’s designer who made clothing out of fur, or the jeweller using bone, or so I would imagine (NB there were some imaginative uses of fake fur on show – why use dead animals for decorative reasons?).

Before the RGU fashion show, Gray’s Head of School made a speech, concluding that Gray’s and RGU were firmly behind Aberdeen’s bid for the highly coveted ‘City of Culture’ title. Hooray!

There were several interesting artists and designers on show; I particularly liked jewellery by Sarah Sidwick. In a written statement Sarah claimed:-

“Body image dissatisfaction is on the rise, with more pressure than ever before put on both women and men to obtain society’s projected ideal beauty…. I believe we should all start taking the growing problem of bodily image dissatisfaction more seriously and question our view on what makes someone ‘beautiful’.

We all have different ideas of what is beautiful I guess. As long as someone’s not to fat or too thin, or too tall or short, and doesn’t show any sign of ageing – and wears lots of designer gear, it’s safe to say they are beautiful.

For anyone who likes to watch a movie without interruptions or without listening to other people’s mobiles going off every five minute, I’d suggest the Sunday Movie at the Moorings Bar. The lights are dimmed around 4pm-ish, the doors are locked, and the audience is quiet. Last week’s movie was called ‘Dazed & Confused’.

Old Susannah found some of the film’s references difficult to follow, and was puzzled that the young people in it seemed to smoke roll-up cigarettes with excessive frequency; I can’t imagine why.

There were a few occasions for cocktails this week, and my first visit to 99 Back Wynd won’t be my last. There is a ‘Painkiller’ cocktail which is delicious, and they have violet-flavoured alcohol, which I love.

Saturday 23 June is nearly upon us, and the biggest party Union Terrace Gardens has ever seen will be on

Possibly best of all is that BrewDog is offering cocktails. Beer cocktails. BrewDog craft beer cocktails. These spirit-lifting cocktails include Pretty in Punk, Saint’s Delight, Hardcore Pornography and Orange Tide. A girl in BrewDog had selected about 20 bottles of different beers to take away; she told me it was a birthday present for a friend. I told her my birthday is 9 July.

And I launched an eBook this week. It’s a very short work entitled ‘Old Susannah’s Handbook of Modern Manners – Part One’. It is available on kindle via Amazon. The introduction is available to read for free, but after that it gets a tiny bit sarcastic. It is yours for about £1.90, and should I sell any copies, then 20% of any profit will be split between four animal welfare/sanctuary groups. No doubt the City of Culture Bid Committee will be interested.

It can be found at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008C81M1I

Seeing as the City of Culture is the topic on everyone’s lips (why, I can barely sleep!), I will include a few relevant definitions. Before that, just a reminder that Saturday 23 June is nearly upon us, and the biggest party Union Terrace Gardens has ever seen will be on. Hope to see you there.

But amid all this fun, the Freedom of Information people wrote to me this afternoon about some of my deer cull questions. It seems that despite public observation to the contrary, warning signs were posted at each and every entrance during the weeks the shooting took place.

The signs said ‘forestry operations’ were in effect. Obviously, forestry operations meant hunters were shooting rifles and a lethal risk existed. By the way, 23 deer were shot, none were just wounded (so the city says), and all were ‘clean kills’. However, to shoot 23 deer, 33 rounds of ammunition were fired.

I put my hands up (especially if confronted with a high-powered rifle) – but if 23 animals were shot instantly dead, doesn’t this mean an extra 10 shots were taken? Did it take more than one shot to kill the poor (hand-fed in some cases) creatures? Did any bullets miss – therefore meaning there could have been some serious accidents?

Feel free to ask the City yourself about the cull, the correct warning signs as to lethal risk, and the 33 rounds needed to kill 23 deer.

Now onwards with a few definitions

Culture: (noun, Eng) 1. the collective qualities, traits, idiosyncrasies that give an area, a group or a nation its individuality.

A Ms D Morgan sent a letter to the Press & Journal last week; in it she noted that Aberdeen has closed nearly a dozen of its museums and/or sold collections over the past decade and a bit. We recently flogged off some of the Thomas Glover House artefacts as well. And about time.

No one is interested in history, old buildings or old paintings; people want to see sharks in fish tanks, skulls covered with diamonds, and granite webs. The sooner we can get more vibrant and dynamic the better. This is how it works.

Sell off your old stuff. Sell old trees for lumber in Hazlehead Park and use the money to plant trees on Tullos Hill (irrespective of the existing ecosystem, peoples’ wishes, or the fact the trees won’t grow).
Shoot the deer that lived on the hill and sell their carcasses for game meat.
Let your old buildings either rot, get burnt down, or just sell them. Then you have cash in hand.
Close museums; throw any books you find in Marischal College’s basement museum into a skip.
Buy some trendy new art, and get lots of consultants in.
Build new venues, even if the existing venues have to be subsidised by the taxpayer.
Borrow lots and lots of money over what you got by selling the family silverware.
Give money to consultants.
Borrow more money.
Set up some private companies, preferably with the established quangos which you’ve helped to set up.
You will need more money. Cut funds, stop benefits, close schools, pressure libraries.
Ask arts practitioners in the area what they want, and ignore those who are politically awkward, not dependent on you for funding, or who want a slice of the new pie.
Set up lots of meetings, think-tanks, new groups.
Select a random area of the city to be the quarter for arts. Impose this new geography. Then sit back and wait for the public’s grateful thanks, and grants to roll in, and tourists in their thousands to appear, hopefully generating the £122,000,000 you promised people your granite web and new ideas would bring in each year. If you build it, they will come.

I do not think Aberdeen can be rivalled in its ambition.

City of Culture: (noun, mod. English) title bestowed upon a UK/European City by vote.

The irreverent magazine ‘Private Eye’ has previously pointed out how Liverpool, previous City of Culture, spent a great deal of money on events which sadly people weren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate or support, and wasted a fortune. But Valerie Watts, our Chief Executive, came from Derry. Derry won City of Culture, and she wants another similar victory here!

Only a minority of negative people in Derry think that money was wasted on this award. £12 million or so was needed for Derry’s ‘Millennium Way’. If you and I haven’t heard of it, it is because we are uncultured. Here is some criticism of what I am sure was a brilliant idea:- http://www.lurganmail.co.uk/news/local/city-of-culture-not-a-priority-1-3761381

But suddenly as I read these old stories, everything fell into place for Old Susannah as she remembered one of the huge white elephants of Liverpool. Actually, it was not a white elephant…

We have seen some of our quangos and LibDem / SNP politicians desperate to build a giant granite web. I can now reveal the reason we are desperate for the giant web is that a city of culture must have: A Giant Spider.

City movers and shakers in Liverpool, (home of the Beatles, Echo & the Bunnymen, classical performers, painters and sculptors) decided to ignore all that art nonsense and get really cultural – with a giant spider called ‘the princess project’. The spider’s cost was nearly £2,000,000. What a bargain!

Why DaVinci, Mozart, Bach, Turner and so on ignored the cultural importance of a giant spider is beyond me; I guess we’re just more enlightened now. But ‘Liverpool Culture Company (in turn funded by the city, the Arts Council and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) decided to get a giant Japanese spider. I guess Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan were not available at the time.

Who were the creative geniuses behind this entire ‘city of culture’ invention? Who wanted a giant spider above classical arts and indeed before serving the needs of the Liverpudlian citizen?

The entire concept of a Department of Culture, Media & Sport was an ancient dream we can thank Tony Blair for. One of the first Ministers for this crucial cabinet post was the talented David Mellor. He was famous for having his toes sucked by Antonia de Sancha, as reported widely at the time.

Was it a Shakespearean scholar, Tom Stoppard or another luminary who helped devise this spider scheme and run Liverpool’s year? Indeed: it was creator of Brookside Close, Phil Redmond, who was Liverpool Culture Company’s artistic director. To quote Wikipedia, which is quite accurate on this story, Redmond said :-

“At £1.5m I think it’s (the giant spider) actually cheaper than (booking) Macca (Sir Paul McCartney) and it has got us on the front of the South China Morning Post. So it’s good value for money. However, the project has come in for criticism [whatever for? – Old Susannah asks] in some quarters: the UK mental health charity Anxiety has highlighted the potentially traumatic effect of the production upon those suffering with arachnophobia, and the TaxPayers’ Alliance has called the artwork an “outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money”.

The vast majority of the public response was … that “The Liverpool Princess’ performance was the highlight of the city’s Capital of Culture 2008 celebrations.”

I can well believe that was the highlight, remembering some of the other non-events Private Eye covered. There were cancelled performances, people giving work to acquaintances, and all sorts of dubious goings-on.

None of that could happen here however.

Patronage: (noun) to support, pay for or otherwise assist an artist, project, sportsman, etc.

In a far distant past, the fine artist was paid by the rich to portray the wealthy patron in a favourable light. The artists were obliged to do as they were told, but often they left clues behind in their work to say how they really felt about their patron (stone masons would leave small caricatures behind in the back of their work).

Later, the role of patron switched to the State. If your artwork pleases the government, you get grants.

For instance the man who was paid £9,000 (or so) to paint our Lord Provost told the press:

”I think he ( Provost Stephens) is a really nice man.”

Well, he would say that wouldn’t he? It’s not like he feels any obligation to the system that commissioned him; or that would mean we have the state controlling what artists do – heaven forbid! – whereas the negative, fault-finding, duo of Anthony Baxter and Richard Phinney were denied grants from Creative Scotland, as ‘no one would be interested in a documentary about Donald Trump and the Menie Estate’.

Thankfully, by letting the government dish out money to the artists they like is that we can try to prevent another ‘You’ve Been Trumped’ from getting made. I wonder how many people with similar projects which were turned down didn’t find the resources to realize their artistic visions.

Thankfully, we will never find out. Another benefit is we don’t have to think too much about what is good or bad art – the state chooses for us. Result!

Old Susannah has already been a bit longer-winded than she had intended; apologies.

Next week: No Creative Scotland commissions for me.

Old Susannah No. 81: Alphabet Soup Leftovers And Dogs’ Dinners

Aberdeen City, Opinion 2 Responses »

Jun 142012

Aberdeen Voice’s Old Susannah continues her romp through Aberdeen City Council’s A to Z of services, and considers two very different ‘Mr Smiths’, and dog’s dinners. By Suzanne Kelly.

Tally Ho! The burning issues of the past week include Olympic torches and scorching internet debate following Annie Lennox’s article in the Guardian. In this piece Lennox suggests that Aberdeen might have some issues and that the City Garden Project is ‘a dog’s dinner.’

In the first place as Mr Tom Smith (ACSEF, City Garden Trust, guru of truth, etc. etc.) points out, Annie doesn’t have all the facts. Mr Smith will be happy to supply them to her. This will be a historic first, considering ACSEF’s previous economy with said facts. But what a result! Tom Smith’s kindly offered to meet Annie! I bet she’s wondering what to wear to any such meeting and is all nervous and excited. Who could blame a girl? (Do I get a meeting invite as well, Tom, seeing as I was head of one of the official referendum campaign groups?).

I’m happy to admit I don’t have all the facts, either – I keep asking for them, but I still don’t have them. For one thing, I don’t know what comments people wrote on the voting slips when the six shortlisted designs were on show. At the time comments and votes were requested (and paid for by the taxpayer). Somehow, a private company, Aberdeen City Gardens Trust, seems to have the votes. Tom is one of the people with access to them, and won’t let us see the results. It wouldn’t be helpful, you see, to release this information.

I also don’t know the concrete web’s final business plan and its financial projections. I also don’t know what the architectural drawings specify in any detail. I don’t know what went on at the many meetings held to further the web. I only have ‘redacted’ (that’s with the details hidden) minutes of all those City Gardens Projects meetings you and I paid for (we’ve spent at least £600k on consultants and services for the granite web – you know, the project which won’t cost us a penny). Call me over-cautious, but before I’d agree to borrow £90 million and commit to spending £140 million on a plan with no details, I’d want something a bit more concrete (excuse the expression).

I also don’t know the latest on Mr Smith’s front page P&J story from when he claimed UTG supporters were ‘harassing’ him and his family, and illegally hacking into his email. You would have thought that had laws been broken, he’d have raced to the papers with the update. Otherwise, it just looks like a cynical manipulation of the press close to the referendum vote. But all in all, I admit I don’t have these minor little facts.

But never mind the facts (which we’ve been asked to do so far) – once Tom’s had a word with Annie Lennox, she’ll be joining ACSEF, moving to Union Terrace and supporting the web. Rumours that she has switched PR companies to Aberdeen’s BiG remain unconfirmed.

But Ms Lennox’ calling the Granite Web ‘a dog’s dinner’ in the Guardian was hardly fair. Firstly, if you tried to feed such slop to a poor dog, it would slink away howling into the night, and the Scottish SPCA would step in, like they did to Dumfries & Galloway’s NHS supremo, one Mr Michael Keggens. Because of his busy job and busy life, Keggens left his elderly dog without food and water, locked in the house for days. Easy mistake to make I’m sure.

The Scottish SPCA were alerted to the dog barking, and found the poor thing alone in the house, caked in muck with not even water to drink. Feeding the dog and returning a day later, the Scottish SPCA found the situation hadn’t changed. Apparently living things need food and water, but you can’t expect someone high up in the NHS to know details like that. Remember this the next time you hear of an elderly or infirm patient suffering dehydration. (PS – the Scottish SPCA is desperate for help just now, as are New Arc and Willows – if you can spare anything, please think about it).

Back to Mr Smith, well a Mr Smith anyway. Old Susannah had a sudden urge this week to re-watch the old Jimmy Stewart film, ‘Mr Smith goes to Washington.’ Yes, it’s heavy on the sentiment and American values. But the gist of the plot is this: a corrupt, wealthy circle of small town businessmen and elected officials are milking the taxpayers; they have a crooked construction scheme (for a dam – a granite web would have been too far-fetched even for Hollywood). These crooks have been sucking up public money, conspiring, and hiding the facts of their self-serving plans from the electorate. This somehow sounds familiar.

In comes naive, honest Mr Smith, newly elected to the Senate, where people expect he will just do as the villains tell him to do. He eventually finds out about all the corruption, and fights it (and he wins). By the way, one of the most powerful weapons which the wealthiest crooked businessman has is his ability to dictate to the local press what to cover, how to cover it, and what to leave out of the news.

In the end ‘people power’ and truth win out over greed, corruption and manipulation. I guess that’s Hollywood for you. I’m still stumped as to why I thought of this film and wanted to see it again, but it will come to me.

Before I continue with my search through Aberdeen City Council’s A to Z of ‘services’, I’d like to say that I’m greatly looking forward to next Saturday’s (23 June) party in Union Terrace Gardens, courtesy of Common Good Aberdeen. Hope to see you there. And congratulations on the unanimous decision for a cafe in UTG to be run by Common Good Aberdeen volunteers, with 100% of profits going to improving the gardens. A result in the truest sense.

I would also like to say a sincere thank you to the Guardian for its investigations, and to Ms Lennox (who can’t win – she gets it in the neck if she says anything, and gets it in the neck if she doesn’t. But I dare say she knows what’s important and what she’s doing, and petty, small-minded criticism can’t stop her. More power to her, as they say).

Now back to Aberdeen City’s A to Z of services.

M is for Marischal College: – Result! ACC gutted this building, fitted it out with new furniture for some of the council staff, and boasted widely how wonderful it was – it only cost around £60,000,000 and it ‘came in on time and under budget’. You can’t say fairer than that, can you?

Of course we never got to see a list of what the alternatives for council office space were (Old Susannah did do a FOI, knowing there is a ton of empty space owned by ACC out there – but was told this information was top secret). Marischal may have been under budget, but what the budget was for other solutions was never disclosed.

Marischal workers are also under something else, and it’s not budget. The problem I reported earlier with leaking toilet pipes hasn’t entirely been solved. It must be kind of stimulating – you never know what’s going to land on your desk if you work at Marischal.

N is for National Fraud Initiative: – No, it’s not an initiative to strip the taxpayer of as much money as possible, it means that:-

“…Aberdeen City Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. We may share information provided to us with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds, in order to prevent and detect fraud.”

We’ll have to wait and see if the new administration can do as well as the previous one at preventing fraud. Let’s see – we had Councillor Cassie and his little financial embarrassment. We had ‘care’ workers stealing from their elderly clients, we’ve had social workers buying themselves goods with our money; we’ve had people at the council offices taking their work home with them (in the form of embezzled funds).

There is a saying: steal something small and you’ll go to jail; steal something big and they’ll make you a legend. Steal an entire Victorian Park and put it into private hands to manage? They’ll make you an ACSEF member.

O is for Open Data: – As the Council tells us,

“Open data is about increased transparency, about sharing the information we hold with the wider community to build useful applications.”

There is a link to this open data –

“We now have a linked data repository, available at: http://linkeddata.aberdeencity.gov.uk/ which provides a number of data sets as linked data. “

Please do be my guest and visit this link. But if you’re looking for any controversial data, I’m not sure this will be much help to you.

P is for Package Holidays: – the City is giving us advice on consumer protection regarding package holidays. Result!

I wonder whether the previous Lord Provost did a package holiday when he went on some of his essential world-wide trips in order to save the city some money. His visit to Nagasaki clearly worked wonders, and I hear the Japanese want to get rid of some of their tedious green space to build granite webs.

There was a tartan created to commemorate the visit as well. While we were spending all this money on his designer jeans, clothes, travel, portraits and so on, we sensibly have just auctioned off some of the artefacts from Thomas Glover House. Glover, you may recall, was for all intents the man who most helped to open up Japan to the outside world, and his house in Aberdeen was a monument to him and his travels.

I wonder if they’ve sold the doorknobs, light bulbs and light switches from the Glover house yet?

Q is for…. nothing: There are no entries. Nothing about quality of services, quality of life, nothing. That’s because things are so good, there’s nothing left to say. (X has no listings, either, FYI).

R is for Rats: If any of you have read the previous columns about the city’s A to Z of services, you will suspect correctly that this link takes you back to the city’s exterminator services. The city will happily kill rats, rodents, insects, and a whole host of critters for you, for a fee. And as we sadly know, they’ll shoot deer.

Next week: Expect an update on the Tullos Hill deer slaughter story, the remainder of the alphabet, and a return to definitions as normal.

PS – I have learnt a great deal from the online debate sparked from the Guardian’s Annie Lennox story. But most importantly, I’ve learnt you are not allowed to criticise a place unless you live in it. Therefore, let’s have no more carping on about the situations in Syria, Iraq, Tibet, Myanmar, DRC, and so on. Glad that’s settled.

Have your say in the comments box below.

Cuckoos In The Nest: Latest In Aberdeen Gardens War.

Aberdeen City, Featured, Opinion 39 Responses »

Jun 072012

What is the probability that the City Garden Project will actually happen? Mike Shepherd looks at some of the obstacles it currently faces.

The City Garden Project cannot proceed if £70 million of private finance is not in place to fund it:

The nominal cost for the City Garden Project is £140 million, with £70 million each to be contributed from the private and from the public sector.
So far, only £55 million of private money has been pledged, although £70 million has always been the target figure. The project will stall if the full £70 million of private funding is not committed.

Aberdeen Council voted in January to agree the following:

“Instructs officers to enter into negotiations with a view to putting in place a development agreement with Aberdeen City Garden Trust (ACGT) and/or their representatives, which sets out the terms upon which Aberdeen City Council (ACC) would be prepared to make necessary Council owned land available, to realise the proposed development subject to;

“(x) Requires ACGT to confirm, in a legally binding form, that they have access to at least £70 million of private sector funds to invest in the CGP, prior to the signing of;

a. An appropriate Development Agreement, and

b. A TIF agreement confirming ACC’s ability to invest at least £70 million in enabling infrastructure related to the CGP.”
http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=18252

A council vote to give final approval to signing the Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) agreement will probably come up this summer. This is basically a request for a £92 million loan from the Scottish Government, £70 million of which would fund the City Garden Project.

The £55 million of pledged private money has been on the table since early 2010 and the full £70 million remains an unfulfilled aspiration two years later. The funding gap of £15 million will be difficult to make up.

One issue is that big companies who could afford to make donations on the scale of millions may be reluctant to get involved with such a controversial project. They will not want to come under severe criticism from either the public or their workers.

Sir Ian Wood could come up with the extra £15 million, perhaps anonymously. This would however be an admission that the project has failed to motivate the business community in the place where it matters: the bank vault.

The TIF business case is risky:

Noted academic Professor Tony McKay has criticised the business case for public funding through TIF as “the worst he’s seen this year”.

Claims that the project will create up to 6500 jobs and add £122 million per year to the city’s economic output are ludicrous, he says. He thinks that the Scottish Government will reject the application for a loan from central funds.
dailyrecord.co.uk/aberdeen-city-garden-business-plan-is-worst-i-ve-seen

TIF funding is based on the idea that without the core project, new businesses will not happen. These are the “But For” criteria that give the green light for putting a new TIF scheme in place. The new businesses created provide business rates to pay for the loan.

The Aberdeen business case contends that much of the commercial activity in two new business parks in the north of the city, and in the city centre, will not happen without the City Garden Project.

I suspect that few truly believe this, as the new business parks will attract inward investment to the city on the back of a currently resurgent oil industry anyway.

Nevertheless, I suspect that the Scottish Government will give a few knowing nods and winks to the “But For” criteria here. They may be amenable to allowing new business rates to be captured to pay off the Council’s loan of £92 million for the proposed city centre redevelopment.

But will it be enough? The business case makes it clear that the revenue will pay off the £92 million loan and accrued interest with a small margin to spare after 25 years. And required to do this are 6,500 new jobs and £122 million added to the city’s economy each year for the next 25 years, a “ludicrous” estimate as mentioned previously.

Let’s take the lesser case whereby the city gets 5,000 new jobs and about £100 million per year of added value. This would also be miraculous news for Aberdeen if it were to happen, but it would be a disaster for Aberdeen City Council. The council would be left with a shortfall on a very large loan. It might have to sell off assets to pay the difference.

Audit Scotland was aware of these problems when it expressed concerns about the City Garden earlier this year, stating that “a key risk will be the affordability of the project and its impact on the council’s finances”.
[Audit Scotland: ACC Annual Audit Plan 2011/2012 p. 10]
http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=18879&txtonly=1

The land issues are complex:

At some point Aberdeen Council will have to approve a deal transferring property rights to the Aberdeen City Garden Trust (or its equivalent). This deal would be likely to involve assigning a long-term lease, and the council have said that they will not sell the land.

There are major issues here, not least those arising from transferring what would be a property lease for public land, potentially worth millions, to a limited company.

Union Terrace Gardens lies on Common Good land and at some point the Council would have to apply to a Court of Session to allow development to take place. Additionally, there are contracts in place for the use of Union Terrace Gardens as a park. A legal document from 1871 states that the area of Union Terrace Gardens should on no account “be appropriated to any other use than that of a recreation ground for the public.”

The City Garden Project website mentions the following:

“The gardens will be run on a not for profit basis. All income will be put back into the running costs for ongoing upkeep and improvement of the gardens. The City Gardens will be able to generate income through activities held within the park; exhibitions, conferences and returns from coffee shops and restaurants.”
http://www.thecitygardenproject.com/faq.htm

I’m not a lawyer, but these issues look to be somewhat contentious. The January council meeting approved the allocation of up to £300,000 of council money to be spent on carrying out legal due diligence for the City Garden Project. The council lawyers must be very worried.

The new council make-up is not favourable to the City Garden Project:

The last council progressed the City Garden Project through its voting procedure with a comfortable majority on most occasions.

The new council looks to have an almost equal split between the ‘pros’ and the ‘antis’.
In addition, the Labour Party leading the new council administration has pledged to kill the City Garden Project.

There will be several votes to come, including a likely knock-out vote at the full Council meeting on August 22nd.

The City Garden Project will also need to survive the TIF business case approval, the development agreement and the planning submission.

This is an administration that will have other concerns. I’m told that central funding for Scottish councils is being cut by millions over the next three years, yet only 18% of the cuts have come through so far. The last thing any new administration will want is the divisive distraction of the City Garden Project and its potential to suck much-needed resources out of the council, for example the £300,000 on legal fees.

Council leader Barney Crockett is opposed to the City Garden Project. He has now been assigned as the Council representative on two bodies that support it: the City Garden Project management board and ACSEF. He will be a veritable cuckoo in what have previously been two cosy nests for the scheme.

The City Garden Project could itself be described as a cuckoo in the nest; its big yawning mouth crying to be fed with big gobbets of public money while other more deserving mouths lack succour. A hard landing beckons for this particular cuckoo.

Have your say in the comments box below. Note – All comments will be moderated.

Aberdeen’s Biggest Garden Party

Aberdeen City, Events, News No Responses »

Jun 022012

£10,000 has been awarded for a Jubilee party in Union Terrace Gardens! With thanks to Iain Richardson.

Community group Common Good Aberdeen were delighted this week to receive an award of £10,000 to support a Jubilee Tea Party on Saturday 23rd June in Aberdeen’s Union Terrace Gardens.

The money was awarded by Aberdeen City Council from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Community Fund.

“This is great news”, said Common Good Aberdeen spokesperson Dorothy Bothwell.

“We’re planning a big party for the citizens of Aberdeen on 23rd June and this money will help to make sure it’s a day to remember. We’ll have a floored marquee, live music throughout the day, a horse and carriage, refreshments and much, much more. We want to make this a big event with something for everyone”.

Local business Cafe 52 will donate food and refreshments on the day.

Common Good Aberdeen campaigns for better stewardship of Common Good land including Union Terrace Gardens. They want to see investment and sympathetic improvements in Union Terrace Gardens.

For more information, contact:

Iain Richardson on 07833 453961, or Dorothy Bothwell on 583451,
email: info@commongoodaberdeen.org,
http://commongoodaberdeen.org

Old Susannah No. 79 – The A to Z of ABZ

Aberdeen City, Satire and Humour 3 Responses »

May 312012

Voice’s Old Susannah comments on current events and enlightens us with definitions of some tricky terms with a locally topical taste. By Suzanne Kelly.

Result! I am sure we have all been dancing in the streets as our benevolent UK coalition Government has decided NOT to introduce a tax on heated Cornish Pasties! What a relief! I feel much better now about the Government writing off millions of pounds in tax owed by Vodaphone (and others). You can’t say the ConDems didn’t look after us.

And here in Aberdeen, the P&J have launched a fantastic survey proving beyond any doubt that people still want the web at all costs (well, £140 million at a minimum).

We were blitzed by hugely expensive print and radio advertising saying the web will improve our lives, make us rich, and give us thousands of permanent jobs.

We were asked to pity poor Tom Smith (of ACSEF, City Gardens Trust, etc. etc.) who the press said had been the victim of harassment and illegal spying in the run-up to the referendum. We were not allowed to examine the voting records for evidence of potential fraud (even after people joked/boasted about selling votes) – but the referendum should be obeyed at all costs.

We don’t have the actual visuals showing what the web will look like when the ramps’ security features are up – but don’t let that worry you. We don’t have either a business plan, or architectural plans, and we can’t afford it – but let’s just go ahead anyway, as that will make Sir Ian happy.

Of course Labour always said they did not want a referendum and they pointed out it is not legally binding. Labour also said that if elected they would scrap the CGP – and miraculously they got elected.

Old Susannah would like to end any ambiguity regarding issues on which public opinion matters:

Public opinion does not matter on: Loirston Loch, cuts to services for the elderly or specially abled, school closures, policing, street cleaning, community centre management, programmes for young people; Tullos Hill and its deer; common good land; Redmoss green spaces; grounds of Cove Bay FC; Don Crossings and Union Terrace Gardens improvement.

Public opinion matters on: Putting a granite web over Union Terrace Gardens and chopping down its trees

I hope that helps.

Aside from Poor Mr Milne having problems with his fans revolting and Portlethen trash accumulation, the sun shone, and people in their hundreds flocked to the FUN Beach, in order to leave litter, barbeque grilles, paddling pools and rubbish in the sand.

Old Susannah asked a guy to dispose of his empty redbull can the other day; all I can say is at least he didn’t curse me out and just ignored me instead. Here’s to the people who join the organised beach cleans, and to the people who keep places like Torrymelinos clean on their own.

Now that we’re back to our usual weather, it’s time to get on with a look at Aberdeen City Council’s internet pages and its A-Z list of services. Visiting the Aberdeen City Council website and trying to find a service? You can easily look up any information you want alphabetically.

Old Susannah takes a romp through the city’s website listings and brings you highlights :-

A is for ‘3Rs’ – (NB: I make ‘3’ starting with a ‘T’. But let’s not split hairs). This great 3R scheme sees the city doing yet more PPI-type deals in which private companies perform a service or build something (like a school) and lease it back to the City for massive sums of money. It’s as if I sold you my flat for a fraction of its value, paid you to fix it up for me, and then paid you to rent it back to me for 10 times its value. Bargain!

Most of the rest of the UK has moved away from this disastrous concept (invented in part by our dear ex-Treasurer, ex-PM Gordon Brown in order to keep debts off the books and make the financial picture look rosy). But here in the Deen, we’re still embracing it, with our ex-Lord Provost seemingly quite proud of his services to the 3Rs (3Rs stands for Readin’ Ritin’ and ‘Rhithmatic – to use the spelling taught in the new PPI outsourced schools).

B is for Bats – Normally you might expect a city council proud of its environment to tell you that bats are a unique and endangered species it is proud to have within its city limits, and that bats are protected by EU as well as national laws. But the A-Z tells you nothing of the kind. It tells you about pest control, and how much the city wants for getting rid of all sorts of critters:-

Insects £56 + VAT
Rodents [Domestic] £78.50 + VAT per course of treatment
Rodents [Commercial] £56 + VAT per visit
Bed bugs £74.50 + VAT per visit.

I suppose the difference between domestic and commercial rodents are whether or not they have ACSEF membership.

Of all the city’s money-making, nickel-and dime schemes, this one seems to be both expensive and extensively recommended, as you will see.

Aberdeen seems happy enough to scare and scatter bats in Union Terrace Gardens by allowing HMT to throw massive fireworks displays at Hogmanay. (What was wrong with the beach as a venue one wonders?) Doubtless the rangers were consulted and saw nothing wrong with lighting fireworks over UTG.

Then again they are happy to plunk a 21,000 seat stadium in an SAC at Loirston, and happily arranged for the eradication of our pesky deer. So what if bats, the peregrines,now ‘discouraged’ from their usual roost at Triple Kirks by Mr Milne, and other animals living in the park were exposed to fireworks?

We might be about the only town centre with this mix of animals anywhere in Europe, but we’ve got webs and offices to build, so let’s use subtle tactics like fireworks to get rid of our annoying wildlife. Again, using any of the tons of empty offices buildings isn’t nearly as important as ensuring construction companies can make lots of dosh. So – mind the bedbugs.

Sadly, the council omitted to say how much it charges to kill your deer.

C is for Civic Receptions – like the one we just held for the outgoing Provost. I never did get my invitation to this £4,000 tradition, which could not possibly have been cut back on. Then again, me and another independent candidate never got our passes for the vote count.

C is also for Cat – the link on the City’s website will for some strange reason take you back to the page where you can get pest control to get rid of your rodents. Hopefully our more bloodthirstier council personnel haven’t started exterminating cats just yet. (I can’t wait to get to ‘R’ to see if there is a ‘rats’ listing – but it looks so far like it is politically correct to say ‘rodent’, not ‘rat’). Note ‘C’ is also for ‘complaint’ – but doubtless no one needs to complain to the city about anything.

D is for Debt Counselling – Old Susannah is not sure she’d take financial advice from a city which hadn’t known it was over £50,000,000 in debt some years back, which had written off £11 million in bad debts in the recent past, and was cutting back on essentials but buying portraits and sending Lord Provosts off to Japan.

However, if you are a football club owner and builder who needs to know how to stop losing money when your team plays or needs help shifting ‘luxury’ flats – do feel free to use this service. D is also for ‘dog’ and ‘dog fouling’ – at least the ‘dog’ link didn’t take me to the pest control site again. As to dog fouling – as I stay in Torry, I really have no idea what this means.

E is for Earwig – yes you guessed it – which takes you back to the vermin control pricelist. Quite frankly, I would probably look in the yellow pages before I went to the City’s site for info on earwigs. Speaking of earwigging, Old Susannah is hearing some very interesting stories emerging from LibDem HQ. Can the Liberals lose any more members? Maybe it can.

E is also for Environment – Were you expecting info on air pollution, the polluted burn at East Tullos (more on that next week), EU environmental projects and protection placed on animals? Well, the link for ‘environment’ takes you to:

And what does it say about conservation areas? “Conservation areas are designated by the planning authority as being areas of special architectural or historical interest.” – so it’s only the build environment we seem to be concerned with at the council. That would explain quite a lot.

F is for Freedom of Information – yes, the council are proud to explain what your rights are, and what the law says. I cannot tell you how swiftly, accurately, completely and transparently all of my FOI requests have been answered. But do watch this space. I am expecting some more info soon – hopefully sooner than my request about property sold to Milne-related companies and contracts these companies also won from the city.

That only took a year and the Information Commissioner’s involvement. Sadly, the FOI team at the city were found to be in the wrong on five different counts on that one. Yes, F is also for five. F is also for ‘feral cats’. Yes, you have guessed correctly – the council’s website for ‘feral cats’ takes you back to the pest & vermin control site.

There must be an awful lot of killing planned for this town. Yes, F is also for fleas, flies and foxes – all of course linking to the vermin control page.

G is for ‘Green Space Audit – believe it or not, green spaces are open, usually green (! really!) spaces in and around city centres. We have a strategy. One which is supposed to …

“… provide attractive and appealing places throughout the city, particularly in those areas identified by the open space audit as low in quality. However within a context of serious financial constraint, it promotes innovative and radical ways of maintaining and managing these open spaces.”

Presumably within our serious financial constraint to manage our green heritage there is a fair amount of room for turning meadows into barren rocky hills,but no doubt Tullos will be tree-covered soon, even if it is a few months since the gorse was largely destroyed, shooting deer (and lots of other things too by the sounds of it), and especially borrowing 90 million pounds to put a granite web over a valley, and turn its earth into a stadium, with seating from the destruction of ancient trees. Yes, that’s quite a strategy.

Well, that’s enough alphabet for now. I’m going to go celebrate with a Cornish pasty, heated as hot as I can make it. Oh, and a new BrewDog prototype beer: American Saison. This delicious offering is made from leaves and berries (like the Cair No Mohr wines I adore).

Next week: more of the city’s website alphabet – and some head-scratching over the city’s wiping £26 million of debt off for the AECC. Hmmm.

Feel free to add any comments below. Note – these will be moderated.

Round And About, May 2012

Community, Information No Responses »

May 312012

Voice’s Alex Mitchell takes readers on a tour of Aberdeen offering a snapshot in time with regard to the appearance, condition and history of some of the city’s streets, features and buildings.

Saturday 19th May 2012:
The first sunny day for ages, so I left the car at Union Square and went for a wander. The handsome Archibald Simpson building (former Employment Exchange) at the north-east corner of the Market Street & Virginia Street crossroads has been stone-cleaned to useful effect. Similarly the Tivoli on Guild Street has benefited from its restoration.

More stone-cleaning is being undertaken on the Carmelite Hotel on Trinity Street. The rectangular enclosures along Carmelite Street are now filling up with shrubs.

The trees planted along both sides of Rennie’s Wynd are taking hold now and doing their bit to enhance this otherwise fairly grim length of streetscape alongside the Trinity Centre car park.

Into the Green.

The shop premises formerly occupied by Coco Violet, just east of the Back Wynd stairs, remain untenanted.

Similarly the former butcher’s shop next to Correction Wynd and the large former sportswear shop on the south side.

Café 52 seems busy, but otherwise few people to be seen at 2.30 pm on a sunny Saturday.

The south side of the Green is already in deep shade. The Green and the surrounding area are characterised by very tall buildings and narrow streets and wynds, the unfortunate effect of which is to shut out the sunlight in the afternoons, even in the summer months.

Along Hadden Street. The trees planted in the rectangular enclosures alongside the Aberdeen Market are now protected by elegant & substantial black wrought-iron tree-guards, which create a welcome impression of regularity and symmetry.

Similarly the Rox Hotel up ahead on Market Street, its 1845 Archibald Simpson premises and frontage elegantly restored.

But the Market Arms pub at the corner of Hadden Street & Stirling Street is looking very shabby these days.

Down Market Street and along Shiprow Lane.

On Shiprow itself, the Ibis Hotel and the huge office development beyond, apparently still unoccupied. The lights are on, but nobody is at home.

Across Union Street and along Broad Street. The restoration and stone-cleaning of Marischal College really show up to good effect on a sunny day and the statue of Robert Bruce is also highly effective.

The restored Marischal College has become the ‘iconic’ backdrop of choice for any TV news item about Aberdeen and it does our town credit.

Along Gallowgate. The BrewDog premises in the former Marischal Bar have become something of an institution, an unusual case of a pub actually being improved by a change of ownership.

Down Littlejohn Street, across King Street and along East North Street to the Castlehill roundabout.

We lost the Timmer Market car park some time ago, to the huge disadvantage of businesses & residents in the Castlegate, and now the East North Street car park is closed down and being redeveloped as part of the new Health & Care Village on Frederick Street.

Nobody much in the Castlegate – a clutch of alkies are disporting themselves between the Sally-Ann and the Portals Bar, not doing anything particularly exceptionable, but hardly conducive to the ambiance of this historic locale or its tourist-related potential.

Down Marischal Street – a spectacularly dilapidated shoppie just up from the bridge over Virginia Street, still with its window display from about 30 years ago. Back to Guild Street, where the forecourt of the Union Square complex seems to have become the favoured place for kids to hang out and drop litter.

Holburn Junction – the premises of the former Beluga café/bar are now occupied by a Sainsbury’s Local, directly across this end of Union Street from a Tesco Metro in the former Bank of Scotland premises.

It seems that conversion of pubs into supermarkets does not require planning permission for change-of-use, and there are a lot of redundant pubs these days.

These new small supermarkets are the one positive development in High Street shopping locales these days, being convenient of access and encouraging people to walk to their local shops and on a regular basis instead of driving to an edge-of-town superstore once a week or so.

Out the Lang Stracht to Dobbie’s Garden Centre on the western outskirts of the city. The Garden Centre incorporates a substantial retail operation including books & magazines, leisure/outerwear – frankly, most of the togs a chap needs – plus a cafė/restaurant, delicatessen, butcher, baker etc.

Garden centres have a fairly banal image, but one can see the attractions of free & accessible parking, a clean, well-maintained environment, decently-behaved customers, clean toilets – it is easy to see the appeal compared with going into town. And it’s somewhere to go in the car, and not too far away.

The danger is that Dobbie’s may be the thin end of a wedge deployed to justify further retail development, followed as surely as night follows day by proposals for residential development and inexorable urban sprawl whilst retail activity continues to drain out of the city centre.

Saturday 26th May 2012:
Brilliantly sunny weather all this week.
Left the motor in the Denburn car park and walked down past His Majesty’s Theatre, under the Denburn Viaduct and into Union Terrace Gardens – full of people, many with small children – this is one of the very few down-town locations where kids can be allowed to run about without fear of traffic.
And not an alkie or smackheid in sight.

The 78 large mature trees are looking wonderful just now. Every aspect pleases, other than that of the Triple Kirks, its crumbling tower & spire now further enhanced by unpainted wooden boarding to shut out the peregrine falcons which were nesting there until recently.

The peregrines are a top predator, indicative of a whole food chain of wildlife species below them.

Belmont Street is full of people, checking out the monthly Country Market. On the brow of Schoolhill, looking towards Marischal College, where the Mitchell Tower is now conspicuously dirty-grey and unrestored.

This view of the College has been obstructed these last 40-odd years by the jumble of concrete rubbish at the Upperkirkgate end of the St Nicholas House complex – the octagonal structure, the long-redundant Post Office and the untenanted shops. Into St Nicholas Kirkyard via Back Wynd. Clumps of bluebells between the gravestones. Lots of people enjoying the tranquillity.

The anti-social element seems to have moved to the Castlegate these days.

To the Oxfam Bookshop, the last second-hand bookshop remaining in Aberdeen, where I obtained Misha Glenny’s magisterial history of the Balkans @ £3.99.

Bookshops and record shops used to be a principal attraction of town centres and High Streets, a reason for going into town, and now they’re almost all gone. What, if anything, will replace them?

Back over Union Bridge and down through the Gardens; again, every aspect pleases – the granite balustrading, originally matching that on both sides of Union Bridge, the Tuscan-style palazzi along Union Terrace, the statues of Edward VII, a.k.a. Edward the Caresser, Rabbie Burns, Prince Albert and William Wallace, and the wonderful and truly iconic vista of His Majesty’s Theatre up there on the Viaduct.

Contributed by Alex Mitchell.

Integrity An Democracy

Creative Writing, Satire and Humour No Responses »

May 172012

By Bob Smith.

Integrity an democracy wull be lost
If the City Gairdens plans ye scrap
So says yon mannie fae Acsef
We maan pit Aiberdeen on the map
.
The chiel his hid a memory lapse
Integrity and democracy it deet
The day the public consultation vote
Wis ignored by Sir Ian an his creed
.
The lot in the coalition cooncil
Ti spik ti Widdie felt the need
Onybody wi a grain o sense
Kentiss widna dee ony gweed

Is it ta-ta ti the Granite Web?
Weel we’ll hae ti wait an hope
The Labour lot stik ti their guns
An Sir Ian Widd is left ti mope
.
The third briggie ower the River Don
Micht be fer the chap as weel
Ross Grant is noo on the cooncil
He thinks the scheme is bliddy feel
.
Integrity an democracy micht recover
In the toon twixt Don an Dee
If some cooncillors they haud faist
An ti Widdie dinna bend the knee

©Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie” 2012

Garden Wars: The Endgame Begins

Aberdeen City, Featured, Opinion 5 Responses »

May 152012

All good stories have an unexpected and dramatic twist to the tale and the thriller / horror / war story of Union Terrace Gardens is no exception. Mike Shepherd writes.

We left the saga with a public referendum having been held and a narrow majority gained for the City Garden Project.

The final count at the start of March saw glumness on both sides with nary a cheer heard; one side having lost the vote, bitter at the sledge-hammer tactics of their opponents; the other side staring at a pyrrhic victory whereby hundreds of thousands of pounds of advertising money had resulted in a narrow majority vote.

One campaigner described the result as like a football match where one side had fielded twenty players and still only won one-nil!

There was still two months to go until the council elections on May 3rd. The SNP had been privately hoping to see a majority of councillors elected so that they could form an administration without any need to seek coalition partners. The political pundits thought this unlikely but still predicted the SNP to end up as the largest group in the council. It was conjectured that the public referendum would have some influence on the vote.

The SNP had been linked to the City Garden Project not the least through Alex Salmond’s comments in support of the project during the referendum campaign. The Labour party opposed the City Garden project and pledged to scrap it if they got the chance. The other main party, the Lib Dems, were split on the issue with three councillors, Martin Greig, Jennifer Stewart and Ian Yuill having opposed Sir Ian Wood’s scheme.

Kenny Watt had provided a website giving information detailing where the candidates standing for election stood with respect to the UTG issue. He had tried contacting as many of the candidates as possible. Some who I suspected to be pro City garden project were non-committal when asked.

In spite of the referendum result, candidate endorsement for the City Garden Project was somewhat subdued in the lead up to the election. Kenny’s website was widely distributed and intended as a voting guide only.

The Council vote was a surprise to many, not least the Labour party. They found themselves with the largest number of new councillors at seventeen, ahead of the SNP. This was not quite enough to form a majority (which is 22 in a council with 43 members). They did manage to secure the agreement of the Conservatives and Independents to form a coalition.

Sir Ian Wood’s scheme is looking much less likely than it had been two months earlier

What happened? There is no doubt that local issues played a part; the proposed third Don crossing in Tillydrone and the new football stadium in Cove and Kincorth.
However, I believe the UTG controversy had a significant influence.

The Labour party saw their number of councillors increase substantially and all three Lib Dems supporting UTG were returned in spite of their party’s poor showing elsewhere.

I’ve had numerous comments from people who admit to having changed their normal voting pattern because they were so upset about what they saw as a very cynical campaign strategy by the City Garden supporters in the referendum. It looks as if the referendum result had an unexpected sting in its tail.

The Labour party, now leading the new council administration, are still committed to abandoning the City Garden Project. I make it a very slight majority of pro-UTG councillors in the new batch. Nevertheless, the political practicality is that Sir Ian Wood’s scheme is looking much less likely than it had been two months earlier.

There are several hurdles for the City Garden Project to get through before it happens, each one of which is a show-stopper if it doesn’t get the vote. The new administration has discussed organising what would essentially be a knock-out vote for the scheme. If it survives that, then there is the business case to be approved for TIF funding, the approval of a land lease and finally the planning submission itself; each separate votes.

On top of that, there will be an intent by the new administration to get on with other business and I suspect they will not want to be distracted by such a divisive issue as the City Garden Project. There will be other priorities to consider.

That’s not to say that the beast is finally dead: By no means. The rich and powerful of the land are not giving up easily.

Sir Ian Wood intends to carry on regardless and will lobby councillors individually to pursue his project. The publicly funded ACSEF have rather unwisely criticised the Labour party position and the Chamber of Commerce are joining in.

Much will be made of the public referendum result, even though the result was marginal and the campaigning by one side was totally over the top. Labour have the moral edge in that they never approved of the referendum in the first place, voting against it on the grounds that the ballot that counted was the one on May 3rd.

There will be more twists and turns to come in this saga no doubt. But at the moment, the prognosis for the City Garden Project is poor. It is of note that the Labour party are already discussing what happens following the demise of the City Garden Project. This includes the establishment of the Castlegate as a cultural centre and the possibility of instigating schemes similar to the contemporary arts centre proposed by Peacock Visual Arts over five years ago.

Local author Diane Morgan is busy writing a new book on the history of Union Terrace Gardens and hopes to finish it this summer. She has a problem. The final chapter hasn’t happened just yet.

Dear Councillors: An Open Letter Re. City Garden Project

Aberdeen City, Featured, Opinion No Responses »

May 142012

In the wake of the local council elections in which the issue of developing Union Terrace Gardens appeared to play a major role, Craig Adams was compelled to write to the newly elected council ahead of a meeting which may well determine the progress of the City Garden Project. Craig shares his letter with Aberdeen Voice readers.

Dear Councillors,

I am writing to you with regard to the upcoming vote on The City Garden Project. The issues surrounding this project have been extensively debated, and to revisit them would be a waste of an email.
I’m guessing that many of you will long ago have formed your own personal opinion on the project, whilst others will, like your constituents, remain in two minds.

Instead, this email will concentrate on issues surrounding the recent public referendum.

I am not a supporter of any particular political party. At local elections I vote solely on the credibility and apparent integrity on the individual candidates. In national elections I usually spoil my ballot paper (and make no excuses for doing so). There is no political agenda here.

Many experts are sceptical of referendums, a view that some of you no doubt share. The purpose of representative democracy is largely to ensure that the people taking the decisions have thoroughly researched the details. Few people voting in a referendum are unlikely to be as well – informed.

It’s somewhat counter-intuitive that the larger the response to a referendum, the less informed the decision is likely to be. While referendums are a necessary part of democracy they are only appropriate under certain circumstances, and must be applied with great discretion.

Referendums work best when the facts are few and the choice is simple. A divided result is not a good outcome. There also needs to be a clearly defined winning line, its position determined by the context of what is being proposed.

There were several other issues surrounding the referendum on The City Garden Project, beyond whether or not it was appropriate or conclusive. The first was the wording of the question. I recall as a teenager going shopping with my mother for a new school uniform. The trousers that she picked were unfashionable. She told me “well it’s either those or you go to school in your underpants”.

The referendum question was loaded in a similar way, in that it ignored any option for Union Terrace Gardens other than Sir Ian Wood’s desired outcome. The implication being – this or nothing. The propaganda that followed reinforced the message that Union Terrace Gardens would be left to rot unless the CGP was built. In my experience the electorate were not split into two camps as has been suggested, rather there were those who wanted:

(a) the CGP

(b) some sort of improvement

(d) UTG restored and improved or

(e) no money spent at all

You’ve doubtless encountered that same spectrum of views amongst your constituents.

The question was not a good fit for public sentiment. On the subject of Scottish independence it is claimed that minor syntactical changes could be worth a swing of 15%. While it’s debatable whether that figure is accurate, there’s no doubt that choice of wording does exert significant influence. In this case it’s not inconceivable that it exerted enough influence to alter the outcome.

The second issue concerns the fairness of the PR spend. The original consultation process was entirely about The City Garden Project. The design contest was also wholly about the CGP. Both of those exercises were orchestrated by a PR company. There’s also the whole controversy surrounding the ‘unregistered CGP campaign group'(?) who leafleted every home in the city.

Taking everything into account it’s clear that there was a substantial disparity in PR spend, and that is simply not fair. The problem with this is that it gives the wealthy and powerful the impression that PR companies can engineer referendums to produce specific outcomes, and that it boils down to a matter of risk vs. reward. Allowing that to pass without comment introduces a dangerous precedent.

Finally there is the issue around the integrity of the result. The Returning Officer has not permitted anyone to examine the marked register. While that position may comply with the specific lettering of ‘a law’, it certainly does not adhere to the spirit of The Law. This is extremely pertinent as the result was close and there is considerable contention surrounding various aspects of the voting.

For those reasons I’d like to make two basic points surrounding the referendum on The City Garden Project:

1) A referendum was not appropriate in this instance.

2) A poorly fitting, badly worded question and one-sided PR spend, resulted in an outcome that was far from conclusive.

Based on the above, and also taking into account questions over the integrity of the vote, it is clear that the course of this referendum was perverted. In my opinion, the closeness of the result, combined with disagreement over what constitutes conclusive, and the questions surrounding it’s integrity, effectively render the outcome of the referendum invalid…

…however from the result it can be inferred that the public are in favour of improving the gardens – just as they are generally in favour of regenerating the rest of the city centre, but we didn’t really need a referendum to discern that truth.

What I’m asking you to do, is to set aside the outcome of this disastrous referendum when you vote on the future of Union Terrace Gardens, and instead vote for whatever you believe is both right for this city, and truly representative of what people want. That’s why we elected you.

Walk in the Light
Craig Adams

Ten Reasons Why Gardens Referendum Is Invalid.

Aberdeen City, Featured, Opinion No Responses »

May 112012

What could have been more simple and straightforward (let alone transparent and democratic) than asking the people of Aberdeen to vote on the future of Union Terrace Gardens? Suzanne Kelly delivers her verdict.

I gladly threw myself into the work of being at the head of an official campaign organisation (my group ‘Democracy Watch’ was one of the official campaign groups with a statement in the referendum voting pack), and I naively assumed that a simple vote with straightforward rules was imminent.

Had I known then what I know now, I would instead have joined Labour and opposed the referendum. Here are some reasons why, and a bit of background.

After the referendum count, supporters of the City Garden Project celebrated their ‘victory’ with glee behind the scenes, then a few days later publically offered the proverbial olive branch to their opponents who wanted not only to retain, but improve Union Terrace Gardens.

‘We must work together to restore harmony, to improve the city’s garden and ensure economic prosperity’ is a fair summary of their position then. This clumsy attempt to paper over the cracks caused by Sir Ian’s determination to have his ‘gift’ of £50 million used to fulfil his personal desires was not working on anyone.

In online social network sites, the messages from the pro CGP camp ranged from ‘ha ha you lost’ to ‘if you don’t accept the referendum results, then it’s a case of sour grapes.’

With all due respect to Crawford Langley, the elections officer appointed to run this sorry affair, the phrase ‘making it up as you go along’ sums this referendum up for me. As an official group we were told there would be strict spending limits and a strict 300-word maximum statement. And that’s about all any of the groups were told.

Had I known from the outset, set down in black and white, any of the positions the elections officer would later adopt and what control he would or would not have over any ‘unofficial ‘groups– then I would have saved myself the bother of wasting my time.

The playing field was never level. The result – considering the vast sums which the Vote for the City Gardens Project group must have spent – was extremely close. And the established press did all the cheerleading for the CGP it possibly could have.

Here are my ten reasons why the gardens referendum is invalid:

1. Spending

It was galling enough to learn that an unofficial group – Vote for the City Gardens Project – could spend freely. (It was even more galling to learn they could make any claim they wanted with impunity – as will be shown later). But when it was discovered that ACSEF had been spending taxpayer money – at least £73,000 – for over a year to promote building in the garden, I realised that my group would never match the PR muscle of VFTCGP or ACSEF.

The £73,000 is referred to in an earlier article which can be found at: https://aberdeenvoice.com/2012/02/the-great-city-gardens-project-gravy-train/ .

ACSEF recommended various bits of “stakeholder engagement, events management, and communication…” all geared towards building over Union Terrace Gardens. And you and I footed the bills, which came to Aberdeen City Council via the Chamber of Commerce – with virtually none of the actual service providers (photographers, PR agencies, event coordinators) used being named in the invoices, with the exception of the Press & Journal, which earned several thousand pounds in advertising revenue.

Parties were held, photos taken, celebrity endorsements made – all before the referendum.

As to the Vote for the City Garden Project group, their spending must have been epic. There was the lurid full-colour glossy A3 flyer, sent not only to households in the city, but in the (non-voting) shire as well. There were radio adverts – not that we will ever find out how much was spent or who placed the ads.

We do know now that ACSEF was implicated in some of the newspaper advertising; this came about via complaints to Advertising Standards Authority about the content of the ads. But more on that later.

The other official groups were never going to afford radio, full page newspaper ads and tens of thousands of glossy brochures (let alone the pseudo newspaper, the multi-paged ‘The Granite Web’).

2. Irregularities?

In a past Aberdeen election, Crawford Langley went to the police with suspicions over dubious postal votes. However, in the referendum some 74 votes were used twice. Mr Langley explained to me that some of these people wrote on their paper votes that they had also voted electronically (though I don’t know how many).

I am unable to share his confidence that everyone who voted electronically and had a postal vote in their name was not a potential victim of vote theft. Mr Langley says that these little scrawled notes ‘negates any vote fraud’. I however have reservations about whether or not the person writing such a note was indeed the intended voter and the same person as voted on line. Since we had people who favoured the CGP ‘joking’ online about stealing votes, why not simply allow scrutiny of the votes (but this is a big issue as we will see later).

FACT: In the 2005 election Crawford Langley called in the police after six people contacted the elections unit to say they did not receive their postal vote forms.

A source who wishes to remain anonymous for a variety of reasons (not least that they wish to keep their job) raised concerns to me (in my capacity as a (fledgling) investigative journalist) of potential care-home vote issues. They believed that votes in one home were not circulated to the residents.

Crawford Langley has dismissed this possibility because the person with the concerns went to me and is remaining anonymous (as is their right). The decision was taken not to investigate any potential residential home issues. This decision does not sit well with me, my source, and other contacts of mine who have experience of residential homes, and I would have preferred to have the possibility investigated; only then could it have been dismissed.

3. They are all in this together

The overlap between members of ACSEF, the BIG Partnership PR agency’s work for the City Garden Project as well as its support for the VFTCGP entity, combined with the (then) City Council’s support of the project proceeding makes for some unholy alliances.

We have Gerry Brough working ‘as a volunteer’ on several of the city-led City Garden Project entities. We have the City Council funding ACSEF. We have ACSEF sending letters in support of the project going ahead.

For a fuller idea of who is involved with what (at least up to our elections last week), see a spread sheet which can be found at http://oldsusannahsjournal.yolasite.com/ (scroll down to the ‘UTG companies and supporters’ documents.) Note this page also has a list of the invoices referred to earlier from the Chamber of Commerce to the City for PR / events advancing the idea of building in the gardens.

4. Promise them anything

The free-spending VfTCGP’s claims were unconstrained by any standards. The Electoral Commission have written to me confirming that they have no power over materials used in local referendum situations – had I known that fact alone, I would have opposed the referendum.

Likewise the Advertising Standards Authority had no teeth. What claims did I object to? The use of the tenuous projections offered by PriceWaterhouse Cooper (who earned a nice bit of change for their work): 6,500 new permanent jobs to be created and hundreds of millions of pounds to flow into our economy.

PWC are unwilling to comment as to how their projections were used in the PR material; if they stood behind these figures, surely they would have been happy to endorse them (even if this means the granite web will create more jobs than the London 2012 Olympics by several thousand jobs). But PWC will not comment other than to say the work they did on the CGP was ‘for a private client’.

I don’t know who the private client is, but the taxpayer certainly funded at least some of the work.

5. Our press – perhaps slightly biased?

Not only were the contents of most of the Press & Journal articles I read slanted, but even the page layouts and placements of graphics were geared to supporting the project. For instance, I complained to the Press Complaints Commission about a front page story which continued on Page 3 – Page 3 carried a box labelled ‘facts and figures’ which repeated most of the PWC claims – which I consider to be fairly far from fact.

A testimonial – i.e. a photo of a girl appeared at the top right of this page, and the quote was along the lines of ‘I was against the project at first, but now that I see how many jobs will be created, I am for it’. As a former advertising agency employee, such heavy-handed tactics are well known to me. But the Press Complaints Commission decided that if someone read the entire article (as unlikely as that might be), they would eventually read that the ‘facts and figures’ presented in the box were projections.

Other examples can be found here and there of press bias. One could be forgiven for wondering if the local press were keen to please some of their biggest advertisers over the CGP, whether consciously or not.

6. OOPS! Misprints and gremlins

The voting packs contained booklets – 165,000 booklets were printed and distributed – containing the 300 word statements from the official campaign groups, both for and against the granite web. Sadly, and wholly mysteriously, the Green Party content was truncated and stopped in mid flow.

How a massive print run of an extremely short booklet went to print without being proofread for such errors is inexplicable to me. I believe the Green Party did get an apology. Still what would the voters have thought? That the Greens didn’t have a fully-thought-out scheme was one possibility.

I was likewise not amused to learn that online my statement at one point ran seamlessly into the rantings of one of the more vocal proponents. I was alerted to this by people getting in touch to ask if I had somehow changed my opinion on the garden. This error was apparently rectified. How many people saw it, I do not know. Mr Langley again took the position with me that since I was the only person who got in touch with him, I was the only person who noticed. I would not have known about it at all if supporters had not brought it to my attention.

He also felt that it would have been seen only by people voting online who would already have a printed copy of the statements in their hands. Hmm. My position is that most people who choose to communicate electronically would be reading the electronic documentation not the booklet – and if they relied on the booklet, then they only got half of the Green position anyway.

My overall feeling is that errors were made which were rather large and which could have been avoided by a bit of diligence. In my experience if errors occur in one part of a project, you can bet they exist elsewhere.

The next two reasons are particularly worrying…..

7. Going Postal

I deliberately asked supporters of my position to vote via the post so they could keep a record of their slip (I suggested people photocopy their vote and keep the copy for their records). For some reason, there are -somewhere in the City offices – votes which arrived too late to be counted, even though they were there on the day.

My source says ‘tons’ of them arrived ‘too late’. When I last heard these votes were still in store somewhere. Mr Langley advises that it was the voters’ responsibility to ensure that the votes arrived on time, and some 300 arrived too late.

Sadly, there are always issues with the post when it comes to the city council. It claims to have sent me letters I never got. It likewise has apparently never received items I posted. For instance I hand-delivered 63 postcards opposing the Tullos Hill deer cull: Ms Watts wrote after the fact she received a total of 35 such cards, even though other people handed cards in and others still posted cards.

At the time I am writing this article, May 9, I still have not received passes sent to me to attend last Thursday’s vote count. Something is wrong somewhere.

Did the referendum votes arrive at the building the night before? How many times per day does post get delivered to the City? Who brings post to the recipients? The more people in this chain, the more essential to ensure the referendum votes were proactively sought and collected. Whether or not this happened I do not know. I am sure that the election officers posted my passes for last Thursday’s count in good time for them to arrive, and it was their responsibility to get passes to me. However, just as for referendum voters, something went wrong somewhere.

8. Top Secret – the Marked Register

No one but Crawford can examine the Marked Register of votes. Crawford is absolutely certain this would be ‘illegal’ for the referendum, although this scrutiny is standard practice for elections.

We campaigners only found out after the fact that we would not have the chance to look for unusual voting patterns, clusters, or evidence of fraud (see above). If there was no transparency and this was somewhere communicated to me early in the process I failed to see it.

If I had known in advance that I’d have no check over how the count went, I would have again opposed the referendum. It looks as if I will never be able to determine if there were any unusual clusters of votes at residential homes, or elsewhere.

Langley’s position is that it is illegal for him to give access in terms of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 2001. Other experienced politicians and campaigners with legal qualifications take a different position.

9. Dirty Tricks?

The Press & Journal front page article concerning Tom Smith implied that people opposed to the City Garden Project had harassed him and his family and acted illegally – specifically by hacking into his email. At the time of writing I am unaware of any prosecution arising out of this allegation.

I will be doing a FOI request to the police (now that I am done with the election and have enough time to do so). Mr Smith is involved in many pro CGP entities, and has much to gain by the project proceeding. His complaint to police over harassment, email hacking and so on – came close to the voting time, and gathered a great deal of sympathy. To me the press article mixed legal and illegal activities to paint a portrait of a devious, law-breaking pro-retain camp.

10. Spoilt Rotten?

I know that a large number of votes were deemed by the election officer to be ‘spoilt’ – this was because people wrote on their ballot papers. According to people present at the count, many of these seem to be from ‘retain’ voters, who wrote comments on their slips.

In an election the instructions clearly say not to make any other mark on your ballot. The referendum instructions DID NOT have this instruction. Apparently voters and campaigners were supposed to instinctively know that the referendum was different from an election in many important ways – but not this way.

Then again, if they have not been destroyed, somewhere in the hands of a private entity (as I understand it) are the results of the public vote on the 6 shortlisted designs. It is a well-known fact that many people who went to the design show wrote on the voting slips to show that they wanted the gardens left alone.

We wanted the figures and information from this shortlist vote released to the public – the public paid for it after all. However, these private individuals refuse to release the results. These same people now seem to be the same ones arguing that to ignore the referendum would be ‘undemocratic’.

Democracy? I don’t think so

On May 9, 2012 ACSEF issued a statement in the wake of Labour’s election success to the effect that ignoring the referendum would be ‘undemocratic’. In this case of the pot calling a press conference to call the kettle black, ACSEF coyly ignores its unelected status, its PR tactics and its blatant lobbying – done at taxpayer expense.

There is no doubt in my mind that ACSEF members have pulled out all the stops to further the City Gardens Project scheme. The question is – will Labour do the right thing and pull the plug on this self-serving quango? One can only hope there is a referendum on ACSEF’s future – now that would be democratic.

So – at the end of the day I personally find the referendum exercise invalidated. The other side has ignored public opinion over the garden before. Thankfully, the election has now returned a council which just may save our garden, our trees (which clean our air), and our money in its millions. Here’s hoping so.

Older Entries Newer Entries