Friday 24 June 2011

IF IT AINT BROKE, BREAK IT.

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"Eff you Gideon. I am withdrawing demand from the economy because of your inflexible high VAT policy. I'm going into town for lunch. But I'VE MADE MY OWN SANDWICHES!
"And I've got a flask."

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http://thecitygardenproject.com/background.asp

The City Garden Project proposes to radically transform a strategic central location by raising the inaccessible, under-used Union Terrace Gardens 


http://thecitygardenproject.com/background.asp

The City Garden Project has been spear-headed by ACSEF following the announcement by Sir Ian Wood in November 2008 that he would pledge £50 million towards a transformational scheme to redevelop Union Terrace Gardens and the Denburn Valley. Similar transformational schemes have been considered by the city before but have failed due to a lack of private sector funding.

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http://thecitygardenproject.com/funding.asp

The City Garden Project will cost around £140 million.
It is anticipated that half the money will come from the private sector and half from an innovative funding mechanism known as Tax Incremental Finance (TIF).

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TIF was devised in the US, where it has been hugely popular with cities as a tool that has enabled them to tackle urban blight. The key benefit of the scheme is that it enables local authorities to raise finance to fund the critical infrastructure needed to get major regeneration schemes of the ground.

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The letter sent by Mayor Menino identified these issues clearly and in a colorful way. Mayor Menino speaks for all urban residents when he writes, “Let’s be clear about what blight means. It’s not just about aesthetics, though it certainly scars an urban environment. Blight kills jobs by destroying an area’s appeal to businesses and customers. It destroys a neighborhood’s residential appeal. It drives property values down, and it promotes crime. The notion that you would purposefully cause this to occur–not due to financing difficulties or other problems beyond your control, but as an intentional cynical ploy to extract concessions from the public sector–is inexcusable.”




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Wednesday 22 June 2011

The Briefing



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http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=10100
http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=2813
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IMPACT
The Single Outcome Agreement and Community Plan outline
a vision for Aberdeen City which is welcoming to business (National
Outcome 1) and Vibrant, Dynamic and ForwardingLooking.
The proposals in this report contribute to this ambition and help to create the conditions necessary for the delivery of the Aberdeen Cityand Shire Economic Future’s ‘Building on Energy- An EconomicManifesto for Aberdeen City and Shire’ strategic vision of “Aberdeen City and Shire to be recognised as one of the most robust and resilient economies in Europe with a reputation for opportunity, enterprise and inventiveness that will attract and retain world-class talent of all ages”.
There are also linkages to the Economic Development theme of Vibrant Dynamic and Forward Looking through ensuring the sustainable development of the Aberdeen City and Shire economy and the pursuit of opportunities for regeneration and development shared with the City
Regeneration Strategy, and thus a positive impact is anticipated in terms of the Equalities and Human Rights Impact Assessment.

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Within this backdrop, the City Development Company would seek to remediate pockets of ‘market failure’ within the City region, and to not only contribute to the sustainable ‘macro’ economic future of the area, but to facilitate with partners the capturing of value for targeted beneficiaries within a charitable / regeneration role.


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Hello?
Is this on? Can everyone hear me OK? Yes - good.
Ahem.

All cleared print ID? Yes. If you could leave all your mobile gadgets - cameras, body-mounted vid-capture devices, smartcells, enhanced biros etcetera with Judy at the thumb-print-in desk please. And step through the magnetoarch... nobody got an old-fashioned metallic hip replacement - ha ha - no? Good. Thanks.

Everybody through OK? No anomalous readings, Judy? No? Good. If you could all find a seat - is there enough room? The room is quite small, em... sorry about that, but the EM suppression means that it has to be. Everyone got a seat now? Good, we can start...



Good afternoon everyone.


Colleagues, on behalf of us all at the Trans-Conjectural Proposals Instigation Trust thank you for taking the time out of your energetic schedules to attend this brief stakeholder update presentation at this key watershed time for our iconic project. And yes, welcome along today to the splendid white-room facilities of the Querulant Suite at this new Idée Fixe Conference Centre. We thank our hosts for the provision of these splendid facilities, not only for this windowless and unrecordable environment - just the thing! - but also for their reasonably-priced and exemplary underground car-park with its innovative numberplate and face-recognition technology demonstrator. All got your PINcards? Some of you have the subcutaneous upgrades, eh? Heh-heh. Good. Shouldn't talk too much about car-parks, though.

To business...

You'll all be familiar with the surprisingly rapid progress of our most recent Trans-Conjectural Proposal which has advanced in an inspirational and iconic fashion. Now is the time for us to transform this project into what we can now call a Global Trans-Conjectural Context-Framing Opportunity. To deliver this transformative, em, transformation, we have developed a delivery plan which will champion and shepherd this agenda. Stepping up to the plate on an interlinked basis, this plan is assured of delivering the appearance of three-hundred-and-sixty degree participation models within our context.

Our overarching management strategy will be driving forward our key activity delivery and measurement plan. The delivery plan will be in the form of an inspirational yet logical legal-entity action-plan vehicle which progresses up-front objectives emerging through this unique window of opportunity towards the delivery of our most ambitious and foremost logical key priorities. It safeguards the potential for a distinct opinionscaping context-framing outlook and will greenlight fund-channeling linkages into an entirely new dynamic.

A strategically central numbers game will provide a fundamental plank to access innovative fund sources underpinned by this transformational drive to manage ownership and own management of this delivery plan. This development strategy is shared by key players and the uplift provided by the delivery plan mechanism is central to its delivery; it will unlock a more attractive, safer and better connected win-win managementscape and target-rich investmentscape for the key stakeholders here today.

And so contracts for community engagement initiatives will soon be in place, delivering on a range of public-relations improvements under the auspices of our best-practice masterplan which we outlined at the last presentation. These new community engagement contracts will provide us with the ideal public-realm participation management solution for the provision of the required consent-manufacturing services via this special purpose vehicle. In due course, this special purpose vehicle will be enhanced and reinvigourated. This is expected to be fully available and framework-compliant within the context-framing consent-manufacturing mindscape which we have already achieved, all the while maximising shareholder value... Oh! Thank-you, no... em... yes, thank-you. Applause isn't necessary - no, ha-ha! Thanks.

...Where was I? Ah yes... The continual securing of this self-referencing self-certified procedural approval feedback mechanism will unlock further yet imaginative, bigger, brighter and iconic leadership obscurantism. This opportunity to shape the future with self-referencing enriched vitality is truly strategic, truly innovative and the radical transformation will not only provide fascinating narcissistic appeal within our own little circle of friends - ha ha - but also wider heritage compliance lipservice services outwith it. Inspirational inclusion misdirection initiatives when appropriate via incremental rearward-facing commitments once progressed will create the appearance of a real iconic international buzz.

In conclusion, then, when we look back on what has been achieved so far in the shaping of the civic mindscape, the manipulation of the investment opportunityscape and the creation of a public opinionscape which is largely characterised by confusion if not ennui, we can look back on an approach - a resource - which we will continue to leverage towards the achievement of ever more enhanced shareholder value and stakeholder satisfaction. So long as key deliverables are progressed in accordance with opportunities within the supply chain to anchor our central objectives with respect to this clear strategy, our established undertaking of prioritising strategy themes and status updates will continue towards the feedback-enabled enhancement of project engagement resources. This provides both measurable internal accountability and vital external obfuscation services.

The vision for this exciting journey is an innovative yet highly robust process which every stakeholder here will enjoy participating in. Every stakeholder here today is part of the process. The process is the future and the future is the process. We are the future. This is a very real possibility. It is within our grasp, we are nearly there. With your continued support and with the compliance and consent we have already engineered, rates of return much higher than those available in any other investmentscape will be assured. Thank you all.

...Ha-ha, thanks, yes, thank-you. Too kind... too kind. Thanks.

...Thank you for your time today. Questions will not be necessary. And now I think Judy's got some special drinks and nibbles ready for us in the Dependency Suite... if you'd like to go through... please... thanks...

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A version of this piece first appeared in the Aberdeen Voice citizen journalism online news and information source on 20 May, 2011.

Tuesday 21 June 2011

NTHNTF



In the flat bottom of the broad valley of the Ruthrieston Burn, between Garthdee and Morningside, lies an old fashioned public playing field. Overlooked by two or three blocks of recently-refurbished tenements on one side and the disused railway line on the other, the full-sized football pitch is complemented by a kiddies playground with swings, a chute and the like. The old railway line, trackbed now tarmac, is today a major commuter route for cyclists and an evening stroll for dogwalkers. But no-one ever uses the football pitch for football. Once muddy six yard box now tussock heavy grass. No nets are ever strung from these corroding municipal goalposts. The bar has fallen rusted broken from its supports at the east end of the pitch. Last week we noticed that now even the posts are gone. A football pitch with only one goal.

Just a little further down that same valley, high fenced and high-tech locked £35-a-match astroturf football pitches for rent are high-energy blue mercury-arc lit at all times to a certain level of brightness. The CCTV system which operates primarily as surveillance of the adjacent ASDA car-park provides the security footprint. Shipping containers double as changing facilities and equipment lockers, raising in our minds the questions: Just what exactly is the nature of the commodity being freighted? By who's agency is this freight being consigned, and to whom is it being delivered?


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ABERDEEN CITIZEN
"BEST free newspaper in Scotland"

MATCHES AIM TO KICK OUT BAD BEHAVIOUR

A NEW scheme has kicked off in an Aberdeen community in a bid to cut antisocial behaviour. Grampian Police are running football matches in the evenings for youngsters in Garthdee. The initiative, being run in conjunction with ASDA Garthdee, hopes to slash problems caused by youths.

ASGA general manager, said: "ASDA Bridge of Dee is delighted to be giving youths the opportunity to participate in regular football matches."

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"This election Communication printed and published on behalf of Gordon Townson"


SNP DELIVERING FOR GARTHDEE


There is a council by-election taking place on 23 June in the Garthdee ward. The SNP candidate is Gordon Townson. As a former police officer with 30 years experience, Gordon has worked as a community officer and education liaison officer.


A former chairman of Grampian Police Diced Cap Charitable Trust, he currently coordinates the Jasmine Charity Challenge, working with several schools across the region, bringing schools, charities, and businesses together to help young people maximise their potential through career opportunities.


Gordon has a wealth of life experience and is well placed to serve your area with enthusiasm and integrity. He will work hard for his constituents if you elect him on 23 June.


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Grampian Police has been gifted a new pint-sized patrol car.

The fuel-efficient Chevrolet Spark - the smallest in the force fleet - has been paid for by Belmont Chevrolet and Aberdeen-based Prosource.IT.

Now the car – the first to carry the "Local Policing. Closer to you" logo – will be used as part of a cost efficiency drive by officers of the divisional Mobile Support Unit (MSU)

Aberdeen Division Chief Inspector George MacDonald said: "I would like to thank Belmont Chevrolet and Prosource IT for their generosity."

Belmont Chevrolet Aberdeen sales manager Mark Stevenson said: "The Chevrolet Spark has a low vehicle excise band of £35 per year and a combined urban fuel consumption of 55.4mpg. This makes it a cost effective motoring platform. With its punchy engine and manoeuvrability it's ideal for use as an urban commuter vehicle. Belmont and Chevrolet are delighted to support Grampian Police and we feel this is an excellent example of the Chevrolet Spark igniting its appeal to our communities for cost effective motoring."

Prosource.IT director Alan Cowie added: "We're an award-winning global company headquartered in Aberdeen. We decided to put our money where our mouth is by supporting our local community in this innovative way. We see this partnership as an extension of our business principles and are delighted to support Grampian Police."

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http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/scots-film-on-trump-resort-ignites-anger-1.1106366


A BITTER row has broken out over a documentary film on the building of Donald Trump’s controversial new £750 million golf course and resort near Aberdeen. The film, which includes footage of Baxter’s arrest, is very critical of the behaviour of the Trump organisation, the economic and environmental planning of the golf course, Scottish reaction to it and Grampian Police’s apparent determination to defend Trump’s interests.


“Water and power is cut off, land disputes erupt, and some residents have thousands of tonnes of earth piled up next to their homes,” the storyline runs. “Complaints go ignored by the police, who instead arrest the film’s director, Anthony Baxter."


Baxter said he was particularly concerned by the role of Grampian Police. Within half-an-hour of interviewing one of Trump’s employees he claims he was put up against a car, handcuffed, taken away, had DNA and fingerprints taken and equipment and footage confiscated.


“After all this I am supposed to think the police are impartial. I call on them to make an apology.”


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O'Connor who is president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (Asps) said:

"The election is over, the new Scottish Government is in place, and now is the time to get down to business. I hope we will see an end to the negativity and scaremongering in the debate on the future of Scottish policing."

O`Connor added:

"The majority of Asps members support a single force. Even with significantly enhanced collaboration between the existing eight forces, the service is not sustainable. Similarly, we do not believe that moving to a rationalised regional model would deliver the level of savings and improved outcomes that would be available in a single service. More importantly, if we are going to change we should do it only once. We do not want the cheapest service, we want the best."

O'Connor’s final pitch was:

"A single police service would mean that policing would be directed nationally, but delivered locally."
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1 COMMENTS:
Anonymous said...
I agree with your narrative all things being equal. Although to balance the proposal this will be more centralisation of a potential malicious police-state in what is already a covert police-state.
Where will the checks and balances sit in this? Freemasons? Jesuits? Bankers? Who will wander onto these [local and national] boards? Common Purpose graduates?

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Monday 20 June 2011

Denburn Dérive #00 PROLOGUE



Up and down Ferryhill pushing the clock to make the appointment with my collaborator. London train rumbling overhead - noisy through the alarming crack in the viaduct arch, the strain gauges the filth. Rainshowers patrol the horizons, darkening out to sea and orbiting our basin-bound town. Will we get wet today? But for now, sun breaks through and provokes a little sheen of sweat - sunglasses on I'm in too much of a hurry to be lingering and photographing all these edges, but I can't help myself. The weather is on the same edge as the transformed and re-transforming littoral of these flatlands between re-routed river and the harbour, this mudflat where once the Denburn and Backburn of Ferryhill mingled their braided way to the mightier estuary beyond and the sea.

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Palmerston who bought his way into Parliament, and who opposed any extension of the franchise to the urban working class, posthumously awarded his own One Way Street with Rotten Dyke
John Aberdein
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Hydroponic supplies and consumables for the cultivators of certain giggly crops snuggle cocking a snook under the slime-filthy arches of Palmerston Road at the site of stalled comprehensive redevelopment on the Denburn estuary flatlands.
Once hailed by the local authority as an exciting, emerging, dynamic new business district south of the city centre, development work here is stalled. Freedom House has been built and occupied, Pilgrim House remains a vacant lot of rubble and estuarine sand. Ready for occupation Summer 2009. The economic crisis made a liar of the developer's billboard - just as on the TV news every weekday we see and hear (and feel) the cognitive dissonant stress of special economic correspondents as they struggle to find a way to tell the tea-time massed prolity: the dawning realisation that a return to growth may not actually be feasible.

Half demolished fish smokehouses remain in a stand-off with the abandoned demolition-man's bulldozer. The anodized aluminium clad high-tech HQ of the local development corporation is gullshit streaked, neighbouring as it does the fish-packers' brick sheds with their robust business model stubborn - no spreadsheet-misdirected finance capital required. No lease-out real-estate capital leverage buy-back vehicle. Just boxed fish from the harbour; finance capital for real-estate bets might have dried up, but we all must still eat. Fishy industry half-here half-away; pencilneck suited and booted spreadsheet wranglers half-arrived. An electric tension discharges in the arc between the now and the then, and between the then and the future. That rapidly receding future juxtaposed with a past that isn't compatible with the new aspiration.


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It is morning in Rubislaw Den, Aberdeen's most prosperous neighbourhood. The sumptuous, granite-faced villas erected by the Victorian shipbuilders and mill barons who made this corner of Scotland rich more than a century ago, rise up and down the tree-lined streets. In the surrounding parkland, deer graze and kingfishers swoop. All is quiet, apart from the occasional crunch of tyres on gravel as Bentleys and Lamborghinis bearing personalised number plates slip out of double-gated driveways to convey their owners to work, or ferry spouses to another day of retail therapy in the city centre.

It might stick in the craw of those living elsewhere in the UK to see wealth being so conspicuously flaunted in Aberdeen's West End – battling as they are to cope with a 35 per cent hike in gas bills or the cost of filling a fuel tank – but here, in the backyard of Europe's high-powered oil and gas executives, the latest round of soaring world energy prices are helping the industry reap rewards unseen since the boom days of the 1970s.

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Aberdeen - widely thought to be the town the credit crunch forgot - but the now-stalled development tells us otherwise. High oil prices have kept the debt-wolf from the door for a while, but Aberdeen is the dead man walking - and those walking the concourses of its amerimall shopping centres are its zombies.

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Fred Magdoff and Michael D Yates
The ABCs of the Economic Crisis

A working person toiling away on an automobile assembly line or in a restaurant kitchen must have found it difficult to understand how the bankers and brokers who have brought the economy to its knees made so much money simply by selling pieces of paper. When workers make cars, houses or meals, and when farmers produce food, they are producing something that people need and can use. But those who sell complex financial instruments don't produce anything tangible at all. Something doesn't seem right about making money without producing a useful good or service. And indeed, no society can survive if the only economic activity - or even the dominant activity - is lending and borrowing money. The same can be said for buying already-made things at one price and selling them at a higher price. If the only economic activity is merchant trade, everyone will soon die because nothing is being produced.
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I've arranged to meet my collaborator in Union Square. Thinking that perhaps it would be ironic for us to start our collaberation there, at the sight of consumer capitalism's highest form - on the northern edge of its imperial reach - Aberdeen's newest shopping and leisure destination is, maybe, too big a bite to chew in one.

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Unfinished short story

One of the many things which troubled him was the standard of product which was available from many of the retail outlets in The New Centre. It was a kind of inside out transaction, he thought. The appearance of sumptuous luxury and opulent prestige telegraphed by the surroundings was belied by the lack of choice and just-about-OK quality of the goods on offer. He sighed. He knew that this was the way of things; that the act of retail - the consumerist consummation, was now almost entirely about the experience of shopping itself. Products, once purchased, became almost irrelevant as the unsatisfiable shimmering simmering need to buy more grasped the shopper and promptly propelled him or her through the doors of the next shop along. Inside out. Like the centre itself; concrete multi-level carpark and aluminium clad shed from most exterior views but the interior veneered with brass and oak, marble and crystal glass. He understood the need for the constant renewal of businesses - the creative destruction at the heart of capitalism - "all that is solid melts into air". He appreciated the reasons for consumers' constant craving for novelty. At the heart of the human condition was the need to seek out new delights; that was hard-wired into the brains of the nomadic hunter-gatherers which we had been until only ten millenia earlier - a mere eyeblink in the full sweeping arc of human evolution. Biologically and psychologically we remained hunter-gatherers, and that heritage was best and fully both expressed in and exploited by The New Centre.

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Past the road-freight loading bay of the new shopping mall which is in the same space as once occupied by a railhead freight terminal which operated fully integrated with the sea-port beyond, I arrive inside the surveillance footprint of the mall's security zone. The cycle racks once trumpeted as evidence of the mall management's committtment to sustainability now exclusively occupied by large-engine-capacity motorbikes. An automatic door and I'm inside the conditioned environment, the mediated experience of the mall. In sharp contrast to the deserted and desolated streets outside, the mall's marble veneered ersatz street is crammed with people. Their contemporary fashion uniforms instantly let me know what sort of people they are - or, more accurately, what their favorite TV programmes are.

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She teamed the stripy socks and black gymshoes with the flowery dress because one of the fat girls on that American high-school singalong show did the same - so it's OK to be bigger these days - it must be, or those girls wouldn't be on the TV. It's all about messages, you know. Her whole life is one of messages, her branded possessions are laden with messages. Her car is marque "x" which says "y" about her. She reckons it says "y" about her, 'cos the advert and the carsalesman (her great annual friend - he's so flirty!) implied heavily that it would. It also lets everyone know what her paygrade is. That's very important. By the badges of their cars they keep their scores in the hierarchies.


All these things are signifiers of 'her', but, although she exercised the final and one true freedom of consumer choice, she did not truly choose them - rather they were chosen for her; they chose her. Unheedingly she spins the hamsterwheel on the neverending upgrade cycle. Surely the next upgrade iteration of her chosen phone and car or gamesconsole and kitchen appliance or laptop and holiday package or tv broadcasting standard; whatever will be the one which will make her life complete! She doesn't care that the upgrade cycle has effectively rendered the ownership of her possessions merely short term leases towards planned obsolescence - that's OK! The subscription model embraces and guides her towards a future on the upgrade path, the roadmap to forever, the added functionality, the software/hardware nexus. Mobile phone teleco business models lead the way to the free provision of hardware in return for a monthly subscription fee. The more she pays, the quicker she gets upgraded to newer more functional flashier hardware which she displays visibly to the chagrin of her inferiors in the lounge bar restaurant leisure and retail destination.


Does it trouble her that, seen from the other end of the telescope, she is in fact the product which has been manufactured conditioned moulded and finalised by her own agency; compliant vacuous consumption of advertising media (the adverts are sometimes better than the programmes!). The living room was the factory - the product being manufactured was she. She has been told what to want, told when to want it, but never told why. A pre-indebted fully conditioned compliant producer-consumer, her contract is negotiable. She is the 'installed base' to which the providers must continually 'upsell'. Her eyes are the eyes delivered to the advertisers by her media provider. Her subscription is the unarguably certain future revenue upon which the media providers base their corporate profitability forecasts as they strategise and organise: the world and its minds being theirs to homogenise.


So does it trouble her? Sometimes she wonders - is this all there is? Sometimes the shadow of the beginning of knowledge flits darkening across her consciousness, but usually, she's too distracted, too put upon, too tired to entertain these thoughts. Does it trouble her? No, she's too busy at work: crushed by the unhuman commute, enriching far-off faceless shareholders by her toils. That is when she's not going through the motions with displacement activity and clock-watching till 5 o'clock and the tea-time glass of wine (or two or three) which she's convinced herself that she deserves; digging ever deeper into the easy-credit overdraft of ersatz happiness and good cheer from the bank of Boozy Britain. Then an exhausted evening slumped in front of the plasma, ready-meal in one hand, balloon goblet of pinot grigio in the other; conditioned by advertising-funded broadcasting to be a good consumer - a commercial commodity, bought, sold and delivered gift-wrapped to the corporations; endentured, bonded, enslaved by the upgrade cycle. Then the same again tomorrow.


Ah, but retail therapy on a Saturday morning! "This is the highlight of my week" she can be heard saying to her companions, only just a little too loudly.

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Outside the mall I saw the rump of a fishing-industry food sector, clinging on against the tide of valueless vague papershuffling make-work, so inside the mall I'm momentarily disgusted and disorientated by by the food-chain inversion implied by the foot-skin nibbling-fish stall in the centre of the concourse. I look away retching, my consciousness is diverted elsewhere and I percieve a psychogeograpical fault-line. Who else has allowed themselves to notice that two security guards - one of them very short, but with a hollow-eyed "don't fuck with me" look in his hard-life face and a tight-wound flick-knife potential to his bearing - have four or five boys lined up against the hoarding of an unoccupied shop unit? Apart from one, who is clearly much older, the boys look like brothers - they've all got the same haircut and are graded in height. All are wearing similarly hand-down cheap unbranded sportswear and trainers. They know what's next - the best they can hope for is summary ejection from the mall. They just don't fit here, you see.

And now across the crowd, I can see my collaborator - psychogeographer Lewis Dryburgh - man with détournement on his mind. We've arranged to meet today for a dérive up the valley of the Denburn from its outfall into the Upper Dock of the harbour. He's leaning against a pillar and putting his phone back in his pocket. I wave at him as my own phone thrums and toots - a text from Lewis. I'm late - but only by 5 minutes. We greet each other and make a start...

So, in search of an ancient watercourse, we head off towards the Upper Dock, through the new bus and coach terminal which is aesthetically very similar to (but planographically opposite from) the roadfreight loading bay at the other end of the shopping mall. "Welcome to Aberdeen!" But which is the true freight of this mall? In which direction does this building cause value to flow?


Thursday 16 June 2011

March Stones 52 to 54 ABD. Woodside and Hilton


Confirmed in his Great Charter of 1319 (an ancient document which founded the real-estate and political power regime which prevails over the polity in Aberdeen to this day), in 1315 Robert the Bruce endowed the Burgesses of Aberdeen with a huge estate of land - The Freedom Lands. The medieval burgesses were a powerful group of men: police and army and lawmaking body and local authority all rolled into one, With a royal mandate behind them, their monopoly on force enabled them to enforce a monopoly on trade. They were the burgh. How our concept of freedom has changed.

The extent of this "gift" of land (which required an annual rent to be paid to the crown) can be seen around Aberdeen today. Often mistaken for milestones, the engraved numbered stelae which lie hidden in plain view around Aberdeen mark the boundary between the gifted estate and the hinterland beyond - Kincardine to the south, Mar to the west and Buchan to the North. Bruce had occupied Aberdeen in 1307 and 1308 while he laid waste to a large part of that hinterland.

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http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/01/march-stones-37-to-39-abd.html

The Harrying of Buchan was a devastating event for this area, characterised by its (surprisingly modern) ruthlessly systematic nature. This was a policy, managed and executed with businesslike efficency; entire towns like Ellon were completely eradicated, livestock and crops were burned in the fields, infrastructure was dismantled and dissipated. Some historians say that so complete was the destruction that the innate and potential wealth of Buchan was damaged for centuries after. A terrible and exceptional act of vengeful spite, unparalleled in these islands before or since.

Small wonder the Aberdonians cowered and offered Bruce whatever he wanted. The fearful and pusillanimous capitulation of Aberdeen's burghers (who had been loyal to the English crown until the pogrom in the hinterland) no doubt, in time, pricked Bruces' conscience and lead to his eventual largesse. According to the Aberdeen City and Shire website, the ordinary people of Aberdeen also "furnished" Bruce with "large supplies" of cash, food and other goods. Under what levels of terror and sword-edge compulsion was this "furnishing" obliged?


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Pylon

Stela
The boundary markers are know as March Stones ("march" being the Old Scots word for "boundary"). Between March Stones 49 and 51 we traversed a psychogeography of loss: a loss of social justice; a loss of workers' lives and dignity; the loss of industry and the loss of the independent burgh of Woodside. This time we climb Rosehill, following the line of the boundary between the present-day areas of Woodside and Hilton. The housing in this part of Hilton is partly characterised by doorways resembling ancient Egyptian temple pylons.

The boundary stone marked "52 ABD" is tucked up against a wall and fence at the back of the pavement on the north side of Smithfield Road, just up the hill from its junction with Clifton Road. As we walk up the steep hill, we notice that the boundary describes a narrowish tongue of land descending to the river Don at Scatterburn, then sharp back uphill, leaving Woodside outwith the boundary.

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http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/19997/details/aberdeen+hilton+lang+stane/



A free-standing block of granite, c.9 to 10 feet in height, which Dr Simpson believes to be a Bronze Age standing stone. It now stands in the grounds of Hilton School and may have been moved when the school was built (Anon 1949), but if so it was replaced in its original position (information from Dr W Douglas Simpson, Librarian, Aberdeen University). Anon 1949.
Visited by OS (JLD) 10 September 1952.

This standing stone is situated on a gentle ENE-facing slope at an altitude of about 80m OD. It stands within a school playground at adjacent to the gates onto Hilton Drive.
(Newspaper reference cited).
NMRS, MS/712/83, visited 11 January 1991.

This large granite standing stone, which until recently stood within the grounds of Hilton School, now forms a landscape feature in a new housing development. It measures about 1.5m in breadth by 0.9m in thickness at ground-level and 2.95m in height, and its broad face is aligned WNW and ESE. A scar on its SSW corner suggests that the top of the stone has been broken off.
The stone, which is enclosed by narrow iron railings set on a circular plinth, is depicted on both the 1st and 2nd editions of the OS 6-inch map (Aberdeenshire, 1869, sheet lxxv; 1902, lxxv.NW).
Visited by RCAHMS (JRS), 19 June 2002.


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/////////


Across the curiously quiet Hilton Drive from the Lang Sane, boundary stone 53 ABD is integrated into the pavement outside a corner shop. It has an Ordnance Survey benchmark rivet embedded in its face. The views down Hilton Road towards the mouth of the River Don and the North Sea have made the ascent so far up from the river worthwhile. But there's a good bit more climbing still to come.

Half-a-kilometer away we can hear the continual traffic rumble and swish of Anderson Drive, all the more audible since the removal last year of the verge-side shrubbery which had acoustically shielded residential areas from the carriageways since the 1960's. The line of the March Stone boundary draws us up Hilton Road between the the three hectares of open space at Stewart Park and the abandoned Rosehill Quarry which mirrors it opposite. Again, the area is curiously quiet. No-one plays the all-weather tennis courts, no-cricketers in the Victorian pavilion by the oval. No children kick footballs on the grassy extents of the park; a philantrhopic gift from the widow of a Woodside merchant. Other than us, only those handful walking their dogs give themselves the permission to be out in the air, walking in the neat park and wild overgrown abandoned quarry.


oooooooooo



Presented to the park by the Captain
of the Arctic whaler "Benbow" in 1903


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/03/21/100828/-Brain-Dead-Molybdenum-and-Whale-Oil-tell-our-sorry-tale

In order to obtain historical evidence for price trends, one needs to examine a case where a non-recyclable resource went through a complete Hubbert cycle worldwide. There are no previous examples of a mineral resource that has done so. In fact, crude oil may turn out to be the first, which incidentally may be one of the reasons why the concept of "peak oil" is so difficult for many people to grasp.

A resource does not need to be a mineral one to show a Hubbert curve. A biological resource which is produced (or "extracted") much faster than it is replaced may also follow a bell-curve. Historically, there have been several cases of terminally depleted biological resources. The whaling industry of the 19th Century is a good example, as already noted by Coleman (Non Renewable Resources, Oxford University Press, 4(1995) 273).

(...)



From the figure [above], it is evident that the production of whale oil followed a bell-curve according to Hubbert's theory, modelled with a simple Gaussian curve, albeit showing strong oscillations. These data are in excellent agreement with the report on Right Whale abundance by Baker and Clapham (Trends in Ecology and Evolution Vol.19 No.7 July 2004), indicating that the fall in production after the peak was caused by depletion and not by the switching to different fuels.

(...)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>





<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

A DESCRIPTION OF WOODSIDE IN 1894
==============

The atmosphere is charged with granite dust; factory stacks and quarry tips mingle incongrously with woods and pastures. From the Cruvies to Stoneywood, the banks of Don are dotted with factories in all the stages between full activity and silent decay.

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Abridged from "Woodside Nae Mair!"
Fullerton Court and Murray Court Oral History Group
Frae a the Airts to Haudagain

Dorothy Crichton

In 1798, Lord George Gordon Noel Byron, celebrated English poet, was a young lad living a short time in Woodside with his old nurse, Agnes Gray. She lived on the first floor of the old house at 719 Great Northern Road. The house was demolished in the 1950's to make way for the dual carriageway. The exact date of Byron's visit and length of stay in Woodside isn't known. But when there he 'fell in love' with an attractive girl named Lexy Campbell who lived with a very respectable spinster - Nelly Calder. Poor Lexy lost face by this affair and her subsequent history was unfortunate. 


#################




Crossing North Anderson Drive at its junction with Rosehill Drive/Provost Rust Drive is a trial for pedestrians. A two-stage pelican crossing with the usual central reservation 'sheep-pen' (that's what the traffic engineers actually call these things) in the middle places the pedestrian in the centre of the high-speed traffic flow, surrounded by fast-moving traffic, oppressed by noise and fumes. To get to the sheep pen we press and wait. When at last the green man shows, it's necessary to remain vigilant and be sure that the motor traffic actually does bother to stop for the red-light, which is these days so often taken to mean: "first three only please". When sure that the vehicles have actually stopped, the pedestrian crosses meekly under the frowning glare of the impeded motorists who's high speed progress has been so thoughlessly interrupted by young mother with buggy, elderly carmudgeon with some shopping, pre-teen kids in their own worlds and a couple of middle aged researchers. < why don't these people just get about by car>  Then standing crammed into the sheep-pen we press the button and wait again.

Across at last, we would be taken by the pavement round a pointless loop to get to where we want to go. Instead, we use the well-worn desire-line path which crosses the grass and bisects the shabby shrubbery to reach the top of Smithfield Drive.

54 ABD


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>>>>>>>>

.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

GOT A WEE POSTCARD FROM THE CENTRE OF THE 20th CENTURY



<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/05/20th-century-boundary-stones-acb.html
2011.05.30

...suppose we should really get ourselves along to the local studies department at the Central Library and see if we can look at a mid-20th century map for clues to where we might find others of these 20th century boundary stones, but hey - this isn't a job! (Nevertheless - if anyone's got a copy of such a map that they can let us have we'd be really grateful.)

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<


20th century boundary X Inbox Reply


from xxxx@yyyyy.com
to otheraberdeen@gmail.com
date Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 9:44 PM
subject 20th century boundary
att 1 Attachment 421kb


Hi, saw your request for a map with indication of Aberdeen's boundary before 1975 and thought that this might help. (SEE ATTACHED)


Regards
xxxxxANONxxxxx
<<<<<<


1 Attachment 421kb proposals.jpg

#######################################

As so often happens in life, when we go looking for one thing, we find something else; something more distracting, perhaps. Something enlightening, something fascinating.

In this case the map document "THE-CITY-AND-ROYAL-BURGH-OF-ABERDEEN, Survey and Plan ~ 1949, ROAD COMMUNICATIONS. PROPOSALS" opens up a door into the minds of the post-war town planners and their fever-dream visions of the future; it is a wee postcard from the centre of the car-crazy 20th century. It isn't really a map (maybe it's a "mind map") rather it's a disingenuous presentation of a schematic diagram made to look like a true map. It takes quite serious topological liberties with topographical realities. Having thrown topographical reality to one side, our post-war planners dared to dream big.

Three ring-roads; a gyratory system at Holburn Junction/Rose St/Thistle St; much of Ferryhill demolished for an inner city motorway (in all but name); a high-speed radial expressway cutting Cragiebuckler in two to link Countesswells Road at Hillhead with Queens Road at Hill of Rubislaw (the undeveloped green corridor for this pupative expressway exists to this day). Three ring roads. 

Even in their wildest car-crazy dreams the post-war planners in London only ever envisaged a maximum of four concentric ring-roads for the capital.

pic from Wikimedia Commons
Predict and Provide
Predict (traffic levels) and provide (capacity beyond that) was the tenet of these mid-century promethean would-be road-builders: iconoclasts, they would destroy the city to create it anew. A new order beckoned and all round the world the social, economic and political decks were being shuffled. The externalities of unchecked motor vehicle growth had not yet impinged upon the considerations of these utopians, instead they saw a future painted in the broad bold strokes and interplanetary proportions of what we today recognise as being nothing but science-fiction. So (concurrent with Dr Beeching's noticing that railways were old fashioned and best done away with) in his 1963 report "Traffic in Towns" Professor Sir Colin Buchanan mused:


In the future: the British Empire's
borders extend all the way to Venus





The possibility most usually canvassed is that within a measurable time some kind of individual jet-propulsion unit will be developed, of which a rudimentary form has already been tried out in the U.S.A. for military use.  
But sensible Sir Colin went on to question the individual jet-pack's viability as a means of daily transport for commuters, and concluded, therefore, that the only possible future was one of comprehensive grand-plan redevelopment to make more and more room for cars - Jellicoe's "Motopia".



The way it turned out for us at the
Denburn Road "improvement".

But Prof. Buchanan did reach ahead of his time and recognise that increases in road capacity can actually exacerbate congestion problems:
The problems of traffic are crowding in upon us with desperate urgency. Unless steps are taken, the motor vehicle will defeat its own utility and bring about a disastrous degradation of the surroundings for living... Either the utility of vehicles in town will decline rapidly, or the pleasantness and safety of surroundings will deteriorate catastrophically – in all probability both will happen.
At the time these words were written, they were not, but the mechanisms of network-induced demand are now well known, are within the body of established empirical science and are regarded as The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion. Indeed, in the United States, where much highway (motorway and dual-carriageway) infrastructure is now approaching obsolescence, planners are discovering that removal of these artifacts from the centre of the car-crazy 20th century has major economic and social benefits for cities.


>>>>>>>>

Professors Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner analyzed travel data from hundreds of metro areas in the U.S., resulting in what they call the most comprehensive dataset  ever assembled on the traffic impacts of road construction. They write:
For interstate highways in metropolitan areas we find that VKT [vehicle kilometers traveled] increases one for one with interstate highways, confirming the “fundamental law of highway congestion” suggested by Anthony Downs (1962; 1992). We also uncover suggestive evidence that this law may extend beyond interstate highways to a broad class of major urban roads, a “fundamental law of road congestion”. These results suggest that increased provision of interstate highways and major urban roads is unlikely to relieve congestion of these Roads.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Milwaukee spent $25 million to demolish the 1-mile-long Park East freeway, while it would have cost $100 million to rebuild that 30-year-old freeway.  Removing the freeway opened 26 acres of land for new development, including the freeway right of way and surface parking lots around it, which have already attracted over $300 investment in new development, in addition to stimulating development in surrounding areas.

San Francisco increased nearby property values by 300 percent by tearing down the Embarcadero Freeway and opening up the waterfront, stimulating the development of entire new neighborhoods.

Niagara Falls is removing the Robert Moses Parkway in order to slow people down and encourage them not to drive as far.  Just as building this parkway encouraged tourists to take longer trips and drive right through to Niagara Falls, Canada, removing this parkway is meant to encourage tourists to take shorter trips and stop in Niagara Falls, New York.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But such counter-intuitive cognitive-dissonance-inducing facts do not go down well here, where we plan the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route "special category" bypass road (a motorway in all but name) and the Berryden Corridor "Improvements" (an urban dual-carriageway radial expressway scheme).

Notable amongst the justifications and rationalisations for work on both the new ring-road and the new urban dual carriageway are promises of "improved journey times". This flies in the face of the UK Department for Transport which, as long ago as 1996 adopted guidance documents stating that cost-benefit studies on new road building schemes must assume that elasticity of demand may be as high as 1.0 with respect to speed. Which is to say that the average trip length increases as much as speed increases: building roads which reduce journey times merely serves to lengthen the average trip taken; with the same amount of time being spent behind the wheel, the number of driver-miles increases. The very essence of induced demand.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Reducing journey times in and around and to and from the North East not only improves quality of life for individuals but helps retain and attract businesses who need reliable connections to their markets in order to survive.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Aberdeen City Council
Frequently Asked Questions



How does losing a part of school playground improve health?








The alignment of the carriageway alongside the school was chosen in order to meet the design requirements for roads and to avoid the demolition of property on the other side of the road. The design of roads in an urban environment can be restrictive and at times compromises have to be reached.










<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Aberdeen City Council
Frequently Asked Questions


Why are you creating a motorway through the city?


The dual carriageway route proposed for the Berryden Corridor permits a number of transport modes and can be successfully integrated into an urban environment. It will have a speed limit of 30mph like the majority of the urban roads in Aberdeen. The Berryden Corridor Improvement Project makes up part of an integrated transport system for Aberdeen City, which includes projects such as;


  • The Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR), the construction of which will reduce unnecessary traffic travelling through Aberdeen, freeing up capacity in the city centre 
  • Union Street pedestrianisation and its associated traffic management.  
  • A number of studies to investigate how to better manage and improve the transport system around the city [...] 
  • Feasibility studies to investigate cycle routes on the Anderson Drive, Inverurie Road and King Street/ Ellon Road corridors. 
  • A Bus Action Plan 
  • A freight action plan 
  • A Car Parking Strategy, which aims to increase charges in the city centre and extend the controlled parking zone.
[...]

 All of this assists the Council in meeting its policy and environmental commitments.



###########




Poised like an arrow pointing at the heart of the city centre, the new urban dual carriageway will deliver high volumes of high speed traffic into the centre of our town, and through the agencies of their action plans, studies and strategies our planners expect us to believe that this will "assist" schemes like the 30-year-promised pedestrianisation of Union Street. Pedestrianisation and modal switch to cycling, walking and public transport is achieved by discouraging motor traffic, by re-allocating aspects of the urban environment away from cars, not by ushering in more.



>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Comments





Alex Mitchell said...


We only have to observe the bleakness & utter desolation of the entire length of East/West North Street, from Mounthooly to the Castlehill roundabout, to realise the destructive futility of this outdated slash-and-burn approach to town planning, with its demented prioritisation of an accelerated flow of vehicular traffic above every other consideration. How many streets, houses and communities were destroyed to accommodate the East/West North Street urban motorway? And there is a cluster of nice little residential streets such as Caroline Place near the former Rosemount Church, really a kind of urban village, standing in the way of the proposed Berryden Junction!


<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

The number of cars, buses and lorries using the key roads in and out of [Aberdeen] has fallen to its lowest level for years.
Surprising new figures suggest traffic levels on Aberdeen’s congested major roads may be dropping after reaching saturation point. Experts linked the findings to the growing use of trains and bikes in an age of increasing environmental awareness and economic austerity, as well as commuters sharing cars or finding quieter routes in to work.
Transport chiefs warned against complacency and said the city’s bypass must be delivered, as well as a third bridge over the Don and a solution at the notorious Haudagain roundabout.
Councillors in Aberdeenshire were certain commu-ters had not witnessed a reduction in rush-hour congestion, even if vehicle totals on the roads had fallen.
Data from Transport Scotland, under freedom of information legislation, reveals the five-day weekly average number of vehicles using Aberdeen’s trunk roads for every month in the last 20 years.
After huge growth during the 1990s, the traffic volumes appeared to stabilise over the last decade and have even started to fall.


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After Aberdeen's traffic density had reached a maximum a few years ago, it then subsided back and our town planners and their business sponsors decided that attracting more traffic to the town centre should actually become the desireable outcome. And so they dusted off those ill-conceived plans from the centre of the car-crazy 20th century and today they push on ahead with a re-hash of the 1949 plans for orbital motorways and urban dual carriageways. They seek to induce demand, to pander to the car-dependent addiction of the polity. Is this the most car-sick town in Europe?

The solipsism of the roadbuilders' logic is circular tail-chasing devastation.

1960's
Is there going to be too much traffic? Better build urban dual carriageways and motorway ring-roads.



2010's
Is there not going to be enough traffic? Better build urban dual carriageways and motorway ring-roads.






<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_dependency


Automobile dependency implies that cities where automobiles are the predominant transport deny their residents not only freedom of choice about the way they live and move around the city but also that the culture of automobile use has produced a kind of addiction to them. The analogy is made with addictions to harmful substances and activities because of the well-known law of diminishing returns in relation to increasing use or participation: the more that is used, the less of the desired effect is gained until a point is reached where the substance or activity has to be maintained to remain 'normal', a state of dependency.
When it comes to automobile use, there is a spiralling effect where traffic congestion produces the 'demand' for more and bigger roads and removal of 'impediments' to traffic flow, such as pedestrians, signalised crossings, traffic lights, cyclists, and various forms of street-based public transit such as streetcars (trams).
These measures make automobile use more pleasurable and advantageous at the expense of other modes of transport, so greater traffic volumes are induced. Additionally, the urban design of cities adjusts to the needs of automobiles in terms of movement and space. Buildings are replaced by parking lots. Open air shopping streets are replaced by enclosed shopping mall. Walk-in banks and fast-food stores are replaced by drive-in versions of themselves that are inconveniently located for pedestrians. Town centres with a mixture of commercial, retail and entertainment functions are replaced by single-function business parks, 'category-killer' retail boxes and 'multiplex' entertainment complexes, each surrounded by large tracts of parking.
These kinds of environments require automobiles to access them, thus inducing even more traffic onto the increased roadspace. This results in congestion, and the cycle above continues. Roads get ever bigger, consuming ever greater tracts of land previously used for housing, manufacturing and other socially useful purposes. Public transit becomes less and less viable and socially stigmatised, eventually becoming a minority form of transportation. People's choices and freedoms to live functional lives without the use of the car are greatly reduced. Such cities are automobile dependent.









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An tiny little old lady tries to cross the road at the t-junction, peering round the wing of the big silver-grey SUV to try to check it’s OK to cross, and to try to make herself seen to the motor traffic using the junction. She waits, and waits, and waits.

Inside the house, a rivulet of running sweat tickles as it begins to trickle down his spine between his shoulderblades as he flollops into the sofa and reaches grunting over his belly swapping the clunky chunk of the black plastic carkey electronic transponder for the skybox remote control. Flips to EPG; pagedown pagedown pagedown. Pagedown. Huh! Nothing - saturday lunchtime. He puts the sweat-finger smeared remote down on the sofa arm and, getting his breath back after walking from the car, puffs hard, blowing his cheeks out. His eyes swivel first, then his head, then his body to look out the window. There it is. He got it two years ago, he knows the exact date, it’s the exact same age as his youngest daughter; his wife was in the maternity unit. She was there while he got his baby. Got the cherished plate transferred over from the older model (this one’s a serious upgrade) LYN 684, that’s in honour of his wife - she likes that.

Saturday and sunday its OK to park it there - no traffic wardens about at the weekend. He loves his end-terrace house (now after about five years he’s got it just the way he likes it), but it has its problems. To his chagrin, traffic regulations mean that, because his house is on the t-junction, he can’t pave over the front garden and turn it into a parking bay, the way his neighbours have done. That’s harsh, particularly as those same traffic regulations have double-yellows immediately outside the house - so he can’t park there; can’t park where he can see the car from the sofa - one eye on the adverts, the other on the Audi. Sometimes he even has to park round the corner up to a hundred metres away. That can be quite a walk, particularly for his eldest daughter - she’s six now, and not used to such distances. But, come the weekend, the wardens retreat and he parks his own car outside his own house, just as he should. To hell with the double yellows: Ford’s in his flivver; all’s well with the world. He can look at it as much as he wants. If he could, he’d park it in the living room.

What’s that? In the corner of his field of view, somebody’s near his car! It’s just as well he parked it there so he can see who’s interfering with his property! He levers himself up and, pulling the airtex front of his too-small poloshirt back down over his paunch, waddles to the bay window. It’s an old lady, just standing. Standing right beside his car, her right hand out by her side, as if she might touch the bonnet at any moment. He hammers his fist on the windowpane - nothing. Face reddening, slack-jawed, wide-eyed he thumps again, bangbangbangbangnbang! Still nothing. Is she ignoring him? He squeezes slather-footed between sofa and TV and hurries out the door, down the hall, out the front door. He looks at the car but he can’t see the woman. Where is she?


















References:


http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/roads/belfasturbanmotorway.html
http://www.hiddenglasgow.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=642
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_in_Towns
http://hc110-2.blogspot.com/
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/05/31/study-building-roads-to-cure-congestion-is-an-exercise-in-futility/
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/transportissues/uktp_history.shtml
http://www.preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysInducedReduced.html
http://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/crap-cycling-and-walking-in-car-sick-glasgow/#more-768