tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60073056028047564862024-03-13T16:04:24.511+00:00OtherAberdeensomething is very wrong with this town<br> psychogeography might or might not helpUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger255125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-13534143147042426492012-03-04T21:07:00.002+00:002013-02-15T21:04:59.313+00:00At the Watershed on the Last Day of Winter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cWII-nyDi5I/T1PU_rC2U4I/AAAAAAAACks/2T_Df-afb-E/s1600/dd+011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cWII-nyDi5I/T1PU_rC2U4I/AAAAAAAACks/2T_Df-afb-E/s400/dd+011.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The leap-year day's morning sun shone low and wan, but yes; surprisingly warm - record-breaking warm, in fact - on that windless morning last week above the town. I was between, on one side, the utterly deserted championship golf course at Hazlehead and, on the other, the scrubby edgeland which is made up of the not-quite urban, not-quite rural landscape to the immediate west. Horseriding centres, market-garden smallholdings, deep-infrastructure municipal reservoirs and pine-forested monoculture woods along with all the other usual edgeland ephemera form a patchwork of land use at the western edge of the town. A never-to-be completed network of paths for walkers, equestrians and mountain bikers waits to be discovered or ignored - relaid or allowed to overgrow into desuetude. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Exploring edgelands like these, where the town frays into the country you might find a path you'd never noticed before. You might follow it through a forested area then between a field of scrubby grass with a magnificent white stallion on one side and on the other, the newly tilled soft rich black soil of this good earth, moist and shining in that warming sun. Your newly-discovered path might bring you to an area you recognise, ah yes, connecting round from a way you'd never come before. And you'd experience an odd mix of feelings. Satisfaction, yes - happy that you'd found a new route that joined up with paths you already knew. But a sadness too - the regret that comes with finally completing a collection, a closing in and rounding off of knowledge, the expiry of a mystery; is that all there is?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Exploring another path - you might find it not-quite-yet overgrown, but hard-enough going, gorse-barbs nipping your arms and legs. Was this an old farm-access road? Was it a drover's road? A tight avenue of mature trees and dry-stane dykes, the once-made now unmade road beneath your feet now grassy green with a desire-line muddy trail up the middle. Who's were the last feet to walk this way? When? And what for? Then the route just stops, cut dead by a recently-built embankment, upon which a commuter's dual-carrageway thunders; Evoque and Focus alike, Hi-Lux and Transit shouldered upon heroic-high revetment thirty feet above your extinguished desire line. You'd have no choice but to turn around and retrace your steps.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And on that anomalously-hot morning last week, that's where I was. Exploring the paths beyond Hazlehead and marvelling at the morning's dew - now sunshine-liberated steamy mist, atmospherically drifting between the pines and highlighting that low-slanting sunshine. Then, secreted somewhere in this liminal zone between the barely-used paths, deep in the small woods I found what I was looking for.</div><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There I found nature's centred silence. A serene stretch of silver-surfaced shallow water amid the trees. These still waters spread wide; a labyrinthine mirror, serpentine between the pines. A seasonally-natural reservoir of the late autumn, winter and early spring months. Then to be exhausted; just-drying cracking mud or even dusty parched concrete-hard in the hottest of summers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pushing branches aside, there I stopped and stood by the edge of the still water. As my consciousness slowed and expanded, I began to perceive the sounds which are embedded in silence. A single bird sings to establish territory, or maybe to attract a mate. A sudden gentle breeze ruffles the treetop canopy, it sounds like a breath. Above - dewdrops on the pine-needles come together and surface tension overcomes the tendency to misty evaporation; gravity becomes the major motive force; a drop forms at the end of the needle gathering weight; and more and more, then poink! First one drip, then poit-poit! Two others drip from the branches into the water and make ripples that radiate, disturbing the mirror-perfect surface. Now I can hear, now I know, that this landscape is a waterscape is a soundscape, subtly it is dominated by the gently soft sound of the slowly running trickling gurgles of water flowing from the reservoir. The drips that plopped from the trees above, I knew would find their way to the sea in time; how would they get there?<br />
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I perceived that from this reservoir the winterbournes trickle out slickly, slowly propagating and shallowly leaching, following inevitable gravity - reaching down through the woods to the three watercourses which originate nearby. Water branches, like the bifurcations of the trees' branches above, radiating out through the sphagnum carpeted, cone-strewn winter-wet forest floor. This landscape is alive with sluggish silvery gurgles; some streams as wide as I am tall, some as thin as my wrist. A temporary and ever-changing dynamic wetland, the channels altering week to week - day to day. I stood perfect still, slowed my breaths and harkened, listening to the trickles of this three-way watershed. And I sent my thoughts out through the landscape, accompanying the waters on their journey to the sea. Down through finding folds in the landscape; rushing tumbling through gushing gorges and dens; sluggish broad floodplains; dead straight constrained in dug channels; sometimes in the open behind the terraced homes of west end; then covered in concrete culverts and brick-vaulted crypts, audible beneath manhole-covers in the town centre. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Out from this secret reservoir, those flows which run to the south find their snaking way between the two municipal golf courses, and eventually become the water of Holburn then the Ferryhill Burn which empties into the big famous River Dee near Union Square's shopping complex car-park. And water which spills west from the watershed trickles to Countesswells and adds to the source of the Cults Burn, rushing spectacular and steep down the Den of Cults hanging valley, again into the Dee. But water which runs from here to the north and east forms seasonal streams which empty into the finger-pattern drainage ditches of the woods and become an ornamental stream which is wrangled to run picturesque through the plastic-wrapped-bouquet-strewn garden of remembrance at the City Crematorium, then to swoop down and beneath the Skene Road commuter route, emptying into the Den of Maidencraig and the Denburn, the nearly-river which gave our town its name.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">My feet had gone on paths new and old, discovered and forgotten, and came to be standing at the three-way watershed on the last day of the season. The drop of water with its choice to make - to be made for it - from three options, three ways to go. A small change in initial conditions will lead to radically different results. I went to walk away through the trees back to the path, and as I looked at the sunlight shining through the mist between the trees, I realised that there was, of course, a fourth option, for some of the morning's dew had, as I had noticed earlier, formed that thin mist in the woods, now rising high to the sky, absorbed into the air, part of the atmosphere and away. Far, far away.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br />
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-150291105414840592012-03-03T20:56:00.003+00:002013-02-15T21:21:29.899+00:00Brand New Old Fashioned Modern Transport System of the Future from the Past<div style="text-align: justify;">
We have mentioned on several occasions the folly of hoping to solve traffic congestion problems by building more road capacity - that would be like trying to lose weight by letting your belt out. So we were pleased to see the major booster of a motorway project - Tom Smith, chairman of local business development quango ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) - at last admitting to the true motivation for proposing to build a new motorway. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cqmrv" target="_blank">Appearing on local BBC news broadcast "Reporting Scotland"</a> Mr Smith said "if it had not been for the [protestors' court] appeals, we would already be enjoying driving on this road".</div>
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Mr Smith was invited onto the TV programme because the most recent appeal by campaign group "Road Sense" to prevent the building of an orbital motorway around Aberdeen was <a href="http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2012CSIH19.html" target="_blank">rejected by Court of Session judges</a> in Edinburgh on the 29th of February. This new road will be a "special category road" (which is to say, a motorway in all but name) and is known as the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR).</div>
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We found Mr Smith's "enjoying driving" statement refreshing, because - at last - there was no assertion that purpose of the AWPR was to reduce the congestion, pollution, noise or danger caused by motor traffic in Aberdeen. Nor was there any attempt to try to suggest that the £750m project would in some way save (or generate) money for Aberdeen and "safeguard the future" - all of which were the sort of <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/tom_smith_north_east_is_on_the_right_road_to_a_highly_successful_future_1_786775" target="_blank">rationalisations offered by him in previous years</a>. No, now that a last barrier to the project going ahead has been removed, Mr Smith reveals what we already knew; this road is for people like him to enjoy driving upon. By this ill-guarded admission, Mr Smith has let slip something else which we already knew: that this road is a solipsistic solution only to itself and the demands of drivers to drive more, drive everywhere, drive always. In the view of Mr Smith and his fellow motorists, motor-traffic transportation is the desired outcome of providing infrastructure for motor-traffic transportation.</div>
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Let us be clear: we would be vociferous supporters of the AWPR if this major road-building programme were to be accompanied by a range of <a href="http://bettercities.net/about-new-urbanism" target="_blank">new-urbanism</a> measures which would reduce traffic flows into and through the residential and central business/retail districts of Aberdeen - measures like <a href="http://trimet.org/max/" target="_blank">suburban rail and trams</a>, <a href="http://www.lightrailnow.org/images/otwmap02.jpg" target="_blank">bus-only roads</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hh9erwDmWLq_-qtFnQen9V47tYeg" target="_blank">pedestrianisation</a>, <a href="http://www.copenhagenize.com/" target="_blank">bicycle infrastructure</a>, <a href="http://www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/decTS/Parking_occw.htm" target="_blank">parking restrictions and charges</a> - just the kind of contemporary urban transport planning policy you see all across continental Europe, the <a href="http://www.carfree.com/papers/perry.html" target="_blank">Middle East</a> and increasingly these days even in the <a href="http://www.cnu.org/" target="_blank">cities of the USA</a>. But, unfortunately, none of these measures is present in the planning of the AWPR, quite the reverse. Instead the AWPR will be complemented by <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-third-crossing-is-wrong-we-try-to.html" target="_blank">multi-million pound radial access projects</a> (including <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/01/urban-dual-carriageways-future-from.html" target="_blank">new inner-urban dual carriageway expressways</a>) which will increase motor-traffic flows into central Aberdeen. We can't possibly support a scheme which will dramatically increase the proportion of space allocated exclusively to motor transport in and around Aberdeen. The results will be as predictable as they will be devastating to the liveability of our town.</div>
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<a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/anti-car-rant.html" target="_blank">More</a> than <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/07/woonerf.html" target="_blank">once</a> we have <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/06/got-wee-postcard-from-centre-of-20th.html" target="_blank">flexed our fingers typing rebuttals</a> to the tired old "predict and provide" arguments for building ever-more motor traffic infrastructure - arguments which decades-long and worldwide experience have long-since discredited. And so then, flexing their politically-aspirant muscles, the business-community boosters of this orbital motorway project shifted their rhetoric onto the unfalsifiable ground of appeals to 'common sense' and populism. <i>"Everyone knows"</i> they said, <i>"that the long-awaited Aberdeen Bypass is much needed, and the majority want it built." </i></div>
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Check out the 'Common Sense' pro-motorway blog:</div>
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<a href="http://www.common-sense.org.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.common-sense.org.uk/</a></div>
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(The type of discourse displayed in the <a href="http://www.common-sense.org.uk/2011/09/08/common-sense-or-nonsense/#comment-2" target="_blank">comments section of the "Common Sense" blog-post</a> is an object lesson in the dangers of unleashing populism in the service of business interests. Have a read, but it's not for the faint-hearted.)</div>
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For the sake of balance, we're happy here to quote some of the opposing voices, which have not been offered a platform by our local mainstream media: </div>
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Stan Blackley, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland:</div>
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<i>The Scottish Government seems addicted to tarmac yet has set itself demanding targets to meet with regard to reducing Scotland's carbon emissions and tackling climate change. This new road will not help them in this regard, and goes to show that Scottish Ministers just aren't able to see the bigger picture. You can't cut carbon emissions and tackle climate change while simultaneously building massive new roads that create more traffic and development.</i></blockquote>
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WWF Scotland director, Dr Richard Dixon:</div>
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<i>It is deeply disappointing that the the court have thrown out this challenge from community campaigners trying to stop the Aberdeen Bypass. This scheme will trash local wildlife and increase climate change emissions as it generates new traffic. We call on Transport Minister Keith Brown to use the forthcoming budget to commit to ensuring that Scotland's transport sector plays its full part in tackling climate change. </i></blockquote>
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Colin Howden director Transform Scotland, the national sustainable transport alliance:</div>
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<i>The bypass will do nothing to address the key traffic congestion issue in Aberdeen. The real problem is car commuting into the city, especially during the morning rush hour - something that an orbital road will do nothing to address. The best way that this could be tackled would be to deliver commuter rail routes into the city. It is unfortunate that the Scottish Government seem unwilling to invest in public transport, and instead continues to subsidise car use. The only thing that this project will deliver is car-dependent commuter sprawl and out-of-town retail tin-sheds.</i></blockquote>
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It's that "car-dependent" quote from Colin Howden of Transform Scotland which we think goes to the heart of the issues surrounding road-building projects like the AWPR. As we walk the streets of Aberdeen, we see the car-dependent all around us, and <a href="http://www.billbuchan.com/imported-20091119232548/2011/8/30/roadsense-stop-the-nonsense.html" target="_blank">it perplexes us to see self-admittedly car dependent people correctly identify road-provoked urban sprawl as the cause of their dependence, and yet they call for the building of more, bigger, "upgraded" roads as a palliative. </a></div>
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Only policies which lead to a shift in transport modes by a reduction in the use of motorcars (like roadspace reallocation away from use by motor-vehicles) will deliver a sustainable reduction in motor traffic congestion and its attendant externalities. Yet the old-fashioned motorists of Aberdeen stick to the old discredited roadbuilding polices of the 1960's. Like the people in the US midwest who Barack Obama ridiculed for clinging to their bibles and guns, the car-crazy folks of Aberdeen can't see over their dashboards; they want more, bigger and faster, "better" roads, "upgraded". It's embarrassing. </div>
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Those unfortunate addicts who seek the help of Alcoholics Anonymous are invited to consider why they do the same thing over and over again, yet expect different results. Were the extent of tasteless self indulgence, waste of natural resources, and disastrous externalities not so catastrophic it would be amusing to observe how closely aligned the rationalisation strategies of addicts and motorists are. We cannot be sure whether it is car dependency which leads to car addiction or vice versa, it's so difficult now to tell the difference. But what we can say is that the results are devastating. </div>
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Again, let's be clear - we are not anti-car. Cars are undoubtedly useful and I use a car when and where it's appropriate to do so - when and where there are no alternative transport modes available which would be less harmful to health, the urban environment, and the wider ecosystem. I have chosen a way of life which minimises my need to use personal motor transport - it was more than a decade ago when I stopped driving regularly. It was difficult - yes, but only for about a week. I soon became entranced by how quickly I became much, much fitter. I soon became enamoured by walking the urban environment, seeing things unmediated, feeling my range and freedom increase and engaging with the town I inhabited. In short, I began <i>living in</i> Aberdeen for the first time since I was a child. That's <i><b>living in</b></i> as opposed to merely <b><i>inhabiting</i></b>. </div>
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And now, on the rare occasions when I'm obliged by circumstance to drive, I feel the terrible oppression of claustrophobic restrictions. Queuing at traffic lights; one-way streets; speed limits; parking restrictions; inconsiderate fellow motorists; and all the other minor and major strictures which people have convinced themselves that they are happy to put up with daily - all the while tied to a chair in the tightly restricted space of a hot locked box full of plastic and metal and volatile refined hydrocarbons. Isolated from the outside environment. View restricted by glass screens, metal pillars, the rear-view mirror. Hearing restricted. Movement restricted. Personal space restricted. And we are expected to aspire to this? It was Voltaire who said "its difficult to free fools from the chains they so revere". It is clear that today, in this town, in this country, the motorcar is one of those chains. But, per Konkin "each individual can free himself, immediately". All that is required is an effort of will.</div>
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The magnitude of that effort of will would be less were our planners, politicians and the businessmen (who wield increasingly more and yet more power) to embrace the new urbanism movement which is sweeping the rest of the world. It's a source of great shame and embarrassment that - as our business tycoons here in Aberdeen gleefully look forward to "enjoying driving" on a new motorway - towns and cities in the United States - Portland in Oregon for instance - have implemented <a href="http://trimet.org/max/" target="_blank">free (yes, free!) public rapid-transit systems</a> while others, like San Francisco, are <a href="http://www.cnu.org/highways/freewayswithoutfutures2012" target="_blank">bulldozing up their urban dual-carriageways</a> (or turning them into <a href="http://www.cnu.org/highways" target="_blank">woonerf-style mixed use boulevards</a>).</div>
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It's heartbreaking to see our town not only falling behind the new urbanism agenda, but so comprehensively repudiating it as to buy wholesale (and at great financial and external cost) into a transport system which was dreamed up sometime in the middle of the car-crazy 20th century - a time when it was thought that there were no limits growth and no limits to the pressure which could be put upon the planet's resources. A time when the devastating impact of high traffic levels on the liveability of urban centres had not yet been experienced. Today, of course, we know different.<br />
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Unfortunately, our local politicians, planners and business tycoons are embarrassingly forward at displaying their backwardness when it comes to their love of cars and driving. Their acknowledgement of neither the externalities of their plans nor the unsustainable implications of provoking continual exponential increase in distances traveled by hydrocarbon-powered personal motor vehicles makes us feel that we are the subject of a sick joke. The sickness of this joke is compounded by the fact that (with straight faces) they call this a <a href="http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/road/projects/a90-aberdeen-western-peripheral-route-project" target="_blank">"Modern Transport System"</a>. It is not; it is in fact quite demonstrably more than a little bit old-fashioned.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-3441245545226419562012-03-02T16:24:00.000+00:002012-03-02T16:32:30.194+00:00Cargotecture<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="http://www.restart.org.nz/images/IMG_0008-Edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="http://www.restart.org.nz/images/IMG_0008-Edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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A few months ago, we heard about urban regeneration in Christchurch, New Zealand. After last year's devastating earthquake it's regrettably necessary that a good deal of the city centre be demolished. What caught our attention in particular was news that, to accommodate retailers displaced from the "red-zone" where the demolition crews are working - a <a href="http://www.restart.org.nz/" target="_blank">"pop up" mall was being installed, constructed from "upcycled" shipping containers</a>. We'd heard about this sort of innovative approach to construction before, and we found it intriguing - full of possibilities. </div>
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Throughout former-Soviet central asia (a major overland trade-route corresponding more-or-less to the trans-historic silk road) shipping containers are re-tasked - turned into domestic and retail accommodation, offices and storage, clinics and workshops, military emplacements and so forth. Any use you can think of for a cheap, readily available, robust, secure, resilient, transportable, modular, stackable, standardised box. Notably, shipping containers form the greater part of two of the largest organised regular markets in the world, located like bookends at either terminus of the silk road. The Seventh Kilometre Market in Odessa, Ukraine covers some 70 hectares (170 acres) and the Dordoy Bazaar in Biskek, Kyrgyzstan is about the same size. </div>
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Similarly, but more darkly, you can see shipping containers regularly on the TV news, being used by NATO military as the modular components of blast shelters and barracks, and as detention centres for enemy combatants.<br />
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On a brighter note, we're heartened by NGO's use of shipping containers to provide humanitarian aid, most notably the work of <a href="http://inhabitat.com/containers-to-clinics-provides-critical-medical-care-in-haiti/" target="_blank">Containers2Clinics</a> in creating fully-equipped clinics which are sent to disaster zones and deprived areas all round the world. The C2C units are marvels of modularity - full-service health clinics with examination and treatment rooms and labs - all within the ISO-standard 8ft x 20ft shipping container, ready to be deployed via the existing global freight network and infrastructure. </div>
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The two things which link all these re-tasked uses of the ISO shipping container are necessity and availability. The necessity to provide a 'building' and the availability of a suitably cheap and fit solution. This is why we find it intriguing that this sort of <i>cargotecture</i> is now popping up in places which are not obviously subject to disaster or depravation. London's <a href="http://www.boxpark.co.uk/" target="_blank">Boxpark shopping centre in Shoreditch</a>, which opened last Christmas is the site which first springs to mind. We can't help but think that there's a bit of posturing metropolitan post-apocalyptic chic going on there. But, on second thoughts and after a bit of research we find that you can buy a newly-built 8ft x 20ft ISO shipping container for USD $4000. Second hand - $1000 or less all the way down to free. These containers are piling up in the Anglosphere West (where we have trade deficits) for it is cheaper to obtain new-built containers for the shipping of goods from the far-east than it is to send empty containers back to the far-east. The result is that we now have a growing glut of cheap, available, transportable and demountable building materials, which already come in the shape of a room, or a shop unit, or a small workshop or lab or office orwhatever. We think it's a great pity that Buckminster Fuller did not live to see this day, for we're sure he would have felt vindicated by this proliferation of "livingry" (as he would have had it, notwithstanding the military stuff we mentioned). But we do feel that cargotecture is, in some way, indicative of disaster or liminal status, conflict or collapse. Perhaps, looking around Aberdeen, and seeing the proliferation of semi-permanent cargotecture deployments even here we might feel that there is some sort of slow-motion crisis going on, some kind of shift in status from permanency to flexibility - a frog-boiling, Zeno-paradox long emergency.<br />
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Throughout the latter part of the 20th century and this early part of the 21st, in the developed west we largely used breeze-block units as the primary architectural element of our (non-prestige) buildings - commercial, domestic and military, all made from the same standard concrete masonry unit. Artificial stone, as it were, made from the ashy residue of coal-fired electricity generation. It's convenient that, as we necessarily come to the end of the hydrocarbon era, an alternate building system presents itself.<br />
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And all that is solid melts into air...<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>A man in a small van pulls over to the nearside of the road and winds down the window - it looks as if he's about to ask me for directions. It's a painter and decorator's van, but the driver is wearing office clothes. Frowning, he leans over the passenger seat and shouts out of the open window:</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>Excuse me! Hey there!</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>Yes. What is it? Can I help you at all?</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>Why are you photographing that?</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>That's an interesting question. What's interesting about it is that you feel empowered to ask, and that you expect me to answer. So let me answer your question with another question: Why do you ask?</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>Look, I've asked you a question first, I want to know why you're photographing that.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>OK, I'll ask you again: Why do you want to know? </i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>'Cos you're photographing it.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>And how does that affect you? What concern is it of yours? Who are you to ask me about my actions? Again - why do you want to know?</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>Look, I want to know why you're photographing that. I'm being civil.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #351c75;"><i>>>No you're not being civil at all - you're being weird. What I do in a public place is none of your business, and it's kind of bizarre that you should think it is. You're being intrusive and you are harassing me. Eff off.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-91130273440380710062012-02-24T20:05:00.001+00:002012-02-24T20:36:00.130+00:00Gaude TerminaliaYesterday (23rd February) was <i>Terminalia</i> - the Roman festival of Terminus - god of boundary stones and border features and, by extension, god of edges and things on the edge. We're all about edges, so we honour Terminus. Here he is, depicted as a bust on top of a familiar-looking stela:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CONCEDO NULLI<br />
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YIELD NO GROUND</td></tr>
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On <i>Terminalia</i>, Romans would make a sacrifice to to the god at the nearest boundary markers (called Termini). The sacrifice would be in the form of a cake, or some ground meal, flowers and fruit. No blood or flesh sacrifice was made, it being forbidden to stain a boundary marker with blood, for the point of having a physical landmark plain for all to see was to demonstrate that no force or violence should be shown when setting mutual boundaries.<br />
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So, we crossed out of Pitmuxton, over Great Western Road to Hammerton Stores (a grocer shop named for the Hammermen Guild, who were once the proprietors of the lands north of Pitmuxton) and got some stuff for the ritual. Crossing back into Pitmuxton, we made our sacrifice to Terminus on the nearest Termini.<br />
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Newly budded crocusses, fruit and a rowie. Concedo Nulli! Gaude Terminalia!<div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-59007224261969998412012-02-22T18:21:00.000+00:002012-02-22T18:21:46.496+00:00Ferryhill Orbital Dérive<br />
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1. Holburn Junction</div>
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8.45 am at Holburn Junction, and the commuters in their motorcars stretch as far as perspective allows, gridlocked at the nexus-choice split-the-wind - Highland or Deeside? All the way from the Y-shaped fork junction to the right-turn to Royal Deeside at Great Western Road, the carriageway is bumper-bound stuck-still jammed with metal machines. One each to their cars - behind their windscreens, strapped to their chairs - the grim-faced commuters look as if they have just been bereaved, or have suffered some other form of intolerable injustice. But the pavements are empty and I am nearly alone as I walk towards the town centre. There is an unaccustomed hush; the usual speeding noise of the motorcars is temporarily stilled by the gridlock, the purring susurration of the idling engines is all I can hear. I feel like I am the last human being in a world of mechanisms.</div>
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Now I'm closer to the junction itself, and I can see the cause of the traffic jam. A bus-lane parker flashes his hazard lights (why?) as he just pops for a minute to an ATM or something, and in doing so renders the whole half-mile of bus lane worthless. A near-empty bus lurches out from the lane to pass the parked car, insisting its way into the stream of private motorists who do not want, oh they so do not want, to let it out. Staring straight ahead, they psychologically blank out the bus, trying to inch forward and deny it roadspace. The motor-bound expressions of the car-commuters change; the customary displays of glum ennui mutating to intolerant masks of fuming rage, indignant. Compounding their anger, the phasing of the Holburn Junction traffic lights has been changed since last I walked this way - it's a high frequency short phase now. Perhaps this is part of a traffic-management policy to discourage motorists from driving into the heart of the town centre, I don't know. One thing I do know - one thing which is plain to see - is that it has had effect on the driving style of the motorists as they approach accelerating towards the junction (not slowing down, as they should) and crashing on through the light controlled junction at amber, then red; two, three, five vehicles through at red, dropping a gear and flooring it, roaring over the junction as the pedestrian's green man shines out across the junction, beep-beep-beeping to no-one but me. It used to be that the green man meant it was safe to cross - but not now, not in this town. So the short-phasing of the traffic lights has had an effect on my behaviour too, because now I have to cross warily and looking and listening all around, as if there were no green-man pedestrian phase at all. </div>
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Keen to study the habits of the commuting motorists, I go into the Starbucks coffee shop which has a picture window panorama of the junction. Sipping away on my americano, the repetitive spectacle of the red-light-jumpers soon pales. This town has an intractable traffic problem, along with the attendant externalities of pollution, dirt, noise, dust, ill-health and on and on. The traffic problem persists despite strategically placed park-and-ride facilities on the periphery of the town (the extensive carparks and shuttle buses remain stubbornly empty), despite high fuel prices ("high oil prices are GOOD for Aberdeen"), despite a "cycling action plan" and despite the new urbanism which is sweeping the developed world's towns, recognising that town centres are places for people, not machines. Despite all these things, traffic volumes in Aberdeen continue to rise; 20% up in the last 3 years, apparently. It starts to snow outside.</div>
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I go up to the counter and select a panini-thing. The twenty-something girl barista has an American accent and an over-pleasant, so-familiar-it's-nearly-flirtatious manner. But something in her eyes tells me it's from a script which she repeats over and over and over through her shift. She sing-song-says she'll bring my sandwich over once she's toasted it. I go back to my seat in the window and start to leaf through a magazine. I can't concentrate and my attention wanders. I scan the coffeeshop and its patrons. The place and the people remind me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Not quite deja-vu - more a similarity of category. It eludes me. </div>
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Several suited and booted young salesey types, (I'll bet it says "Sales Executive" on their business cards). Sitting each one alone, one by one they lever open their laptops and check their e-mail. And there elderly couple conversing animatedly in sign-language appear to have come in just to get out of the snow, which has now turned into a pathetically damp sleet. Another anodyne group of be-suited folk arrive and settle in for what, amazingly, appears to be a full-blown meeting - something in their manner, their clothing, their pens and pads, makes me think they're lawyers or accountants or surveyors or suchlike. The most junior of them is taking minutes and making sure that everyone got the coffee they wanted. I notice that the deaf couple haven't bought anything, and they're sitting propped on the arms of sofas near the front of the cafe. Their BSL discussion becomes more and more animated - they're silently arguing. Not wanting to intrude on private grief, I look away. A squat casually-dressed woman with scaped-back hair; she's wearing trainers and has both a small rucksack and a big holdall. She holds her mug in one fist and pours over a thick soft old novel which she keeps open with a beefy forearm. A tall slender middle-aged man in active-looking beige clothing (he looks like a geography teacher - the sort who takes his guitar on field-trips) guddles in his tote-bag and confounds my preconceptions by fishing out a copy of <i>The Sun</i> tabloid. By now, the deaf couple have reached an impasse in their squabble and they sit, not looking at each other, arms crossed, chins jutted, brows knitted.</div>
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My sandwich arrives, and I notice that the sleet has stopped. Aching-blue between the parting clouds, the sky shoots a barrage of winter-low golden sunlight to glance off the slick wet tarmac and paving stones, up into my face. Blue sky and golden light in our february-grey town - a delight. Wish I'd brought my sunglasses. And with that thought I recognise what the place reminded me of - it's an airport departure lounge, it's a hotel foyer, it's a nowhere un-destination - where we go while we're waiting to go somewhere else. When we want to go somewhere else.</div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-69962134806854499162012-02-21T12:56:00.002+00:002012-02-21T14:35:11.032+00:00The Charm Agenda, Charm Offensive, Offensive Charm<br />
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A whole month after our <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2012/01/union-terrace-gardens-or-city-gardens.html" target="_blank">"Final Thought"</a> about the planning debacle surrounding Aberdeen's only town-centre green space - Union Terrace Gardens - events conspire to make liars of us, and we're obliged to offer yet more "final thoughts".</div>
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<b>CHARM</b></div>
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I was leafing through the most recent edition of Tyler Brûlé's <i>Monocle</i> "cultural briefing" magazine the other day. (Yeah, yeah, I know.) But we very much like Tyler's takes on urbanism, on transport and on modernism (in architecture and design). Since he turned the 'lifestyle' magazine market inside out when he launched <i>Wallpaper</i> in 1996, his editorial push has been characterised by a purity of vision and a earnest championing of good taste and human scale urban design - quality, authenticity and integrity in urbanism. Looking at his magazines, you might think that postmodernism never happened.</div>
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The most recent edition of <i>Monocle</i> points out that, as we're getting accustomed to having tough economic forecasts thrust in front of us, and as politicians and mass-media pundits struggle to begin to think about how they might approach - as they eventually must - the necessity of starting to condition the general public to the fact that a return to economic growth may not actually be possible - certain brands, businesses, regions and people seem not to be merely surviving, but rather thriving despite the economic crisis. The magazine devotes an editorial and an entire globetrotting section with travelogues (dérives) and essays (polemics) all turned to the examination of that special quality which allows some to float easily to the top to enjoy the oxygen of prosperity while others sink in the stifling mire of economic depression. Tyler's travel writers, photographers, philosophers, and graphic artists are flung to the four corners of the earth and return to identify this fundamental ingredient of resilient success. They conclude that this vital essence is <b>charm</b>.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>>>>>>><br />It's a set of attributes got by doing things based on human feelings and not because a focus group says it sounds good or the numbers seem to add up when you pile them on to an Excel sheet. The reason we think this word [charm] is key in 2012 is because it adds the DNA for longevity into brands, business and neighbourhoods<br />[…]<br />Honesty, integrity, simplicity … are other words that help all manner of firms thrive, but oddly, they never seem to make it past the door of a business school. That's because these things can't be taught; you have to genuinely possess these qualities.<br />[…]<br />Charm is unquantifiable, which is why management consultants and MBA graduates overlook it. Decisions about the future of a town, building or business that are made in the boardroom don't consider the importance or charm. … And yet charm is arguably the most important factor for securing repeat business, which in today's financial climate is invaluable.<br />Charm is fragile too - it's not something you can buy (think Dubai), it takes time to nurture and requires safeguarding because, once lost, it's near impossible to reinstate.<br /><<<<<<<<</i></span></blockquote>
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So you can see that this resonates with today's urban planning tumult in Aberdeen. Since the intervention of oil-tycoon Sir Ian Wood in 2008 caused the collapse of the project to build the Northern Light (a contemporary art centre) in favour of his own vanity-stroking City Square Project (as was), the discourse in Aberdeen has been characterised by a singular lack of charm. Accusation and counter-accusation have flown in an increasingly polarised debate as the polity is subjected to the spectacle of a process which has been distressingly divisive. Misdirection, misinformation, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)" target="_blank">sock-puppetry</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations#Negative_PR" target="_blank">DPR</a>, website hacking, vexatious allegations, character assassinations and other dirty tricks have all been rumoured to have been used by one side or the other or both. Allegedly. We have been disappointed but unsurprised to see a lack of balance in the local press, who have continued to act as editorial mouthpieces for the boosters of CO2-supremo Sir Ian Wood's project, their pro-development articles hitting their own front pages with predictably metronomic regularity. But then, we've <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-is-white-up-is-down-225.html" target="_blank">long since aired</a> our <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/01/cognitive-dissonance-churnalism-think.html" target="_blank">disappointment</a> about how our Aberdeen newspapers are operated.</div>
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In our opinion, the distasteful aspects of this process which will in effect privatise commonly-held land, were inevitable. When carbon-bigwig Sir Ian Wood first announced his intention to outbid the creative and performing arts community in Aberdeen he set our teeth on edge by <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/art-student-versus-millionaire-in-a-battle-for-a-city-s-heart-1.929558" target="_blank">going on record and saying</a>:</div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Eighty percent of the people who spend time in [my] square will have no interest in the arts.</span></i></blockquote>
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So breathtaking an expression and expectation of philistinism, both patronising and dismissive, used by the emission-king Sir Ian Wood as a justification for why his scheme would be preferred by the people of Aberdeen over the Northern Light scheme, was inevitably seen by the creative arts community - both producers and consumers with curator-types in between - as an opening pre-emptive strike in a dirty war for the soul (both metaphysical and urban-physical) of our town. Thus was the wind sown, and now we reap the whirlwind as the time has arrived and the people of Aberdeen are now making a decision on whether or not the park gets bulldozed. A postal referendum is in progress at this time. What emission-monger Sir Ian Wood first called "The City Square Project" has been re-branded "The City <i>Garden</i> Project". You can see what they did there.</div>
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<b>THE SUPERFICIAL CHARM OF BOILERPLATE</b></div>
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One of the many aspects which has characterised the moneymen's push to foist their debt-creating real-estate land-grab and building project on the people of Aberdeen is the use of pubic relations (PR) consultancies who are involved in projecting a presence (we think that's the kind of thing these sorts of people tend to say) for the City <strike>Square</strike> Garden Project. Posters, flyers, web, social media, radio, tv and print. It's all been very slick and impressive. If you think that a corporate branding and impression management (as they say) exercise can ever be impressive, that is. Many people do in these <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/02/a-to-z-of-aberdeen-h-is-for.html" target="_blank">hyperreal</a> times, more's the pity.</div>
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A couple of weeks ago, I asked one of the social media manifestation aspects of the City <strike>Square</strike> Garden Project a straightforward enough genuine question. Here's what I asked:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>>>>>>>><br />One of the things which is a perennial spectacle in Aberdeen, in the city centre, is the sunset gathering of starlings - vectoring in from all directions and amorphously flocking in the sky above Union Street. The spectacular flock (numbering tens of thousands of birds) swoops around the city centre, gathering strength of numbers as subsidiary flocks join, before groups break off and dive beneath Union Bridge to roost.</i></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i> </i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>The RSPB and the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) state that: "starling numbers have fallen by 66 per cent in Britain since the mid-1970s. Because of this decline in numbers, the starling is red listed as a bird of high conservation concern."</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>And the RSPB also note that the Countryside Act (1981) makes it illegal to intentionally kill, injure or take a starling, or to take, damage or destroy an active nest or its contents. They say that preventing the birds from gaining access to their nests may also be viewed as illegal by the courts. And indeed, the provisions of the Scottish Nature Conservation Act (which supersedes and modifies the Countryside Act) are more stringent yet when it comes to bird habitat protection, making it an explicit offence to: "obstruct or prevent any wild bird from using its nest". How can this be avoided by the plans as proposed?</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>How will the project circumvent the provisions of the Countryside Act and the Scottish Nature Conservation Act? How will the promotors of the project deal with this issue? Has the City Garden Project been in touch with the RSPB and the BTO? If they have not already contacted the RSPB/BTO, why not?<br /><<<<<<<<<<</i></span></blockquote>
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The response from the City <strike>Square</strike> Garden Project's social media manifestation:</div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>> </span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">We love the birds too and want to see them remain in the city centre. What is exciting about the new gardens is the fact that new eco-systems and habitats will be created by the larger gardens with a greater diversity of plants and wildlife.</span></i> </blockquote>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><<<<<</span></i></blockquote>
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Ugh. Firstly, when I read that, I had the feeling that I'd been mugged. It's that superficial charm of the PR "handling" thing that they do by the numbers; that thing that's straight out of the first year media studies playbook where they 1. gushingly agree ("yes we love birds too, see - we're just like you!") - then 2. deflect by issuing handwaving boilerplate ("the new thing will be EVEN BETTER"); all without addressing the serious and genuine specific concerns I'd expressed. At the time of writing, I've seen no genuine response to my questions from the City <strike>Square</strike> Gardens Project PR people. </div>
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The thing about charm is, it cannot be faked. We can all tell when a corporate entity has a "workshopped vision" rather than a genuine opinion. We are used to the cant of the scripted interactions we must suffer with call centres and checkout till operators. We can even now detect when the script has been drafted in order to appear unscripted. It's wearing, it's tiring, it's disheartening. We live now in an age of flesh-robots consulting decision-tree boilerplate scripts. Where are the real people? What are their genuine opinions? It's doubly disheartening to realise that the real people promoting this real-estate venture (in this case, emission-king Sir Ian Wood and a group of 50 anonymous(ish) - certainly faceless - businesspeople who are bankrolling the PR initiative) reckon themselves to be so lacking in genuine charm that they must retain a PR consultancy to generate a continual outgushing of superficial charm boilerplate in order to deflect public attention away from them, and away from key questions and problems with the project. I suppose, at least, we should congratulate the group of fifty anonymous(ish) businesspeople for their self-knowledge. </div>
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<b>A HAPPY IMPRESSION OF BLACKMAIL</b></div>
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A correspondent pointed us towards the <a href="http://www.kenmcewen.com/blog/files/a87c4850cf9bf187ac06e200b3831750-114.php" target="_blank">blog of local(ish) PR practitioner Ken McEwan</a>, in which the PR-man contends that - unless the people of Aberdeen consent to carbon-mogul Sir Ian Wood's real-estate development scheme which would destroy Aberdeen's only town centre green space - there will be no further investment of any kind in Aberdeen. When he asserts: <b><i>"This is an all or nothing package"</i></b> he's kind-of saying <b><i>"Vote Yes to the comprehensive redevelopment of Union Terrace Gardens or the rest of the city gets it!"</i></b> </div>
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Of course, the PR-man avoids any use of the words "loan" or "debt", choosing to use the words "investment" and "funding" instead. But leaving that aside, and also leaving aside the arguable thrust of the "all or nothing" assertion, what we find most enlightening is the posture that this PR-man is happy to be seen to be taking. To us, it seems that he appears to be revelling in creating the impression of a kind of civic-development blackmail. Aren't these PR-types charming?</div>
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<b>CO-OPTED</b></div>
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When we last wrote about this subject, we got a bit of criticism for our use of language like "emission-king" and "pollution-mogul" when describing carbon-baron Sir Ian Wood. Some people thought we ran the risk of undermining the work of the various voluntary groups who are working to retain Union Terrace Gardens. We responded by saying that we would happily consent to the destruction of Union Terrace Gardens were the pre-eminent CO2-magnate Sir Ian Wood to renounce his role in the extraction of oil and gas and denounce the oil industry for the atmosphere-threatening activity which it demonstrably is. We said that we were not interested in coalitions, particularly when membership of a coalition might compromise our principles. It's a matter of perspective - for what use will a small city centre park be should the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation" target="_blank">thermohaline circulation system collapse</a>? How will Union Terrace Gardens in their current form help the hundreds of millions of people who will be displaced from low-lying coastal regions as sea levels rise? When ever will the many hundreds of thousands who will be killed in resource-wars to come be able to enjoy the peace and tranquility of a sunken garden in a provincial northern town? </div>
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So we were saddened when the major grouping of volunteers which is working to retain Union Terrace Gardens announced that they have received the beneficent backing of oil-tycoon Jimmy Reid (yes, another one, another tycoon). We wrote about the intransigence of these pollution-millionaires before, in the context of the <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/10/collapse_07.html" target="_blank">financial collapse of the potentially atmosphere-saving carbon capture and storage pilot plant</a> at Longannet power station. </div>
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In a press release, carbon-grandee Jimmy Reid, publicity-friendly MD and Chairman of Balmoral Group said:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>>>>>>><br />I and many of my business contemporaries, are committed to establishing a fund which will help bring the gardens back to their former glory. Without destroying our heritage, and without putting Aberdeen City further into debt, it would not be difficult to breathe fresh life into the park. Improved access, new planting, cleaning and restoration, park wardens and live events could all be relatively easily and cost effectively achieved.<br /><<<<<<<</i></span></blockquote>
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We were sickened by the sycophancy which Jimmy Milne's announcement provoked from some members of the groups who want to retain Union Terrace Gardens. And we were troubled by this talk of a fund set up by faceless businesspeople to run a public park. But, again, these are side issues. More important to us is that we certainly don't want our activism (such as it is) to be co-opted weight-of-numbers-wise (as it runs the risk of being) in support of the consent-manufacturing activities of the pollution-magnates and their climate-jeopardising activities, whatever their views on the direction of urbanism, new or old. Such are the dangers of coalition membership. Which oil-tycoon do you prefer? We prefer neither.</div>
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<b>SOUR GRAPES</b></div>
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The whole spectacle of this fight for the future of a small park has split opinion in this town. It has marginalised the creative sector, it has damaged the arts and it has polarised discourse. It has served as a window-dressing diversion away from the necessity to build a <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2012/01/energy-trap-bubble-market-capital-trap.html" target="_blank">truly sustainable industrial future for Aberdeen based upon the exploitation of renewable energy sources</a>. The atmosphere of hostility and distrust is poisonous to the enjoyment of this town for its own sake, something which is one of the avowed aims of the whole OtherAberdeen blog. And now the polity of the whole town has been manoeuvred into the false dilemma of being forced to endorse either the vision of one oil-tycoon or the other. We feel a need to distance ourselves from this spectacle, for sometimes the grapes <i>really are</i> sour.</div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-48613572493540192202012-02-13T17:08:00.000+00:002012-02-13T17:08:02.429+00:00Under<div style="text-align: justify;">
Growing up in Aberdeen, the young mind can't help but be fascinated by the under-ground (or rather, under-road) aspects of the town. Beneath large parts of Union Street, Bridge Street, The Castlegate, Market Street, Holburn Street, Bon-Accord Street and, of course, Rosemount Viaduct exist vaulted caverns which shoulder the carriageway above. The vaults beneath the Holburn and Bon Accord viaducts provide coal-cellars for the tenements which flank the structures; coal-chute covers sometimes still visible embedded in granite flagstones, anomalous amongst the concrete pavingstones. And I can especially remember being in a store-room/workshop beneath Union Street at some point during the mid-1970's. I can't remember for sure why I was there, something to do with a TV repair, but I do specifically remember the shop proprietor making great play of the fact that we were under the road. The shop premises was an electrical retailer (a local enterprise called "Alexanders") in the unit now occupied by that Anne Summers low-rent lingerie outlet. On Bridge Street, there was a sports goods shop (I can't remember the name) which had premises on both sides of the road, linked through the vault under the road. I remember a very narrow steep boxy staircase. One-at-a-time please.</div>
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A while ago, we touched on the subject a little:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/up-stairs-to-understanding-of.html" target="_blank">http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/up-stairs-to-understanding-of.html</a></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>></span> </i></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Viaducts like these exist all over Europe in formerly hilly town centres with which the Victorians had their vainglorious way. Notably Edinburgh has its many viaducts and bridges with vaulted caverns below, and those vaults are put to work as entertainment venues, pop-up pubs, knocking shops, ghost-tour backdrops, etc. Similarly, London's Oxford street is, in part, raised above the former natural topography. In parts, entire pre-Victorian streetscapes are preserved below vaults, notably the Georgian shopping street which has been preserved almost in its entirety below the Selfridges department store. We understand that this living psychogeographical fossil (for what else can we call it?) has been from time to time used as a film-set. Back home, we have heard claims of secret access, of strange artifacts and of old cottages and the like existing below the vaulted stonework of Aberdeen's viaducts, but we treat these claims with scepticism. We know that, notwithstanding the odd restaurant and nightclub, the vaults of Aberdeen are most commonly used as underground carparks, and commercial storage. However, we would love to learn of more exotic uses, of secrets forgotten, of stories waiting to be told. We would so love be proven wrong.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><<<<<<</i></span></blockquote>
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I was passing the door to the vaults beneath Market Street one day last week. By being on foot and keeping eyes open, you can increase your chances of being in the right place at the right time. A new air extraction system was being installed in the vaults, I chatted a bit to the HVAC guys, and they let me in...</div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-18975232116802030972012-02-10T19:10:00.003+00:002012-02-10T23:31:27.994+00:00Dog in Manger Throws Toys out of PramDo you remember this one?<br />
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<a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/dog-in-manger.html" target="_blank">http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/dog-in-manger.html</a><br />
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Updated today with this:<br />
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And, all the more extraordinarily, with this:<br />
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News also reaches us <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trump-declares-war-on-salmond.16718168" target="_blank">via The Herald </a>of a letter which Donald Trump has written to Alex Salmond MSP, Scotland's First Minister.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Trump Declares War on Scotland</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trump-declares-war-on-salmond.16718168"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trump-declares-war-on-salmond.16718168</span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>>>>>>>></i></span> </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>In a withering letter, he tells Mr Salmond that by encouraging the construction of offshore wind farms, "you will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than any event in Scottish history"</i></span> </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Later, in a radio interview, he said that included wars.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Mr Trump has been fighting against 11 off-shore turbines which he claims would spoil the views from his new championship golf course at Balmedie. He has already declared no more work will be done on his planned hotel, 950 holiday homes and 500 houses until the fate of the wind farm is decided. He has also demanded a public inquiry, and a decision is expected within four months.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>However, in his letter to the First Minister, Mr Trump paints a wider canvas: "You seem hell bent on destroying Scotland's coastline and, therefore, Scotland itself". He says he could never support this "insanity".</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>"As a matter of fact I have just authorised a member of my staff to allocate a substantial amount of money to launch an international campaign to fight your plan to surround Scotland's coast with many thousands of wind turbines – it will be like looking through the bars of a prison and the Scottish citizens will be the prisoners," the letter adds.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Mr Trump says tourists would not suffer because there would not be any coming to Scotland because of the wind farm policy.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>He questions the economic wisdom of Scottish ministers laying such store in wind energy: "For the record, taxing your citizens to subsidise wind projects owned by foreign energy companies will destroy your country and its economy. Jobs will not be created in Scotland because these ugly monstrosities known as turbines are manufactured in other countries such as China. These countries, who so benefit from your billions of pounds in payments, are laughing at you."</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><<<<<<<</i></span></blockquote>
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You'll see that the article points out that Donald Trump promises to finance an "international campaign" against windfarm developments all over Scotland. Extraordinary.</div>
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Being residents of Aberdeen, Scottish, interested in energy policy, interested in planning issues, etc as we are, these outbursts seem almost comical in their hyperbole to us. But then we realise that we, perhaps, are not the intended audience of Donald Trump's polemics. Nor, perhaps, are the political figures to whom he has nominally addressed these paroxysms. No, the intended audience of Donald Trump's outpourings might be exclusively made up of his existing stakeholders. Last summer, blaming the global downturn, Donald Trump pulled back from his originally promised development of a "high class" [sic] golf resort with five star hotel, condominiums, luxury villas and the like. Now Donald Trump finds himself with a development which some have suggested that he cannot finance, and from which it has been said that he cannot profit.</div>
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The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-16969723" target="_blank">BBC sought a response</a> from the Scottish Government, and got this choice quote:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>>>>>></i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Scottish waters are estimated to have as much as a quarter of Europe's potential offshore wind energy. A recent study suggests that harnessing just a third of the practical resource off our coast by 2050 would enable us to generate enough electricity to power Scotland seven times over.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><<<<<</i></span></blockquote>
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Adding to this, Niall Stewart, who is Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables said:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>>>>>></i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Who is Donald Trump to tell Scotland what is good for our economy and our environment? Offshore wind is already attracting billions of pounds of investment and supporting hundreds of jobs across Scotland.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><<<<<</i></span></blockquote>
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That Donald Trump has chosen to try to stand in the way of this juggernaut - picking a fight which (surely even he knows well) he cannot win, might be seen on the face of it to be ill-judged and foolhardy. Particularly perplexing is that Donald Trump chooses to pick an unnecessary fight, for, as Niall Stuart also points out - there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why these developments cannot exist side by side. </div>
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When these facts are appreciated, some people might conclude the following: that Donald Trump's outbursts over the last few days are not intended to influence Scottish Government energy policy; the statements are not intended to win hearts and minds in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire; they are not aimed at "saving Scotland" as Donald Trump asserts; and nor are they intended to promote his golf course. Those same sceptics might believe that these polemics are, rather, aimed at saving face. Sceptics as they are, they might be tempted to think that, confronted with what could be seen as the prospect of failure at Menie - instead of accepting responsibility for what might be seen as an ill-judged investment and own up to what could be understood as management failures; rather than draw attention to his financial situation or just admit that, as some might say, he appears to be beaten - Donald Trump must find an external reason outwith his control; something to blame. Those same sceptics might be tempted to say that he needs a scapegoat by which to deflect the attention of his investors, backers, fans, boosters and other key stakeholders away from what might be interpreted as his burgeoning personal and corporate failure in Aberdeenshire.<br />
<br />
But we would never say such things about a man and organisation we respect as much as we do. We daren't.<br />
<br />
The necessity for Scotland to have future prosperity based upon an energy supply which does not jeopardise the atmosphere appears, the sceptic might conclude, to offer Donald Trump just that way out.<br />
<br />
So, if the sceptics are proven right, who are we to stand in the way of what could be understood to be Donald Trump's face-saving exit strategy? But if and when he does go, we will miss such entertaining spectacle as he has provided for the last five years! </div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Haste ye back!</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-84954457995778302752012-02-10T15:28:00.001+00:002012-02-10T15:28:25.115+00:00That's Entertainment!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="284" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/36549287?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="505"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-43380932309720102012-01-25T08:57:00.000+00:002012-01-25T14:32:46.357+00:00Attitudes to Surveillance in Public Places<div style="text-align: justify;">
Followers of Road Rage News will not be unfamiliar with this classic which has gone viral in the last few days, having first been picked up by the magnificent <a href="http://bristolcars.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Bristol Traffic blog</a>, then mainstream media outlets the Guardian and Telegraph. A business motorist was caught on camera verbally abusing a man who filmed her car blocking a busy road. She threatens to tell the police that he assaulted her. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="372" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/k8zqNe0ujwE?rel=0" width="505"></iframe><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The YouTube user, intrigued by a truly frightful example of arrogant motoring started filming on his vidphone. The motorist jumps out of her car, and starts pursuing the pedestrian down the street.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"You've been filming me. Gimme that phone - now! You've been filming me - it's illegal! It's illegal! Who the fuck do you think you are, filming me? I'm trying to get to my place of work - how dare you fat little lump? </i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>[...later...]</i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I want to know who you are, I want to know where you live or where you work."</i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
She also threatens him with a fraudulent vexatious allegation (of assault) and a man (thought to be the motorist's husband) harangues and intimidatingly menaces the YouTube user. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Leaving to one side the appallingly ignorant and arrogant driving style of the business motorist who is the subject of the video and also leaving aside the harassment and intimidation she and her husband visited upon the pedestrian, what intrigues all the more is the attitude to surveillance in public places.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If Bath is anything like Aberdeen, everyone is almost always and everywhere in the town centre subject to video (and, increasingly, <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/01/big-brother-is-now-listening.html" target="_blank">audio</a> - oh, and <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2012/01/unacceptably-intrusive-covert.html" target="_blank">tracking</a>) surveillance. This surveillance is operated by civil authorities and, again - increasingly, by <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/12/private-enterprise-petit-police.html" target="_blank">private security firms</a>. As the driver of a high-ish end Audi, the business motorist who is the subject of the viral movie will doubtless be fully loaded with sat-nav and an anti-theft tracking device. All the information streams from these surveillance data gathering systems are transmitted to people (or AI expert-system statistical analysis and pattern recognition algorithms) in remote locations with unknowable proclivities and uncertain future outcomes. All of this our society has become accustomed to; if it bothers us at all, it does so only marginally. Yet, when the business motorist in the video spots that she is being filmed by a member of the public who is in plain view, who's face she can see and whom she can engage in conversation - she goes APESHIT. Why is that?</div>
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-91184520226735973252012-01-24T14:19:00.003+00:002012-01-24T15:32:07.659+00:00The Energy Trap, The Bubble Market, The Capital Trap<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nearly a year ago, at the premier of <a href="http://fraserdenholm.tumblr.com/showreel" target="_blank">filmmaker Fraser Denholm's</a> documentary feature <i><a href="http://vimeo.com/20513540" target="_blank">"Run Down Aberdeen"</a></i>, an open floor discussion with the audience followed the screening. During that discussion, <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msps/currentmsps/Lewis-Macdonald-MSP.aspx" target="_blank">local list Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald</a> was heard to say that <i>"high oil prices are good for Aberdeen"</i>. As, since the mid 1970's, the Aberdeen economy has become increasingly dependent upon the extraction of fossil fuels from the petroleum fields beneath the raging swells of the central and northern North Sea, for an MSP to make such a statement would seem to be - well - just common sense. Wouldn't it? </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But, whenever we're confronted with something which appears to be common sense, as psychogeographers, we're apt to try to have <i>a good look around the back</i>. We're on the same page as grand old man of letters W. Somerset Maugham on this one:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers."</i></span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So, what of this common sense claim that high oil prices are good for our town? As an opener, we'd draw attention to our old blog-post <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/07/a-to-z-of-aberdeen-d.html" target="_blank"><i>"D is for Dutch Disease"</i></a>, in which we examined the inimical effect on our local economy of this over-reliance on the one business sector with particular reference to the resource-extractive aspect of that sector:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>OtherAberdeen</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>The A to Z of Aberdeen, D is for The Dutch Disease</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/07/a-to-z-of-aberdeen-d.html" target="_blank">http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/07/a-to-z-of-aberdeen-d.html</a></i></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>></span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>The Dutch Disease is a concept in economics which explains how the development of a natural resource extraction business sector (like oil and gas) and its associated economic boom can over-balance an economy, causing decline in non-extractive value-adding sectors - particularly the manufacturing sector, but also in agriculture. The pathology of the Dutch Disease is accompanied by moral decline in the personal sphere (affluenza) and turpitude in the public sector (government) as it becomes entangled with big-money business interests. Hmm... sounds familiar?</i></span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><<<<<<<</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Since we wrote that, there have been an number of developments. And other than the bland "good for Aberdeen" assertion, we collectively must ask what high oil prices mean: what is the cause; and what is the effect <i>going forward</i> (as they say)?</div>
<br />
<br />
////////////____________________<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>THE ENERGY TRAP</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Recognition of evidence that global oil production is reaching (or has already reached) the "undulating plateau" at it's historic peak is now no longer the domain of the <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tin+foil+hat&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=r6YeT_TkHonJswbN0-SuDA&ved=0CEkQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=753" target="_blank">tin-foil hatters</a>. Today this recognition comes, not from the usual-suspect voice-in-the-wilderness Peak Oiler blogosphere (<a href="http://europe.theoildrum.com/" target="_blank">The Oil Drum</a>, <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/" target="_blank">The Energy Bulletin</a>, <a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/" target="_blank">The Post Carbon Institute</a> and such), but from the likes of the US military, Shell Oil, and the White House.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----o0o-----</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>United States Joint Forces Command</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Joint Operating Environment</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><a href="http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf</a></i></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>></span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>...by 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 [million barrels per day].</i></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><<<<<<<</span></blockquote>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
-----o0o-----</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Shell Oil</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>"Signals and Signposts"</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.shell.com/home/content/media/news_and_media_releases/2011/scenarios_signals_signposts_14022011.html" target="_blank">http://www.shell.com/home/content/media/news_and_media_releases/2011/scenarios_signals_signposts_14022011.html</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>></span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">We believe that the world is entering an era of volatile transitions and intensified economic cycles.</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">[…]</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Supply will struggle to keep pace with demand. By the end of the coming decade, growth in the production of easily accessible oil and gas will not match the projected rate of demand growth.</span> </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><<<<<<<</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<b></b></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<b>-----o0o-----</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Le Monde</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Washington considers a decline of world oil production as of 2011</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/03/25/washington-considers-a-decline-of-world-oil-production-as-of-2011/" target="_blank">http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/03/25/washington-considers-a-decline-of-world-oil-production-as-of-2011/</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>></span> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The Obama administration of Energy supports the … hypothesis of an "undulating plateau". Lauren Mayne, responsible for liquid fuel prospects at the DoE, explains : "Once maximum world oil production is reached, that level will be approximately maintained for several years thereafter, creating an undulating plateau. After this plateau period, production will experience a decline.</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">"</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Concern about the future availability of energy dense fuel sources, which will be required to create a transitional and then a sustainable energy infrastructure are beginning to be expressed in academic circles.</span></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><<<<<<</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">-----o0o-----</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Do The Math</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>The Energy Trap</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><a href="http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap" target="_blank">http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap</a></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Our reaction to a diminishing flow of fossil fuel energy in the short-term will determine whether we transition to a sustainable but technological existence or allow ourselves to collapse. One stumbling block in particular has me worried. I call it The Energy Trap.</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>In brief, the idea is that once we enter a decline phase in fossil fuel availability—first in petroleum—our growth-based economic system will struggle to cope with a contraction of its very lifeblood. Fuel prices will skyrocket, some individuals and exporting nations will react by hoarding, and energy scarcity will quickly become the new norm. The invisible hand of the market will slap us silly demanding a new energy infrastructure based on non-fossil solutions. But here’s the rub. The construction of that shiny new infrastructure requires not just money, but…energy. And that’s the very commodity </i>in short supply.<i> Will we really be willing to sacrifice additional energy in the short term—effectively steepening the decline—for a long-term energy plan? It’s a trap!</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><<<<<<<</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
-----o0o-----</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">////////////____________________</span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>THE BUBBLE MARKET</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>New Scientist</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Carbon bubble could threaten markets… maybe</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21031-carbon-bubble-could-threaten-markets-maybe.html" target="_blank">http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21031-carbon-bubble-could-threaten-markets-maybe.html</a></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>After the dot-com bubble and the property bubble, prepare for the carbon bubble. Entrepreneurs meeting in the Maldives last week warned that shaky assumptions about future fossil-fuel use are buoying financial markets and that the collapse of this "carbon bubble" could trigger another crash one day.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>"There is this suicidal river of capital flowing into fossil fuels," says Jeremy Leggett, a green entrepreneur ... based in London. "Let's get the risk acknowledged."</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>[…]</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>According to some studies, in order to have a chance of limiting global warming to 2 °C, humans cannot pump more than another 570 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere before 2050. Yet a report by energy-industry initiative Carbon Tracker, commissioned by Leggett and others, found that the proven fossil-fuel reserves of companies and countries would add up to 2800 Gt if burned for their energy.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>That means up to 80 per cent of known reserves may have to be left in the ground if governments decide to limit total future emissions to 570 Gt.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>[…]</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Leggett's point, though, is that the carbon bubble is a risk that investors are overlooking. Pension funds, for instance, continue to put their money into gas, oil and coal companies without taking account of it.</i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><<<<<<</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
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-----o0o-----</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's not our intention here to examine the alarming geopolitical implications of this onrushing environmental degradation and energy supply bottleneck, chewy and crunchy though that will be. And, let us be clear, global oil production figures have never been higher. However, North Sea oil production is well past its peak, and is falling rapidly.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<b>THE CAPITAL TRAP</b></div>
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While the oil price per barrel in US dollars peaked at near $150 during 2008 and then fell sharply, the price of North Sea oil has 'recovered' (as they say) and is today trading at $110. And in the intervening period, fluctuations in currency exchange rates have meant that, when expressed in Pounds Sterling or Euros, oil has never ever traded at a higher price. The combination of this all-time record high price along with both record global demand and falling UK output is an unfortunate triple-confluence of global trends for our provincial town. The implications of this co-incidence for the sustainability of high levels of economic activity and employment in our town are troubling, for - as oil reserves diminish - the grinding certainties of geological happenstance and the imperatives of the profit motive insist that it is the more difficult, more expensive to reach reserves which are tapped last - and the cheaper-to-exploit resources are those which are extracted first. The high oil price, for this 'province' (as they say) hastens the day when those easier reserves are gone, and all that remains is the difficult stuff - the reserves which require a high market price for oil before the return on investment realises the cost of exploitation. (Monetary costs only, that is. There are, of course, many externalities.) But worse even than that, the current excessively high return on investment acts like black hole for capital - sucking in investment which, as the necessity to stabilise and reduce carbon-dependency in our energy supply begins to bite, would be better reallocated towards putting our energy supply on a sustainable, renewable, decarbonised foundation.</div>
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Recently, news reports have pointed towards investment growth in support of a burgeoning renewable energy sector; Inverness, Perth, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Orkney all beneficiaries. Alas, little of that investment is directed towards Aberdeen, distracted as our local capital and skill base is towards the glittering prizes of riches wrung from the high-value fossil fuels lying in the convoluted strata kilometres beneath the seabed.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>The Courier</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Enterprise area status a boost for Dundee's renewable energy hopes</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><a href="http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Business/article/20374/enterprise-area-status-a-boost-for-dundee-s-renewable-energy-hopes.html" target="_blank">http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Business/article/20374/enterprise-area-status-a-boost-for-dundee-s-renewable-energy-hopes.html</a></i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Dundee's fledgling renewables sector has been given a major boost by being declared as one of Scotland's new enterprise areas.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>[…]</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>It is hoped the dock's new status will encourage companies such as utilities giant SSE to progress plans to make Dundee a key focus of their North Sea renewables plans. The Perth-based company signed a memorandum of understanding with Dundee City Council, Forth Ports and Scottish Enterprise to explore options for a new manufacturing plant to be established at Dundee Port to service the offshore wind sector.</i></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Any such development would create hundreds of jobs directly and in the associated supply chain.</span> </i></div>
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But here in Aberdeen the energy trap is compounded by the fossil-fuel-powered capital trap as investment disappears over the event-horizon of record oil prices into the black hole of non-renewable hydrocarbon extraction. And on the streets of our town, excessive pay rates in that extractive sector are visibly disappearing down the sink-sector drain of conspicuous consumption and a grotesquely distended housing bubble. Aspiration (as commonly understood) is all to often demonstrably mistaken for acquisition, and affluence is mistaken for wealth as late-stage consumerism mounts its final stand in the shopping malls of our inconsequential northern provincial town.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>The Scotsman</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Scots can cash in on £375bn oil bonanza </b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/scotland/scots_can_cash_in_on_375bn_oil_bonanza_1_1943934" target="_blank">http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/scotland/scots_can_cash_in_on_375bn_oil_bonanza_1_1943934</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>>></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande';"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">SCOTLAND’S North Sea oil and gas industry can deliver a £376 billion bonanza over the next 40 years and secure Aberdeen as “one of the global energy capitals” of the future, according to a report published today</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study said the oil boom was there for the taking if government and industry leaders can “grasp the many opportunities”.</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Mark Higginson, senior partner at PwC in Aberdeen, said: “We have a remarkable – and potentially unrepeatable – opportunity to position the city as an international energy centre of excellence… However, this isn’t simply going to fall to Aberdeen by right. We need to shape our own destiny and the journey must start now, with everyone focused on a single, definitive strategy that embraces core objectives of maximising oil reserves, exploiting the new frontier areas west of Shetland and the Arctic, becoming a talent magnet and more effectively serving the needs of industry...”</span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The study, titled Northern Lights: a strategic vision of Aberdeen as a world-class energy capital, advised stakeholders to collaborate more to build on the city’s long track record in oil and gas, without which there was a risk that the opportunities within reach may slip away.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Alternative Energy Strategy for Council Owned Public Buildings</b></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Whilst each project to develop <b>alternative</b> energy technologies will require detailed analysis and evaluation before being progressed, this strategy will provide the overall context in which future projects will be developed.</span> </i></blockquote>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">May 2011 Version 4</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Appendix 2: Overview of Available Technologies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>This strategy will consider a number of <b>alternative</b> energy technologies some of which are outlined below. It should be noted that for Council owned public buildings planning permission for <b>alternative</b> energy technologies is not required unless the equipment is valued over £100,000.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<a href="http://acsef.co.uk/viewNews.cfm?theID=59&page=2" target="_blank">Time</a> and <a href="http://acsef.co.uk/viewNews.cfm?theID=53&page=1" target="_blank">again</a> we are frustrated when we see clean, sustainable energy sources, which are available to exploit in abundance all over and around Scotland, referred to by Aberdeen's people and businesses as <a href="http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=13864&txtonly=1" target="_blank">"alternative energy"</a>. The use of that phrase "alternative energy" is telling. It tells you everything you might want to know about the people and businesses that use it. Rather than use words like "sustainable" or "renewable" or "clean" when discussing non-polluting energy sources they instead label these sources of energy as "alternative". In the UK, the use of that word has pejorative connotations, usually to do with "alternative" lifestyles like strict veganism, communal living, far-left political beliefs or religious cults or other hippy-dippy stuff which is to be mistrusted, feared, scorned and therefore belittled whenever possible. By using this kind of language the people and businesses of Aberdeen show that their default position associates clean energy sources with questionable fringe actives and beliefs which are to be scorned. This sets the context in which they frame their discourse and actions, for language is never neutral.</div>
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And thus we despair that it's becoming increasingly unlikely that significant capital will be reallocated away from the atmosphere-threatening hydrocarbon industry to build a sustainable local economy based upon clean energy sources here in time to secure the vaunted title "Global Energy Capital" [sic] which local business development companies claim for our town. For the one-way-bet certainty afforded by an oil-price which, despite globally defective demand; despite recession or depression, remains proudly above the psychologically significant $100 per barrel mark is a huge distraction to capital, which (as we have all seen since 2008) always discounts the future.</div>
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Flashing like the urgent "HOLD NOW" buttons of a slot machine stuck on a jackpot payout, this ton-high oil price militates against any thought of significant reallocation of capital crossing the minds of the oil companies and their executives here. The certain play of continued and renewed investment in the oil-bearing strata beneath the seas of the UK's continental shelf satisfies the needs of capital oh so much more than adequately. Why would capital (the need to increase itself being its primary reason for existing - integral to its true definition) redeploy away from so certain a one-way bet into something a just little more risky?</div>
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The tickers tick up on global heat budget, CO2 concentration, social inequality, species extinction, deforestation, ocean acidification, resource depletion and political instability and conflict. But the ticker also ticks up - ever up - on the free-market price of a barrel of oil. That same ticker begins to look like a countdown to the deadline for establishing a sustainable economic future for Aberdeen. The high oil price an obstruction, a distraction. It's in the way of the future. </div>
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Local labour politician Lewis Macdonald stated at the screening of 'Run Down Aberdeen' that "high oil prices are good for Aberdeen". Politicians, it seems, also discount the future.</div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-40485896425449506312012-01-22T17:16:00.001+00:002012-01-22T23:09:34.403+00:00Unacceptably Intrusive Covert Surveillance<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the UK, it's a regrettable fact that we're used to being visually surveilled by closed circuit TV at all times and everywhere in public town-centre spaces - either by civic authorities when in public realm space, or by private security contractors when in commercially-operated space. Very often that commercially-operated urban space gives every appearance of being public realm space; a good example being the plaza on the top deck of Aberdeen's St Nicholas shopping centre, which connects pedestrian access between St Nicholas Street, the historic St Nicholas churchyard and Schoolhill/Upperkirkgate. It looks very much like public space, it provides a vital pedestrian access thoroughfare in the heart of the town and it just <i>feels</i> like a public realm space. But it isn't; it belongs to and is operated by <a href="http://www.landsecuritiesretail.com/" target="_blank">Land Securities plc</a> (<i>LandSec</i>, as they are known to insiders, is the UK's largest commercial property developer). Similarly, the border between public realm space and commercially-operated space is often ill-defined and it's difficult for the casual pedestrian to discern at what point his or her rights of way and freedom of assembly have been extinguished in favour of commercial exigencies. One of the most striking examples of this phenomenon in Aberdeen is the interface between the Rail Station and the Union Square shopping centre. The developers of the site have designed the commercial 'offering' (as they say) around pre-existing desire lines so that it's not easy for someone arriving by train in Aberdeen to find his or her way into public realm space without first passing through space which is part of the Union Square commercial venture and as so is operated by a private company.<br />
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Anyone who doubts that we have a good reason to be concerned about this; anyone who's prepared to trot out the old <i>"if you've nothing to hide then you've nothing to fear"</i> excuse for kowtowing to those who would surveil us at every possible opportunity should read <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/07/panopticon-singularity.html" target="_blank">this</a>, and <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/12/private-enterprise-petit-police.html" target="_blank">this</a>, and <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/02/private-enterprise-petit-police-at.html" target="_blank">this</a>, and <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/03/fear-kraken.html" target="_blank">this</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-walk-i-cycle-i-look-i-think-i-am-bad.html" target="_blank">this</a> and <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes-nos.html" target="_blank">this</a>.</div>
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While we have serious concerns about the normalisation of blanket surveillance in urban space (at the risk of sounding starry-eyed naive) we at least preserve a hope that civil authorities do what they do in service of the greater good, on behalf of us all and answerable to our elected representatives. By contrast, surveillance undertaken by private security firms on behalf of the commercial operators of privately-owned urban space do so only in the service of profit, <i>enhanced shareholder value (</i>as they say). Still, though, at least we get warning of such surveillance - CCTV operators are obliged by law to display signs letting us all know that an area is covered by surveillance. These signs are indeed visible (adding ever more to streetfurniture clutter) in both town centre public and private realm spaces.<br />
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But now news reaches us via <i>The Scotsman</i> newspaper of an insidious new form of surveillance being 'rolled out' (as they say) across the shopping centres of Aberdeen.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Movements of shoppers tracked by 1984 phone technology</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.scotsman.com/business/technology/movements_of_shoppers_tracked_by_1984_phone_technology_1_2043604" target="_blank">http://www.scotsman.com/business/technology/movements_of_shoppers_tracked_by_1984_phone_technology_1_2043604</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>>>>>>>></i></span> </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>...unsuspecting shoppers who enter a shopping centre are now often tracked on a screen by retail staff – using their mobile phone signals to locate their path through the shops.</i></span> </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Many Scottish centres are using the technology – which has been adopted by property giant Land Securities, which owns a large number of major shopping centres and has installed the tracking devices in ten of them – as well as rival Hammerson, which operates the technology at the Silverburn shopping centre in Glasgow and plans to install at its Union Square development in Aberdeen this year.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>The Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow, the Bon Accord and St Nicholas shopping centres in Aberdeen and Livingston’s The Centre are also among those north of the Border using FootPath, created by Path Intelligence, which is behind a range of technology to help shopping centre bosses plan their layouts.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Path Intelligence chief executive Sharon Biggar refused to admit whether the technology was even in use in Scotland for “data protection” reasons – although she did acknowledge that it was utilised in centres in the UK and six other countries around the world.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>“We are not allowed to reveal the names of any of our clients because of data protection laws,” she told The Scotsman. However, while the company fiercely protects its paying clients, it does not give shoppers the same privacy.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>The refusal to list where this technology is in use means that shoppers are unaware that they are being tracked – unless they spot the small signs alerting them to the practice. However, even if they do see the signs, there is no option for them to opt out of the scheme without turning off their mobile phones.</i></span> </blockquote>
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To which we'd add that the great majority of today's mobile phone handsets cannot be fully powered down without removing the battery, and so your phone will respond to a tracking ping <b><i>even if you might think you've turned it off.</i></b> </div>
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This same Ms Biggar, of Path Intellegence, manufacturers of the intrusive surveillance technology, is also quoted in the <i>Aberdeen Citizen</i> freesheet (<i>"BEST [sic] free newspaper in Scotland"</i>):</div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">"We are very open with the public. We ask our clients to have signage up where the system is operating. The signs are exactly the same as the ones for CCTV"</span></i></blockquote>
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Yet, when we pass through Bon Accord and St Nicholas shopping centres, while we can see the signs which warn us of CCTV surveillance, we see no signs whatsoever warning us that we are to be subjected to this new form of distasteful electronic-tracking intrusion. The only indication of this novel and intimidating privacy-busting technology you get is if you manage to spot the sensors themselves. Here's one, it's about the size of a hardback book:</div>
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See if you can spot them next time you visit the Bon Accord and St Nicholas shopping centres! </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>FootPath Technology </b></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.pathintelligence.com/en/products/footpath/footpath-technology" target="_blank">http://www.pathintelligence.com/en/products/footpath/footpath-technology</a></span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>></span></i> </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>The Path Intelligence FootPath system consists of a small number of </i><b>discreet</b><i> monitoring units installed throughout the centre. These units calculate the movement of consumers without requiring the shopper to wear or carry any special equipment. The units measure signals from the consumers' mobile phones using unique technology that can locate a consumer's position to within a few metres. These units feed this data (24 hours a day 7 days a week) to a processing centre, where the data is audited and sophisticated statistical analysis is applied to create continuously updated information on the flow of shoppers throughout the centre. At any time the shopping centre management can access the data via PI's secure web-based reporting system.</i></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The FootPath technology is the only system available on the market today that can gather information on shopper paths continuously and accurately. FootPath can be installed in one centre or across a portfolio, providing you with quantifiable information to help you monitor your centre and assess the impact of your business decisions.</span></i></blockquote>
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Interesting to note that the system is not closed; that is to say that it is not an discreet network within only the building it serves. Rather, the data that the system gathers is transmitted to a Path Intelligence central processing facility. (Who knows where? Most probably this function is itself outsourced to an offshore number crunching data centre.) The data, once analysed, is then distributed via the internet back to the subscriber. We cannot know whether this is local Bon Accord or St Nicholas centre management, or some central management facility of Land Securities plc. In any case, it's not just the shopping centre security contractor, nor the shopping centre management or owners who have access to information about your movements, the providers of the tracking technology also gather that data. We have to ask ourselves how we feel about this. Did you like the bit where they said that shoppers are <i>"not required to wear or carry special equipment"</i>? We suppose we should, at least, be thankful for that!</div>
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It is telling that, even as the operators of our shopping centres fail to notify us of the fact that this intrusive surveillance is taking place, the providers of the tracking technology make capital of the fact that the monitoring units are <b><i>discreet</i></b>. Why, unless they fear a backlash of public disgust and outrage, would the unobtrusive physical footprint of the tracking units be regarded as one of the benefits - the <i>unique selling points</i> (as they say) of this highly intrusive development in our cities? It's as if they're trying to keep their data-gathering activities as covert as possible.</div>
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Someone should tell them - <b><i>if they've nothing to hide, then they've nothing to fear.</i></b></div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-63210975405011044952012-01-20T16:08:00.002+00:002012-01-21T18:08:57.316+00:00Union Terrace Gardens or City Gardens Project - A Final Thought or Two Before You Decide<div style="text-align: justify;">
OK, there's so much in the media about the ongoing controversy surrounding oil-tycoon Sir Ian Wood's vision of comprehensively redeveloping Union Terrace Gardens and imposing a new building on precious, protected green space in the heart of Aberdeen that there's not much for us to add other than to tie up a few loose ends.</div>
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If you live in Aberdeen, you'll know well that you're about to be asked to take part in a postal referendum which will determine the future of our only town-centre park. The choice will be to retain the park - Union Terrace Gardens - or endorse carbon-mogul Sir Ian Wood's City Garden Project (the real-estate boosters of the project used to call it the "<i>City Square</i> Project", but that name didn't play too well in focus groups). If the people of Aberdeen choose destruction of the existing park, the park will be comprehensively redeveloped, and the valley it currently occupies (much like a small-scale version of Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens) filled with a new building which has become known as "The Granite Web". This new building appears to be a catwalk-bedecked semi-outdoor concert venue and shopping mall. We used to say "shopping centre". Do you remember when we used to say "shopping <i>scheme</i>"?</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VnjjgBoHAaY/TxlZfShbuFI/AAAAAAAACgo/ZafU1wIFU10/s1600/existing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VnjjgBoHAaY/TxlZfShbuFI/AAAAAAAACgo/ZafU1wIFU10/s400/existing.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Existing - Union Terrace Gardens</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kf_-3WS41L8/TxlZiLh90yI/AAAAAAAACgw/uHmA07IIp-o/s1600/proposed.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kf_-3WS41L8/TxlZiLh90yI/AAAAAAAACgw/uHmA07IIp-o/s400/proposed.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Proposed - The Granite Web</td></tr>
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Anyway, there's little we can add to the overwhelming dissent, disgust and indignation which characterises the discourse about the comprehensive redevelopment proposals in new media outlets and social media forums, so we present some samples here:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>STV Local</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://local.stv.tv/aberdeen/news/25833-youth-council-chairman-steps-down-over-union-terrace-gardens-stance/">http://local.stv.tv/aberdeen/news/25833-youth-council-chairman-steps-down-over-union-terrace-gardens-stance/</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>[Aberdeen] Youth Council’s official view [is] that the City Gardens Project is an environmental, social and financial gamble.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Blouin Artinfo</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/756740/diller-scofidio-renfro-tapped-to-build-a-high-line-for-scotland">http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/756740/diller-scofidio-renfro-tapped-to-build-a-high-line-for-scotland</a></span></div>
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>>>>>>>>>></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>It’s a fabled and oft-pursued “Bilbao Effect,” or in this case, High Line effect, that we strongly caution against. Recent failures to create this coveted tourist-draw include Oscar Niemeyer’s shuttered cultural center in Spain, and Rafael Viñoly’s critically pummeled “Golden Banana” in Colchester, England. </i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Lena the Hyena</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/a-tangled-granite-web-weaves-around-union-terrace-gardens/">http://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/a-tangled-granite-web-weaves-around-union-terrace-gardens/</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Aberdeen did have a park in its centre. It does have a park; Victorian gardens. And it is reasonable to see why someone with disposable income measured in millions might want to influence improvements to the centre of his home town (although that in itself calls into question the morality of influencing policy just because you have more money than most) but the motives behind the proposal have shifted since it was first envisaged. [...] Suffice to say that by creating a piazza (and that was the term in use at the beginning of this whole UTG episode) the city would attract business is specious. I don’t for a moment imagine that Mr Wood ever moved his business into anywhere because of the look of the place, whether or not it had a piazza, but because of the economic returns his company hoped to bank.</i></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b>Moved to Comment</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://rxpell.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/and-the-winner-is/">http://rxpell.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/and-the-winner-is/</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>>>>></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Sterile, stale and uninspiring are just three of the words that have been used to describe the scheme – a cross between Tellytubby land and a ’70s skatepark with myriad opportunities for graffiti artists and multiple jumping off points for the suicidal. Contempt for heritage is shown by the fact that the historical features of the gardens are wiped away with the distinctive (and listed) granite balustrades going the same way as the mature trees.</i></span></blockquote>
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We would also recommend the incisive commentary, spread out over many many posts, on the wonderful <a href="http://fraserdenholm.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Blerr de Blerr Blerr</a> blog from videographer of Aberdeen, <a href="http://fraserdenholm.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Fraser Denholm</a>. </div>
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And we too have covered some aspects of our own objections to the proposed comprehensive development:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/03/biting-hand.html">http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/03/biting-hand.html</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande';">>>>>>>>>>></span></span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>... our personal greatest vexation with this proposed redevelopment was the way than an opportunity to anchor a progressive arts and creative sector in Aberdeen was so thoughtlessly as to appear maliciously squandered. The City Square proposals caused the collapse of the Peacock Visual Arts Northern Light initiative which would have created a new contemporary arts centre for Aberdeen and the north of Scotland</i>.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/04/woonerf-for-denburn-valley-proposal.html">http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/04/woonerf-for-denburn-valley-proposal.html</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>We are concerned that ACSEF's [local business-interest quango/lobbying group, boosters of the project] top-down agenda to impose one single expensive solution to what they perceive to be Aberdeen's town centre problems runs the risk of putting all our civic eggs in one heavily-indebted basket.</i></span></blockquote>
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To all of which, let us add the reminder that this proposed comprehensive redevelopment and building project is on <a href="http://www.scottishcommons.org/docs/commongood_v3.pdf" target="_blank">common-good land</a> (pdf) - sometimes referred to as "burgh commons" - as established by land rights campaigner Andy Wightman in his 2011 paper <a href="http://www.andywightman.com/docs/UTG_AWreport_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank"><i>Union Terrace Gardens - Historic and Legal Status</i></a> (pdf). This is land which is owned exclusively by no-one and generally by everyone, and which is held by the town authorities in trust for the people of Aberdeen. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_land#Burgh_commons" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry</a> for "burgh commons" states: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>"By the early 19th century, most burgh commons had been appropriated by the wealthy landowners who dominated burgh councils, and very few have survived."</i></span> At the risk of appearing churlish, should we applaud the fact that the affluent capitalists of Aberdeen are at last making this effort to catch up?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mcxj8xHjZFM/Txl7IuHeLQI/AAAAAAAACg4/bx30EUIChnk/s1600/permission.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mcxj8xHjZFM/Txl7IuHeLQI/AAAAAAAACg4/bx30EUIChnk/s320/permission.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"BON ACCORD CENTRE<br />Permission granted for entry<br />No public right of way constituted"</td></tr>
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In all seriousness, though, this proposed development is of course an attempt by business interests to privatise public-realm space for profit. Or "adding shareholder value" as they tend to say - why use one straightforward word when you can use three obfuscations? Should the development go ahead, we will be able to visit these "gardens" only by the grace of the private sector owners and/or operators of the new building. Experience confirms that those private-sector operators will impose arbitrary restrictions on behaviour and appearance, and will undertake intrusive surveillance on all passing through. Indeed, our town has form in allowing the private sector to extinguish public rights. Where once a public right-of-way south from George Street continued all the way south to join with Market Street via St Nicholas Street, today a huge real-estate company called "Land Securities plc" grant permission for pedestrian access through their Bon Accord and St Nicholas Centre shopping malls only under the condition that no public right of way is (re)established. Where once we had a right of free access and passage, association and discourse, now all we have is consumer choice, that choice itself from a diminishing handful of shargar shoppies. </div>
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When old-media outlets, such as our local press, provide a forum for the boosters of this project which would build commercial and retail premises on the site of of our only town-centre park, they inevitably invoke a loathsome and cringing insecurity, a needy aspiration to "attract" businesses and businesspeople to the town and a perceived necessity to make the town an "attractive prospect for future mobile investment". Over the last two years, ever since emission-monger Sir Ian Wood first caused the collapse of the proposed Northern Lights arts centre, which would have created a home for local creative forum Peacock Visual Arts in Union Terrace Gardens, we have had many misgivings about what comprehensive redevelopment of the gardens would mean - we have always had the feeling that the wool was being pulled over our eyes, and not in the obvious way. But it is only today, only now that the people of Aberdeen (despite already once having said "no" to carbon-magnate Sir Ian's vision) approach the final zero-hour decision time that we can put our finger on one source of these misgivings. The City Garden Project, as proposed by CO2 baron Sir Ian Wood, is not for the people of Aberdeen. It's for the much more important people who aren't here yet. It's not for the likes of you and us - we don't count, we <i>only live</i> here already. We are the pre-existingly inconvenient legacy community.</div>
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We therefore urge you, if you have a vote, to reject the proposed destruction of the town centre garden in favour of business profits (sorry - <i>enhanced shareholder value</i>). The moneymen of this town, with emission-monger Sir Ian Wood at their head, have made the mistake of believing that a town is nothing more than the sum total of all the business activity which takes place within its borders, and so they then go on to compound their error by thinking that the town should be run like a business. We at OtherAberdeen know that the truth is much much broader than that pencilneck narrow vision promoted by pollution-king Sir Ian, ACSEF and our town council. Towns and cities are communities - places for people, places for association and interchange of all kinds, not <i>just</i> commerce. Show them that you know this too. Vote to <b><i>Retain Union Terrace Gardens.</i></b></div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-13717960413475645912012-01-06T19:43:00.001+00:002012-01-17T17:41:36.196+00:00Explosive Lows, Sting Jets, Blocking Events and Resilience<div style="text-align: center;">
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Two weeks ago today, on Scotland's extra New Year bank holiday, you might remember a nasty winter storm caused extensive damage to property and infrastructure all over the country. In other parts of the UK there were a couple of deaths caused in one instance by a falling tree and in the other by adverse conditions at sea. While these human tragedies happened in the southernmost part of Britain, the greatest rage of the storm was visited upon the central belt of Scotland, where, due to the extra New Year's bank holiday, most folk were enjoying a day off work at home and so thankfully there were few injuries and no fatalities. The central belt is the most populous part of Scotland; an area of relatively low-lying land situated between the Highland massif and the southern uplands, it comprises the valleys of the River Forth and River Clyde with Scotland's two major cities - Edinburgh and Glasgow - at either coast along with all the concomitant housing, transport facilities, businesses, infrastructure and population density associated with them. The central belt is the cinch for Scotland's waist, giving the physical geography of the country that distinctive and familiar hourglass figure.</div>
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When the storm came, its greatest intensity was funnelled by this topography into the central belt. This being the area of maximum human habitation and activity, the storm had greatest possible impact upon the human geography of Scotland. This is the second such notably intense storm to hit Scotland this season, the first being <strike>European Windstorm Friedhelm</strike> <i>Hurricane Bawbag</i> which famously caused a social-media sensation when <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/arts-blog/would_bawbag_s_proud_progenitor_please_stand_up_and_take_a_bow_1_2001332" target="_blank">unilaterally re-named by internet gobshites on Twitter.</a></div>
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Notwistanding the fact that it was more the location of maximum intensity rather than the intensity itself which was newsworthy (conditions like those two weeks ago - had they happened, say, in the Cairngorms or on Shetland would not have attracted much reportage) there were a couple of terms used by TV weatherfolk which drew the attention. Firstly, before the storm hit, <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/transport/forecasters-scrambled-to-update-advice-as-conditions-worsened.16350053?_=cf217d30e8b6734c61d5367049dec6207e80018e" target="_blank">forecasters scrambled suddenly</a> to intensify their weather warnings, as the incoming low-pressure weather system became subject to a sudden deepening to become what they called an "explosive low". After the storm had passed, meteorologists noted that the storm had been characterised by a "sting jet", a phenomenon first identified after the Great Storm of 1987 which affected the south of England. </div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_jet">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_jet</a></i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">>>>>>>>>>>>>></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>A sting jet is a meteorological phenomenon which is believed to be the cause of the most damaging winds in European windstorms.<br />Following reanalysis of the Great Storm of 1987, led by Professor Keith Browning at the University of Reading, researchers identified a mesoscale flow where the most damaging winds were shown to be emanating from the evaporating tip of the hooked cloud head on the southern flank of the cyclone. This cloud, hooked like a scorpion's tail, gives the wind region its name the "Sting Jet".<br />It is thought that a zone of strong winds, originating from within the mid-tropospheric cloud head of an explosively deepening depression, are enhanced further as the "jet" descends, drying out and evaporating a clear path through snow and ice particles. The evaporative cooling leading to the air within the jet becoming denser, leading to an acceleration of the downward flow towards the tip of the cloud head when it begins to hook around the cyclone centre. Windspeeds in excess of 80 kn (150 km/h) can be associated with the Sting jet.</i></span></blockquote>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/120103_MET9_WV_24.GIF" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/120103_MET9_WV_24.GIF" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Sting Jet</td></tr>
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The preceding three winters here have also been characterised by unusual conditions. In the winter of 2008/9 and then again but even moreso in 2009/10 a rare and persistent omega-shaped kink in the high-altitude jet stream (a high-speed river of air which girds the earth and flows west-to-east) caused high-pressure anti-cyclonic weather systems to become "stuck" over Britain - blocked from continuing their more usual west-to-east progress. The attendant clear skies associated with high-pressure weather systems allowed heat to escape directly into the stratosphere and so the country those winters was characterised by rime frost and morning fogs, starry nights and windless calm. For the sharp-eyed and patient, rare atmospheric phenomena like moonbows and sun dogs and parhelic arcs became commonplace daily sights. In 2010/11 a similar jet stream "blocking event" occurred, but that season's high pressure system got stuck over the central North Atlantic with the effect that weather systems marched in formation one after the other down from the high arctic, causing record snowfall and record low temperatures all over Britain. Nasty. These blocking events are becoming more common, and can be dangerous. Summer blocking events over Russia are responsible for thousands of heat-related deaths and the destruction of land, real estate and habitat by wildfire. </div>
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No blocking event over Britain this season (so far at least) and the winter, while rough and windy, has been unusually mild. So, selfishly, in Scotland we might feel thankful for the mild temperatures. But that gratitude comes with a sense of unease, for how many seasons in a row can we experience unusual weather and continue to label it "unusual"? </div>
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A BBC Scotland weather-news special - <i>Storm-Force Scotland</i> - was broadcast last weekend, and as I watched, I felt that there was a bit of a "Keep Calm and Carry On" air about it. Archive footage was shown to demonstrate that, yes, from time to time damaging winds can occur in Scotland and the participants appeared to be under special orders not to use the terms "Global Warming" or "Dangerous Climate Change". </div>
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But Alex Reid, the Scottish Government's special meteorological advisor let the mask slip…</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="284" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/35196053?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="505"></iframe><br />
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We should not be surprised that these unusual weather patterns continue to surprise the authorities, for the disruption they bring takes a different form each time. And as this pattern-with-no-pattern continues we hear much from Government spokespeople talking of the need for "resilience". When, two years ago, freezing conditions and a shortage of grit/salt made Scottish roads unusable, a Transport Secretary lost his government position and steps were taken to ensure future superabundance of grit/salt. This year, those stockpiles lie unused. And then when floods swept low-lying areas of Moray and Perthshire tens of millions of pounds were spend on flood defence measures. Bunds and dykes and gates now lie unneeded, silent witnesses to wind-felled chimneystacks, and roads and railways closed by fallen trees. It seems that when the state and big business talk of "resilience" they mean "hardening" - a futile enterprise, for all human effort is ever dwarfed by the magisterial power of nature.</div>
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On the Isle of Bute, in that first week of 2012, the storm had cut the electricity supply from the mainland. The chainstores and supermarkets, reliant as they are on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban" target="_blank">Kanban </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_look-up_code" target="_blank">PLU</a> systems were unable to operate. They closed their doors to customers. Despite the fact that there might still have been stock on the shelves, the employees felt so disempowered by being un-powered that they could not take their customers ready-money - for the tills were not working. Without electricity, the threads of big-business commerce unravelled. But by contrast, the sole trader and small-scale local enterprises (which that island community remains blessed to retain) - the butcher and baker, ironmonger and inn - remained trading perfectly well. Marking their accounts by pencil in notebooks, locking cash taken in a strongbox in a cupboard. But what about people with no cash until the banks are back online? Well, they had no worries - the community-based enterprises were the local heroes who knew their customers by name. A little note; an IOU on a post-it pad written by candlelight - and trust - was their currency. </div>
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Resilience is not to be found, cannot be found, in engineering projects which jut their chin at nature, hoping to stand fast against the storm, or the cold, or the desertification, or the flood, or the heat, or the landslide, or the drought or the tide, or whatever combination surprises us next. Hubristically strengthening our civil-engineering defences merely increases the severity of the impact when those defences will be finally, inevitably breached. "Look upon my works ye mighty and despair". No - resilience is, rather, to be found in those activities - those systems - which fail-safe, which are unaffected by cascade failure, which are discreet nodes unconnected to artificial dependency networks. This true resilience stands founded in the strength of our communities and operates within the envelope described by the sustainability of our activities. We should take note of the sole traders of Bute and how they reacted during the time that the island was off the grid at the start of 2012. We should study carefully how they sustained their community for a whole week without electricity - without missing a beat, for there is a real lesson of true resilience for our future contained within their sustainable activities and self-reliant attitudes.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-57062476354810748752012-01-06T19:42:00.001+00:002012-02-10T15:28:40.378+00:00That's Entertainment!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="284" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/34675555?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="505"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-32634014828087598212012-01-01T11:36:00.001+00:002012-01-01T17:49:12.136+00:00Silent New Year<div style="text-align: justify;">
And now this is the first day of another year in Aberdeen. Happy New Year everyone. </div>
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At the sounding of the midnight bells and the ringing-in of the new year with a toast to loved ones, down in time every year from when I was a young boy in Aberdeen, one of the things I first remember about Hogmanay in this town was my dad taking me out into the back garden and us listening together to the boats in the harbour sounding their horns. For fifteen minutes or half an hour they blared their airhorn hoots in paradoxically mournful salutation of the celebration. The droning tone of these horns blown for joy fitted the duality of the Hogmanay festival, which marks the funeral of one year and the birth of a new one. All the streets in the double-estuary-amphitheatre of our maritime town resonated to the different tones, and the people of the town listened in wonder - cocking an ear to this freighter and that anchor-tug, this supply-ship and that tanker. Which tone went with which sort of ship? Which was louder, and which shriller?</div>
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And every Hogmanay since, the ships' horns sounding out in the harbour at midnight at the turning of the year has been one of the things that has marked the season for me. An annual punctuation, something to expect, a tradition; personal and civic. And a few years ago, the tech embodied in the horns evolved - and the Hogmanay sound across town changed from being that saraband of pneumatically driven hoot to a more upbeat polka sequence of digitally-generated beeps and tones, not an unwelcome change. Rather than the mysterious mourn in slow-time darkness, the soundscape of our town on Hogmanay came to resemble more the climactic sequence of tone-communication depicted in Spielberg's <i>Close Encounters of the Third Kind</i>, fascinating and other-worldly; a sensory impression reinforced by the recent fashion to use firework displays to help mark the turning of the new year.</div>
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But suddenly, oddly, this year, no boats in the harbour or ships in the bay horned their toots or beebed their blare for Hogmanay. No sound came from the basin to accompany our celebrations as 2011 turned into 2012. The harbinger of this new year was silent - foreshadowing shame? Boding infamy? Presaging an ill-starred fate? We don't know why this traditional aspect of Hogmanay was absent from our town this year. Maybe there's a good reason, maybe just a trivial one. Maybe it's trivial of us to complain. But one thing is for sure, it's another one of the little erosions which bit by bit leave us with fewer and fewer reasons for remaining here. It signifies one of the many many Zeno corrosions which little by little threaten to burn away this town's soul. What other little denudations have passed us all unnoticed?</div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-68266046337069465022011-12-22T15:50:00.000+00:002011-12-22T16:48:37.351+00:00Have a Very Alcohol-mediated, Consumerist, Motorcentric, Advertising-driven and Illiterate, Xmas in Aberdeen!<div style="text-align: justify;">
I went to the barber. We like barbers, and we like the fact that there's a resurgence in their numbers on the streets of Aberdeen. Used to be, before the long boom, that there were lots of barbershops. Bastions of exclusive masculinity they were, where stoic-faced men and boys would sit or stand queuing around the edge of a smallish room, waiting in companionable silence or low-tone discussion for their turn on the barber's chair - impressively sturdy yet mildly frightening-looking in its functionality, sharing as it does a common ancestor with the dentist's chair. Ranged round the room - stonily staring either into the middle distance or at the chequerboard linoleum floor we would be; men together at one with the laminarity of our own smooth thoughts in that masculine mindscape which may flourish in quiet, understated and conducive spaces like the barbershop. Places like that are where best the masculine mindscape can range wide and smooth - idea upon idea distilling and concentrating, concatenating and ramifying; creative patterns merge and blossom - for it requires just that sort of continuous unity of environment and encounter for its best experience and function. The only sounds in the barbershop the whispered, measured tones of sober discussion, the hum of the electric clippers and the snick-snip of the finishing scissors, then a whispered <i>"...and something for the weekend? Sir?"</i> and the man currently being groomed was brushed down. He'd stand up, pay - and then it'd be your turn for the buzz-cut. No crap, no smalltalk, no faffing about, no feminisingly fragrant and functionally extraneous trichological 'product' - just an effing haircut, done expertly, quickly and cheaply by a grown man who you could trust had done exactly that same thing a million times before. You could have faith that in ten minutes flat he'd have you'd stepping out of the chair with your hair looking exactly like that of the NASA test-pilot you expected it to. What could possibly go wrong with such a simple activity, so quiet and uncomplicated a space, so straightforward a commercial relationship? </div>
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When the long boom came, the barbershops one by one began to disappear - we thought it was natural wastage - the old barbers retired and their premises became unisex salons. Full of 'lifestyle' magazines, conditioner/gel/mousse/whatever 'product' (to be sold on commission), pop music videos, and late-teenage girls who would charge a small fortune for taking up to an hour to make a frankly bad job of cutting your hair. Sometimes these places would have aquaria. But, worst of all - oh by far worst of all - the smalltalk; the juddering discontinuity of arbitrary inconsequential crapchat, destroying the unity of the masculine mindscape. </div>
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Now that the long boom is at an end, and the politicians and commentariat begin to think about ways to try and tell the electorate that a return to economic growth may not actually be feasible, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good and barbershops are returning to the urban scene in Aberdeen - we daresay it's the same story all over the country.</div>
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So, more or less on a whim, I walked into one of Holburn Street's growing number (seven at the most recent count) of barbershops which have recently begun to typify parts of the town-centre. All appeared as it should have been: chequerboard linoleum flooring; fuss-free interior; traditional-looking barber's chairs; no branded hair 'product'; a small queue of men with reassuringly blank looks. All correct. I expected that I shared a common frame of reference with barber and clientele alike. But I was wrong.</div>
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Regular readers will know that we at <i>Other,Aberdeen</i> believe that - rather than the ticket-price or up-to-datedness of gewgaw possessions; rather than the external veneer of mere ostentation; and rather than an overdraft of ersatz happiness from the bank of Boozy Britain, the key to well-being is to be sought in the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, the strength of our relationships and the sustainability of our activities. So I was disappointed to to be subjected to the smalltalk of the barber who first asked me what sort of car I drive. (Living in the town centre, it's not necessary for me to own a car, so I do not.) That smalltalk opening gambit having failed, the barber then asked whether I would be out drinking that night. (I do not drink.) </div>
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"<i>What!</i> Not even at Christmas?" </div>
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<b>< No. > </b></div>
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"Are you not <i>even</i> going to take a drink on Christmas Day?" </div>
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<b>< No. I don't use it. > </b></div>
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Eyebrows raised, and head shaking, the barber blew a breath out from between pursed lips: "Pffft".</div>
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Next I was asked what I expected to <i>"get"</i> for Christmas (I was not asked what I would be <i>giving</i>). And then, once my hair was cut and I had paid, I was handed a little seasonal promotional 'gift'; a barbershop-branded beer-bottle opener: "In case you <i>change your mind</i> and decide to have a wee cheeky beer or two over the festive season". The fact that I do not use alcohol simply could not, <i>would not</i>, fit into the barber's world view, especially at Christmas! </div>
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Walking back home, I reflected on how misunderstood the straightforward desire for simplicity can be. At this time of year especially, and with the western world's economies undergoing the convulsions of phase change to a low- or no-growth future - we hope that simple, unmediated pleasures, unfreighted with commercial content and free from reliance upon fragile critical dependency networks become valued once again. I quickened my step, eager for the simple pleasures of hearth and home on that winter day. The day's consignment of Christmas cards awaited me in the vestibule. Among them, this gem:</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8ug-mcQU-qg/TvND8j5l7NI/AAAAAAAACf8/Ofqif5do2ew/s1600/xmas+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8ug-mcQU-qg/TvND8j5l7NI/AAAAAAAACf8/Ofqif5do2ew/s400/xmas+001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Where to start with this copyright busting, advertising-subsumed, commercially complicit piece of seasonal "cheer", parasitising as it does upon the mass-culture iconography which has developed around the secondary arbitrage market for car insurance? Perhaps it is enough to simply point out that the producers of this Christmas card have mis-spelled "meerkat".</div>
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With Season's Greetings to all our readers!</div>
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<i><a href="http://northernliminalia.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Key Stakeholder</a></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>Other, Aberdeen</i></span></i><br />
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-62129953272881236132011-12-16T15:54:00.004+00:002011-12-16T23:35:08.168+00:00Cacophonous Rosemount<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the oppressive noise level generated by motor traffic in Aberdeen increases in direct correspondence with the oil price, trying to undertake psychogeographical studies of the town and its socio-geographical relationships becomes more and more frustrating and our field reports run the risk of becoming increasingly one-dimensional. <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/11/march-stones-58-to-60-abd-froghall.html" target="_blank">More than once</a>, these pages have featured our <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/11/driech-mizzle-cacophony.html" target="_blank">bitter complaints</a> about the growing cacophonous overburden of discordance on our town's streets and the impact of this noisy intrusion upon our quality of life. And when we visit an area of study, by chance dérive or purposeful expedition, it takes an engaged effort of the will to try to screen out the harsh racket which destroys the unity of the urban experience - that which our psychogeography seeks. </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aP7WxWqoBeY/TutnAlphBFI/AAAAAAAACfQ/4_MoQcPF-o8/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aP7WxWqoBeY/TutnAlphBFI/AAAAAAAACfQ/4_MoQcPF-o8/s320/1.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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For example, a couple of weeks ago, we walked up and down Rosemount Place - host to a subsidiary commercial district of Aberdeen, about a kilometre from the town centre, and so fitting nicely the the multi-node-model of urbanisation. The Rosemount area is full of artefacts and arrangements of great psychogeographical interest. From ancient boundary stones to boutique cheese-vendors; from mid-century Viennese-style art deco apartment blocks to Georgian manor houses hidden behind Victorian tenements, accessible up long dark <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pend" target="_blank">pends</a>; from independent cosmopolitan cafés to cipher-embazoned granite pediments and gables - Rosemount is fascinating. Tree-lined avenues and traditional green-lane rights-of-way criss-cross the area. Rosemount would be a nice place to linger, to dawdle, to stroll and maybe even do some grocery shopping; to stop in a cafe and read a newspaper, to live life at a human scale and pace. But unfortunately, through-traffic roars up and down Rosemount Place, rat-running at maximum possible speed between the northwest of the town and the central business district. The noise generated by the continual high-speed flow of traffic makes Rosemount Place an unpleasant and oppressive zone. Not at all a nice place to linger.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BJpVI20I0LA/TutpjCGwjGI/AAAAAAAACfg/RaZrSDBOmyQ/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BJpVI20I0LA/TutpjCGwjGI/AAAAAAAACfg/RaZrSDBOmyQ/s320/3.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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We had intended to stay, to look at stuff, to think and reflect, to discuss what we were experiencing. But it was impossible. We couldn't dally, because we had to shout to each other in order to be heard. It just was not possible to stand on the pavement or stroll and maintain a conversation. Once again we were subjected to that most British of outcomes - the confusion that exists between streets and roads. In pre-mid 20th century urbanism, roads connected locations and streets connected people. A road's main function was transportation, while streets enabled public interaction. Today, in Aberdeen, even the streets are roads, and public interaction is marginalised in favour of noisy high-speed motor-traffic 'flow'.</div>
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According to the World Health Organisation document <a href="http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/136466/e94888.pdf" target="_blank">"Burden of disease from environmental noise"</a> (pdf):</div>
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<i>The health impacts of environmental noise are a growing concern. At least one million healthy life years are lost every year from traffic-related noise in the western part of Europe.</i></div>
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<i>[...]</i></div>
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<i>Traffic noise alone is harming the health of almost every third person in the WHO European Region. One in five Europeans is regularly exposed to sound levels at night that could significantly damage health.</i></div>
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<i>[...]</i></div>
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<i>Excessive noise seriously harms human health and interferes with people’s daily activities at school, at work, at home and during leisure time. It can disturb sleep, cause cardiovascular and psychophysiological effects, reduce performance and provoke annoyance responses and changes in social behaviour.</i></div>
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So, what is to be done? We're pleased to note that the Scottish Government is obliged by European Union legislation to address environmental noise via <a href="http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/299264/0093316.pdf" target="_blank">Noise Action Plans covering Noise Management Areas</a> (pdf). Unfortunately, we're less pleased to note that local greenwash boilerplate issuing quango NESTRANS (North East Scotland Transport) is the local body responsible for dealing with transport noise in Aberdeen.</div>
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The NESTRANS "Health and Transport Action Plan" (HTAP) document is difficult to find, particularly as NESTRANS appear not to have updated the document index on their website since 2008, but a bit of knowledge of how to conduct advanced Google searches delivers up the goods.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Google-generated <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Z_bN8M4s3HYJ:www.nestrans.org.uk/db_docs/File/Board_Meeting_8_December_2011/5a_HTAP_Annual_Report_2011l.doc+http://www.nestrans.org.uk/db_docs/File/Board_Meeting_8_December_2011/5a_HTAP_Annual_Report_2011l.doc" target="_blank">HTML version here</a>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">MS Word .doc format <a href="http://www.nestrans.org.uk/db_docs/File/Board_Meeting_8_December_2011/5a_HTAP_Annual_Report_2011l.doc" target="_blank">download here</a>.</li>
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It's disappointing to note that the "Noise Control" section of the report is practically identical to that published in the NESTRANS HTAP last year, the only change in the form of words being those necessary to report that no action has yet been taken, not even to identify problem areas. We'll save them the time and effort: the whole of Aberdeen is now a problem area for traffic noise.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Google viewer version of <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:zUc_h78yZscJ:www.nestrans.org.uk/db_docs/File/Board_Meeting_-_8_June_2011/5a_HTAP_Annual_Report_2010.doc+5a_HTAP_Annual_Report_2010&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiMMR5pfWpBQgrZ7U5K9XFCwow-IbXs_HPv4_hAPLUUHvWMFQ6CQY3V0nKzyfnxQMvcVH7hjumXwbWSqqY6OO68Lm1jVZeSEic6L3XPGT4vT2xWbTlKfQw96dbTgHWanS6q6r8f&sig=AHIEtbSh5unzzzWzMXEkOb5sOmzMoGxILw" target="_blank">2010 HTAP here</a>.</li>
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It was a fairly pleasant surprise to see that our local advertising free-sheet <i>"The Aberdeen Citizen" (BEST free newspaper in Scotland) </i>covered this story with a front-page splash last week: <b>"EU COULD TELL ABERDEEN TO CUT DOWN THE NOISE"</b> - they thundered. We were delighted. But then we read the article. The reporter who wrote it asked a local haulage magnate to comment. The transport tycoon in question responded by calling for road resurfacing:</div>
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"Drive past noise varies on the road surface ... it can be loud and intimidating. <b><i>The only way</i></b> to lower that is to improve the road surface."</div>
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(Our emphasis)</div>
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The reporter also sought a quote from a NESTRANS spokeswoman who said:</div>
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"As technological advances reduce noise levels from vehicles, it is possible that improvements will occur anyway."</div>
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Astonishing. This spokeswoman believes that "technological advances" will come to the rescue; presumably those advances being in the form of electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles which will emit negligible engine-noise. But, engine noise is already only detectable in today's motor cars at speeds lower than 20mph. Above that speed, it is the rolling tyre rumble and aerodynamic effects which produce the noise which so blights our urban environment and is of such great concern to the World Health Organisation. So the NESTRANS spokeswoman is happy to tell us that she is just crossing her fingers and hoping that the problem will go away, and the haulage magnate wants road surface 'improvements'. Neither of these quoted sources countenance measures (such as modal-shift away from use of private motor vehicles towards sustainable, active and/or public transport modes) which could reduce traffic volumes or speeds. They have not considered this obvious, low-cost and minimum intervention solution, because so entrenched has their motor-centric world-view become that they cannot see the bleedingly obvious fact that <b>motor-traffic is the source of motor-traffic noise</b>. To paraphrase the splendid <a href="http://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">"At War With The Motorist" blog</a>:</div>
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<i>The cause of traffic noise is traffic. Too much of if, driving too fast. We like to pretend that it’s bad engineering, because we can always fix engineering by replacing it with some different engineering. And we like to pretend that it’s not the volume and speed of traffic and the behaviour of drivers, because acknowledging this would mean giving up hope that one day the traffic noise will magically be solved. But that’s the way it is: too many cars, driven too fast. </i></div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-36411966645861397052011-12-16T11:28:00.000+00:002011-12-16T11:28:05.817+00:00EdgewatchOtherAberdeen's first hardcore psychogeographic photoblog project <a href="http://edgewatch.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">"Edgewatch"</a> came to an end the other day. Check it out: <a href="http://edgewatch.blogspot.com/">http://edgewatch.blogspot.com/</a><div>
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<a href="http://edgewatch.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">365 days of Aberdeen</a></div>
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If you're in the know, you'll already know about the successor to Edgewatch: <a href="http://northernliminalia.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">"Northern Liminalia"</a></div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-80736708910296691082011-11-30T12:44:00.001+00:002011-11-30T14:14:03.484+00:00Driech Mizzle Cacophony<div style="text-align: center;">
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><<<<
A volcanic eruption halts ALL air traffic into and out of the UK, for the first time ever. Eerie silence at the top of the hill, where only last week I was buzzed by a helecopter-full of roughnecks. The airport roar of jet engines silenced by Icelandic ash, the only thing I can hear today at the prominence summit is the gentle wind, whispering serene abstractions in my ears.
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I was taken aback to find from an entry made in an old notebook just over eighteen months ago that a silence, eerie or serene or of whatever character, could be found anywhere in this town, at any time. The note was made at the top of Brimmond Hill in April 2010. I was taken aback to read it because these days, just a short six seasons later, there's no silence to be found here - not anywhere round here at all. How quickly we forget; how easily plasticised our human existence. The condition of constant outdoor noise is so readily regarded as normal to our situation.</div>
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So I crave the peace and space that we all used to enjoy. Actually, no - we didn't enjoy it, we took it for granted. Like on a Sunday, for example. I remember long, aimless teenage Sunday afternoon walks - with friends or in solitary thoughtfulness - through our town's plentiful beech- and birch-lined boulevards and avenues. The peace affording me the mental space, the unity of direct passive experience, to appreciate the granite and slate symmetries, framed by hedge and tree, lawn and border. Bay and turret, gable and pitch. Suffusing my human spirit with unique ambience of place and time. But today, to walk those same boulevards and avenues - fewer, ever fewer their lawns and hedges and trees - is to find that unity of experience disrupted by the continual noise of motor traffic. The relaxed nature of walking for transportation or even for its own sake has been critically disrupted as, over recent years, even our streets have become roads.</div>
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To recapture that serenity - that unity - we set out with hope, with intention of passivity, on Sunday morning to walk the Sustrans footpath on the Old Deeside Way; Abergeldie to the Den of Cults, then down to the Shakkin' Briggie at the old waterworks. We hope, o we so hope for quiet. Surely, walking that route, away from roads and the streets that have become roads, we'll find what we want, and find our minds there too on that driech morning.</div>
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The morning immediately mizzles near-dimensionless nanosphere-points of water onto everything we're wearing - like dew on a spiderweb. But shortly we're properly soused as, surface tension breached, those points gather more and more water. Discharging water vapour from the smirr-saturated but mild and windless air they expand, ballooning, and burst into just wetness. But we're dressed and shod for these normal autumn conditions. Weather doesn't frighten us.</div>
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There is beauty in the soft-edges of this fall weather - the dun damp of autumn, the fungal must of the deliquescing leaf-litter by the sides of the footpath, next year's top layer of topsoil. By the side of the footpath an apple tree gnarls back at the glowering sky. Its underbrush is the focus for a squabble of birdlife. We see that somehow little beaks have split the windfall apples. The discarded semi-skins which the birds do not prefer lie around discarded, voided like pastry cases after a children's party. As we approach a double-dozen blackbirds and robins and starlings kerfuffle and flap and vector off a safe distance, to return to the tree and its underbrush once we're past. Their little songs, their tweeting entreaties, beeping out first the warning then whistling the all-clear to their feathered cadres, and cheering our souls as we set out on our morning route.</div>
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We walk along through Airyhall and Garthdee. There are few other people about. And none of those are just walking. There are a handful of joggers. Insulated, every one of them, from our world by ear-connected bicep-strapped iPod. The trademark white earbuds and wires along with the velcro armstrap appurtenance somewhat reminiscent of medical paraphrenalia - a stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff hybrid. Brows knitted and gurning, these loping obsessives: we nod hello to them as they pass. They do not see us, they focus to the horizon of the middle-distance. </div>
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And here is a dog-walker. Indignant, clearly: seems the obligation to provide his pet with exercise and relief is not what he'd prefer to be doing this Sunday morning. His face angled sternly down he mutters desultory into the phone in his right-hand fist, the remote electronically mediated interlocutor elsewhere taking precedence over the flesh and bone and fur animal present. A little knotted translucent polybag of still dog-arse warm dogshit dangles obscenely from the man's left-hand fingers on knotted loop. He twirls it absentmindedly like a dandy might a cane. We smile our community to him as we pass. He does not meet our eyes, actually turning his head away. But the dog - she is a collie - trots across and makes eye-contact with us, one after the other, politely. She gently snuffles briefly our outstretched hands and looks farewell to us over her shoulder as we walk on. She will know us now and forever.</div>
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At Pitfodels, and it's mid-morning. The mist-damp air is an efficient transmitter of sound waves, so - although we can't see it - we can hear the motor traffic on the North Deeside Road, 100 metres to the right, parallel to our walking route. What are they doing - so many of them, driving about the place, on a Sunday morning? And then we're past the old train station at The Den of Cults. An odd name, and tautological; "Cults" being a diminutive derived from the Gaelic "cuil" for "nook". So "Cults" is a little secluded place. The "den", which is the steep gorge of a stream, making it doubly-so. Despite its name, so intriguing to modern ears, no sinister sects are hiding in this steep V-shaped valley, just an everso-nice Victorian municipal suburb built for the waterworks where the Cults burn confluxes with the River Dee. That suburb now, of course, metastasised by the late 20th century's large-plan bungalows and cul-de-sacs all the way up the south-facing hill to the watershed.</div>
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Down in the den, the rushing burn streaming and bubbling over rocks and little bouldery waterfalls by our side, we feel perhaps the first inkling of the cheerful feelings - the unity of sensation - which we'd sought when we set out. We can pick out the obsolete waterworks infrastructure: An engine house now a des-res; valves, spigots and the like as garden ornaments; enigmatic equipment artefacts embedded in walls and footways. Oh, and the big newish kidney-shaped reservoir on the flood-plain, like a man-made oxbow lake on the broad flat inch (a flat sandy bank or river island). Out in the centre of the flat, still water the handrails of a just-submerged catwalk structure are parallel platforms where a gauntlet of waterbirds - mostly ducks, some gulls, a handful of swans and one single cormorant with its wings spread wide - stand guard. </div>
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Across the river, yan to the yin on the same flood-plain inch squats the "Aspire Golf Centre". Surely one of the most up-to-date and exciting golfing opportunities available to the hard-pressed golfers of the north-east of Scotland, for acknowledging the busyness of the busy folk of business in Aberdeen "City and Shire" the Aspire Golf Centre offers a short-form of golf. Only nine holes, and every one a par 3. Flood-lit, for high-speed late-night golfing, after those long hours a-wrangling at the spreadsheets in your cubicle. And a target range; very popular, because it has what are called "Powertees", an "automated teeing solution", which means that aspiring golfers don't ever have to bend over. Less hassle, see?</div>
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And passing the golf centre, the South Deeside Road, a secondary road, a narrow winding B-road which follows the contours of the steep gradient southern wall of the glacial valley. Again and again, the crest and roar of gearbox and turbo reverberate booming off that valley wall. Reflected over the river to us on our muddy path to Inchgarth: the cacophony of the motor-men taking their high-speed gear-change engine-breaking thrills on the leaf-fall slick adverse cambers. Heel-and-toe fast and furious they fly, and we see their Subarus and Golfs or whatever flicker through the trees across the water. Not 100 metres away, their choice of Sunday-morning leisure destroys ours; we cannot even sustain a conversation between us. A flight of swans angles quite low overhead, but today we are denied the privilege of hearing their in-flight murmuring intrigues. We might as well have tried to find peace at an airport, or a Grand Prix circuit. </div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-86632552195199380692011-11-23T17:14:00.001+00:002011-11-23T17:52:45.202+00:00March Stones 58 to 60 ABD - Froghall.<div style="text-align: center;">
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Celtic Place-Names in Aberdeenshire<br />John Milne, 1912<br />>>>>><br /><i>FROGHALL: Cheerful place. </i><b>Frogail</b><i>, merry, cheerful.</i></blockquote>
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The branch line from Kittybrewster to our harbour’s massive rail terminal, one of many “Waterloos”, lies in near-desuetude, the almost-gleam of the rails betraying the only occasional robust creeping of freight wagons slipping in the dark of the clanking night towards the Berryden loop and access to main-line rail and away. Cargos to or from who-knows-where, who knows for what? Rare, seldom seen. Hardly considered.<br />
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Negotiate the dust and roar and hurry of the motor traffic at the Powis Terrace/Bedford Road junction and traverse either of two pedestrian footbridges over the railway cutting and onto Elmbank Terrace, there to get away into another world. Always and everywhere, it seems, to be on the wrong side of the rails is a condemnation. But here, walking with care to find the town’s ancient boundary stones - the “March Stones” (see note below) - to be on the wrong side of these tracks offers a kind of relief. The area, called Sunnyside to the north, Froghall to the south seems becalmed in a doldrum which is somehow away from the rest of Aberdeen; separate - a forgotten triangle of neglect. Benign neglect. This town is busy, too busy - so to walk down a quiet residential but non-suburban street, which has become like a woonerf-by-accident is a rare pleasure here. So easy to forget that walking and talking with your pedestrian companions is one of life’s simple riches, free wealth - for over the last small handful of years, since the oil-price first surpassed one hundred U.S. Dollars per barrel, this town-that-likes-to-think-it’s-a-city has gone into resource-extractive overdrive. Drill baby drill. This involves lots of people driving around the place as fast as they possibly can.<br />
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Walking through becalmed Sunnyside/Froghall is relief. This unremembered triangle has, for whatever happy confluence of reasons, been rendered non-permeable to motor-traffic flows. Strolling calmly and slowly, each other’s words are listened to and considered in the unhurried luxury; the stroll of ideas as one step goes in front of another. In this way, and along these ways, progress is made as we make progress through the locality. The landscape of the built environment and its elements is assimilated in its relationship to us, in those elements’ relationships to each other. We insinuate ourselves and our thoughts into that landscape, we can be still in the resonances of the insights we gain, which in turn centre and still us farther yet. Still, centred, moving. An expansive unity of experience moving on and through the inner urban landscape.<br />
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The once-impressive villas, merchant-manors of nineteenth-century traders or capitalists, overlook the near-redundant branch line in the cutting below Elmbank Terrace - the street where boundary stones 58 ABD and 59 ABD are found. Were the original proprietors of these impressive properties overlooking an interest in the cargoes traversing or capital embodied in the short-lived Aberdeenshire canal which - almost immediately obsolescent upon its foundation - in turn established the foundation of the railway now occupying the cutting? Behind the villas, an industrial area fallen on hard times. Aberdeen’s still-born jute industry died with the canal, monumental masonry exhausted with the granite quarries. Traces of those industrial waves remain; in the street names - Canal Road and Jute Street (where we find boundary stone 60 ABD); and the industrial heritage evident in the built environment - the workers tenements clustering round the industrial area, the traces of rail sidings and platforms, the hand-cranes and unworked slabs in abandoned mason’s yards. And now, second (or third?) wave light industry, transient, almost gone too. Motor-trade, builders’ merchants, carpenters, telephone engineering depot, all in various stages of decrepitude. We smile to each other in the acknowledgment that there is beauty here. There is allure in the craquelure of peeling paint. There is dusty beauty in the modernism of a redundant telephone exchange used as a stationery store, forms no longer following function. There is delight to find a pedestrian permeability up a snicket behind bollards and there is a thrilling unity to the right-angled granite canyons that are the never-identical ramifications of the Aberdeen Victorian tenement template. <br />
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The edges form as industry constantly revolutionises itself and all that is solid melts into air. The edge is the difference between something and nothing. Residential development encroaches, people come and go, and come again. Will the <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/07/a-to-z-of-aberdeen-d.html" target="_blank">Dutch disease</a> event-horizon, the overriding exigency of oil-industry urgency suck all the capital of our town down-hole, to die dissipated and exhausted in (or exported from) a peripheral industrial estate? Or will something new, some novel enterprise yet to be conceived, re-occupy the dormant heart of Froghall - the "cheerful place"? </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">60 ABD</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Development Opportunities<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></td></tr>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-09BC9qq6SWI/Ts0qnlEvoeI/AAAAAAAACao/2d9WyOPOdpk/s1600/froghall+006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-09BC9qq6SWI/Ts0qnlEvoeI/AAAAAAAACao/2d9WyOPOdpk/s400/froghall+006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tenements - Old.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flats - Newer</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apartments - Newest</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tagging not new - 'JJ 1879'</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Test Department</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">wood berd</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goods Pioneer</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every day is like Sunday.</td></tr>
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<i>Note: The “March Stones”</i></div>
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<i>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 <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/10/aberdeens-freemen-and-freewomen-and.html" target="_blank">Burgesses of Aberdeen</a> with a huge estate of land - known as “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.</i></div>
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<i>The extent of this "gift" of land from Bruce (which required an annual rent to be paid to the crown - heh, some gift!) 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.</i></div>
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<i>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 efficiency; 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.</i></div>
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<i>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 towards our town. 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? In this context, the "gift" of the Freedom Lands more than a decade later might be seen as a form of belated conscience-stricken compensation from Bruce to Aberdeen's craven burghers.</i></div>
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<i>The numbered stelae boundary markers which show the edges of that “gift”, the Freedom Lands are known as March Stones ("march" being the Old Scots word for "boundary”).</i></div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-40869008879214552742011-11-22T12:55:00.001+00:002011-11-28T16:26:04.121+00:00Why a Third Crossing is Wrong - We Try to Explain Electricity to a Cat<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nJbFRMxaoLg/TsvF0Q_T46I/AAAAAAAACZw/tF6yw-t6PFw/s1600/FOTO_3RD_DONCROSSING_PROPOSED_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nJbFRMxaoLg/TsvF0Q_T46I/AAAAAAAACZw/tF6yw-t6PFw/s1600/FOTO_3RD_DONCROSSING_PROPOSED_01.JPG" /></a></div>
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Our attention has been drawn to the <a href="http://thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com/"><i>"Why a Third Crossing is Wrong"</i> blog at thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com</a>, in which a community activist in Tillydrone logically sets out the reasons why Aberdeen City Council and their business-community sponsors are wrong to push ever onward with their antiquated proposals for a damaging new bridge (the "Third [sic - see below] Don Crossing") over the River Don at Tillydrone. This new motor-vehicle bridge, if built, would form part of the much larger <i>grand project</i> to build a new (but paradoxically, <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/06/got-wee-postcard-from-centre-of-20th.html" target="_blank">as we have explained</a>, very old-fashioned) radial expressway in Aberdeen, pointing directly at the heart of the town centre. We've touched on some of the aspects of this new radial expressway <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/01/urban-dual-carriageways-future-from.html" target="_blank">once</a> or <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/10/march-stones-56-57-abd-k-is-for.html" target="_blank">twice</a> before.</div>
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We admire the systematic and thoroughgoing approach demonstrated by the author of <a href="http://thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Why A Third Crossing is Wrong</a> (let's call it "WTCW") - but of course, the damoclean situation which the Tillydrone (and wider Aberdeen) community finds itself in demands nothing other than all the rigour that can possibly be mobilised in opposition to this road and bridge project which will slice the community in two. The case against the building of this new road and bridge is set out logically and assiduously on the pages of WTCW and the perspicacity and professionalism of the content pages (which are in the form of submissions to the forthcoming public enquiry into the compulsory purchase orders associated with the scheme) does credit to the Tillydrone community. We congratulate the author of the WTCW blog and we recommend it to our readers: go and <a href="http://thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">have a look</a>. </div>
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Being familiar with some of the issues surrounding the proposed Third Don Crossing, and after reading the WTCW blog, we were reminded of a recent piece on <i><b><a href="http://www.copenhagenize.com/" target="_blank">Copenhagenize</a></b></i> in which motorists using a street through a community in Ferrara, Italy are referred to as parasites:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.copenhagenize.com/2011/11/parasites-and-living-lungs.html">http://www.copenhagenize.com/2011/11/parasites-and-living-lungs.html</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>What a great word. The host organism is, of course, the city off which they feed. The streets outside my flat as I write this are relatively free of parasites. The ones that plague Copenhagen aren't your traditional parasites. They aren't noctural. They desert their host organism on migratory patterns, scurrying back to their formicaries in the afternoons, only to return to feed upon their host in the morning. To continue their infestation and causing all manner of illnesses that the host organism is unable to defend itself against.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Traffic pollution with its toxic emissions and noise pollution, a lower perception of safety for pedestrians and cyclists, traffic accidents that kill and maim, reduced property prices and so on.</i></span> </blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>Parasites. It's a brilliant way to describe the motorists who roll down these streets, contributing nothing to the liveableness of my neighbourhood and others, hardly making a dent in the economic well-being of the shops, paying their taxes in other municipalities. Rumbling past, spouting the residue of their combusted fossil fuels behind them to the funky tunes on their radio while they text away on their telephones. </i></span></blockquote>
>>>>>>>>><br />
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WTDC says:<br />
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<a href="http://thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/34/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">http://thirddoncrossing.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/34/</span></a></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The academic consensus is that growth in car transport and road haulage mileage should be discouraged as it is not sustainable socially, environmentally and economically and that there should be a ‘modal shift’ to other sustainable forms. i.e. there should be a decoupling of road transport from economic growth.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am not alone in interpreting that the root of the problem of congestion is the over dependence of the North East on car transport and this is evident by the fact that congestion in and around Aberdeen is not only confined to the Haudagain and Bridge Don ‘pinch points’. I consider that the development will perpetuate this condition by encouraging car usage resulting in more congestion and continuing the progressive marginalisation of sustainable transport alternatives.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Reading through the documentation so far is leading me to the conclusion that there is a bias in the interpretation of the studies leaning towards the conclusion for the need of a road traffic bridge. There appears to be over emphasis on the benefits, understatement of the consequences and the ignoring of alternatives.</span></i></blockquote>
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OtherAberdeen's regular readers will of course know that our position is uncompromisingly against the use of motor-vehicles as a personal transport mode in the centre of Aberdeen (or any town centre). Policies which discourage cars in urban centres and reallocate roadspace away from motor traffic are mainstream throughout <a href="http://www.fietsberaad.nl/library/repository/bestanden/Fietsberaad_publicatie7_Engels.pdf" target="_blank">continental Europe</a> and are being <a href="http://www.cnu.org/highways" target="_blank">adopted even in the USA</a> to the great benefit of local economic prospects and urban social profiles, but when we publish blog-posts demanding that similar policies be adopted here, we generally get a whole lot of quite nasty abuse. </div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9ysYVUOmlxo/TfID-SI43GI/AAAAAAAABrI/G7kX2vbsA8w/s1600/Postcard+from+the+centre+of+the+car+crazy+20th+century.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="229" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9ysYVUOmlxo/TfID-SI43GI/AAAAAAAABrI/G7kX2vbsA8w/s320/Postcard+from+the+centre+of+the+car+crazy+20th+century.jpg" width="320" /></a>So… it's a tough nut to crack… Going hard at the technical aspects of specific projects, as WTCW does, and as <a href="http://www.road-sense.org/" target="_blank">RoadSense</a> (for instance) are doing with regard to the forthcoming orbital motorway project (the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, or AWPR), is vital - for without these efforts and others like them, 'facts on the ground' would change rapidly and irreversibly, as road-building proposals are presented as plans, and plans are presented as <i>faits accomplis</i>. But it's troubling that efforts like these have to be made at all, for they are fighting a rearguard action against a democratic deficit. And as <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/06/got-wee-postcard-from-centre-of-20th.html" target="_blank">we have pointed out before</a>, the current road-building obsession in Aberdeen is an atavistic desire for the realisation of plans which were first drawn up in the centre of the car-crazy twentieth century, before the externalities of motor-centric policies were understood. Car-dependency (or is it car-addiction? - so hard to tell the difference) as pointed out by WTCW is endemic in this part of the world.</div>
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We believe that the underlying problem lies in the mind-set of the polity here (just offering an opinion like that expressed in the previous sentence can provoke reams of abuse). It's a problem of framing, of context. We said, in the conclusion to our <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/04/woonerf-for-denburn-valley-proposal.html" target="_blank">"Woonerf for the Denburn Valley"</a> piece:<br />
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<i>"…once our scheme is up and running … who would ever want to take their car all the way into the town centre ever again?"</i></blockquote>
And among the responses we got was one from someone who said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Yeah, exactly. That's the serious danger of schemes like these which remove road capacity"</i>. </blockquote>
The point being that, here, in this town, in this area, more cars on more roads is <i>ipso facto</i> regarded as being the desirable outcome. This is the context - the frame - in which we try to make the case for sustainable and active transport. You might as well try to explain electricity to a cat. The framing, the prevailing mindset, makes the case for any alternative to motor-transport practically impossible to promulgate. For example, take the forthcoming "Berryden Corridor Improvements" [sic] project, which forms part of the same radial expressway as the Third Don Crossing. The use of that word 'improvements' is telling, for it is the consequence of an <i>a priori</i> assumption on behalf of planners that more cars on more roads in the city is a good thing. So the use of that word <i>'improvements'</i> can be seen as a political deployment of language; for who could credibly oppose something which is an <i>'improvement'</i>? The questions that exercise us at OtherAberdeen are, firstly: Why is car-dependency endemic here? And secondly: What is to be done? What can be done to break the frame, change the context?</div>
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<b><i>Why is car-dependency endemic here?</i></b><br />
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Historically and broadly-speaking, economic progress and improvements in living standards have been accompanied by an increase in car ownership and use. This is understandable. The affluent society, status displays, the growth of suburban living and commuting, the upgrade cycle, etc. All other things being equal (and in the absence of civic policies to discourage motoring) economic growth provokes more motoring; cause and effect. It appears that our policy-makers have got this back-ass forwards; mistaking cause for effect they now believe that more motoring on more roads is a primary cause of economic growth. This is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult" target="_blank">cargo cult</a>.</div>
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OtherAberdeen has explored the impulse for hierarchical status-display through motoring and, while that's an effect that's evident everywhere in the UK, we feel that the extreme affluence of the upper percentiles of the Aberdeen population has a disproportionate psychological 'pull' effect on those 'below' them in the hierarchy, many of who mistake affluence for wealth and so cannot understand that aspiration is not the same thing as acquisition.<i> "Aberdeen is Tycoon-town, / If you're not a tycoon yet, you will be soon."</i> So, aping the transport choices of the hyper-affluent, the people of Aberdeen and its hinterland are delighted to put more cars on more roads, because to them it demonstrates that Aberdeen is a town on the up-and-up, a town that's going somewhere (even if that's only to the shops for a pint of milk).</div>
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<a href="http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/web/MultimediaFiles/TRANSPORT_CHARLESTOWNJCT_ATNIGHT.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/web/MultimediaFiles/TRANSPORT_CHARLESTOWNJCT_ATNIGHT.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Related to that upper-percentile affluence is, of course, the fact that the predominant industry round here is concerned with oil extraction. An acquaintance, defending his excessive motor-mileage said he was "supporting the local economy" by using so much petrol. He wasn't joking. But there's a bit more to it than that: Aside from the impacts upon urban liveability, aside from the detrimental personal and social effects of sedentary lifestyles, and aside from the impact on the perception of safety and desirability of switching to other transport modes, excessive motoring also contributes to climate change (motor transport causes about a quarter of UK carbon emissions). As motor transport and the oil extraction industry are critically co-dependent, so it is psychologically impossible for a motorist in Aberdeen to integrate the fact that motoring is harmful into his or her world view, for that is the same thing as acknowledging that our town's success (such as it is) is based upon that same globally harmful thing. If you want to get Aberdeen people to admit that motoring is harmful, you are asking them to admit that the North Sea oil industry is harmful, and that, by extension, Aberdeen itself is harmful. As Upton Sinclair (author of "<i>Oil!</i>" filmed as "<i>There Will be Blood</i>") said:</div>
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<i>"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it!"</i></blockquote>
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<b><i>What is to be done?</i></b><br />
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<a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/10/carshare-no-dont-think-so.html" target="_blank">We've mentioned</a> that asking people in Aberdeen to switch to a mode of transport which is less amenable to hierarchical status displays is hard going.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/10/carshare-no-dont-think-so.html">http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/10/carshare-no-dont-think-so.html</a></span></div>
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<i>Having spent a lifetime on the upgrade cycle gathering those letters and numbers on the boot-lip of their car - those glyphs and cartouches which so shorthandedly signify their importance - to then tell them that it was all for nothing and that they must abandon these status-displays is to so undermine the foundations of their world-view that they cannot integrate it into reasonable discourse. You might as well tell them that everything they believe in and hold dear is demonstrably wrong, and that everything they think they have achieved and hope to go on to attain is just an illusion. It's like telling a toddler that Santa doesn't exist, and taking away their lollipop at the same time. The reaction you get is not good.</i></blockquote>
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In an ideal world, the fact that there is no 3rd Don Crossing would be seen as an opportunity. For instance, in both Oxford and Cambridge, <a href="http://aberdeencars.blogspot.com/2011/08/oxford-cambridge-failures.html" target="_blank">high levels of active and sustainable transport are the norm</a>. In Oxford's case, this was policy-driven. There it was decided in the 1970's that the urban environment in the town centre was simply too precious to expose to the detrimental effects of motor-traffic. Park-and-ride was pioneered in Oxford, but - crucially - it was accompanied by a moratorium on the creation of new parking spaces in the town centre. No new public car-parks, and - even more importantly - no employee carparks for businesses. While we have excellent P&R facilities for Aberdeen, they are fatally undermined by policies which continue to attract large numbers of motor journeys into the heart of the town. Cambridge benefitted from a different dynamic; though, paradoxically, it was a lack of dynamism which has lead to today's happy outcome. In that town, civic neglect meant that they missed out on the late 20th century enthusiasm for inner-city ring-roads and radial expressways and the like. What turned out to be benign neglect meant none of that sort of motor-pandering infrastructure was installed, and - the ancient town centre being largely unsuitable for motor-traffic - the people of Cambridge took to bikes (or, rather, never got off them). Today, Cambridge has the highest modal share for cycling in the UK. It's worth emphasising that this is not the result of a specific pro-active-transport policy, but rather is the outcome of doing very little to encourage motoring.</div>
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But where does that leave the likes of us active-transport advocates in Aberdeen? In Aberdeen, it leaves us out on the edge; that's where. Sniping from the fringe, marginalised, a hated out-group, seen as dogs-in-mangers; anti-progress, anti-business, anti-Aberdeen. But, of course, we are none of those things.</div>
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Additionally, we are highly skeptical of the compromises offered by groups such as Get-About, and Aberdeen Cycle Forum - because what they ask is that sustainable and active transport be <i>considered</i>, be <i>included</i> in strategic plans which are largely about putting more cars on more roads. And they get exactly what they ask for - tokenistic half measures, afterthoughts and unsuitable infrastructure tacked onto major road-building projects. Where these groups fail is in their acceptance that active and sustainable travel is 'in addition to' business as usual, whereas, if campaigns for active and sustainable travel were successful, there would be significantly less pressure on existing road capacity, and calls for more roads would simply evaporate. For active and sustainable transport is not 'in addition to' business as usual - rather, it is 'instead of' business as usual. The policies of GetAbout and the like have failure built in, for they first acquiesce unquestionably to the <i>a priori</i> calls for more roads, and then seek to piggyback on that.</div>
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We note that Aberdeen City Council's plans for the Third Don Crossing bridge and its feeder roads include some tokenistic cycle paths, some of which are labeled as being 'segregated'. You'd think we'd be pleased, yes? Well we're not, because this labelling demonstrates that road-planners in this town have completely misunderstood what segregation of facilities for cycling should actually encompass. We couldn't put it any better than the <b><i><a href="http://lofidelitybicycleclub.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club</a></i></b>, so we'll leave it to them and their discussion of what "Going Dutch" would mean for UK cycling infrastructure:</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://lofidelitybicycleclub.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/misinterpreting-interpretations/">http://lofidelitybicycleclub.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/misinterpreting-interpretations/</a></span></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The fact is that ‘Going Dutch’ does mean having segregation everywhere! But there’s one fundamental caveat; The British assume segregation to mean ‘segregating cyclists from the road to ’improve traffic flow’ for motorised traffic’ whereas the Dutch mean ‘segregate motorised vehicles from people to improve movement for everyone’.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Through the years, the British have created a lot of bypasses, relief roads, motorways, urban expressways and the like. The Dutch did the same but ensured that it became an utter pain in the buttocks to get across the town being bypassed in a car, in effect forcing motorised traffic to use the new infrastructure built. The British didn’t and are still paying the price with heavily congested town and city centres. In fact we keep using it as some perverse justification to build more bypasses, relief roads, motorways, urban expressways and the like.</span></i></blockquote>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here</td></tr>
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Quite. Here, in Aberdeen, we have both plans for a new orbital motorway bypass and a new radial expressway (as well as other radial access 'improvements' for motor transport). Additionally, so great is the fear that the orbital motorway bypass road will reduce traffic flows into and through the town centre, that NESTRANS (the North East of Scotland Transport Partnership - a political/business quango) document <a href="http://www.nestrans.org.uk/db_docs/docs/LITB%20AWPR%20300508.pdf" target="_blank">"Optimising the Benefits of the AWPR"</a> (pdf) includes specific provision for measures to 'improve' radial flows of motor traffic towards and through the town centre. This is the direct polar opposite of the more modern transport planning we see in continental Europe (in particular Netherlands and Denmark) where, as the <a href="http://lofidelitybicycleclub.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club</a> point out, yes indeed they have bypasses and motorways and the like, but it is this infrastructure itself which forms the major plank of the segregation policy. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KpQtxgEgDwk/Tli6U5dkjbI/AAAAAAAAB_8/oiXHFxS_xqg/s1600/080827+Cycling+Street+Scene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="153" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KpQtxgEgDwk/Tli6U5dkjbI/AAAAAAAAB_8/oiXHFxS_xqg/s200/080827+Cycling+Street+Scene.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elsewhere</td></tr>
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For these roads fulfil the policy of segregating cars from people, keeping motor-traffic flows away from where people want and need to be. And so, in this way, urban centres - centres for entertainment, residences, commerce and community - are allowed to fulfil their correct urban function as human-scale places for people, rather than machine-scale places for cars. Were our forthcoming orbital motorway bypass project to be accompanied by policies which would prevent radial flows of motor traffic into and through the centre of our town, there would be no greater advocates of it than we. But it is not, so we are not. </div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rI70F-z1sLE/Tli6IahSO_I/AAAAAAAAB_w/UAs5973Uw7A/s1600/Picture+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="120" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rI70F-z1sLE/Tli6IahSO_I/AAAAAAAAB_w/UAs5973Uw7A/s200/Picture+2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
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Incontrovertible evidence has been mounting for some time now, demonstrating beyond doubt that motor-centric policies to encourage ever-increasing numbers of motorcar journeys into the centres of towns are wrong. Wrong for the environment, wrong for personal health, wrong for the community and wrong for business sustainability. Indeed, we were delighted to notice that a raft of recent studies encompassing places as diverse as The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Canada, Swizerland and the United States shows policies which cater for bicycle transport are better for local business than those which cater for motor transport.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://thisbigcity.net/local-economic-implications-of-urban-bicycle-networks/">http://thisbigcity.net/local-economic-implications-of-urban-bicycle-networks/</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>...a study from the Dutch city of Utrecht which found that whilst bicycle-based consumers spend less per transaction, they make more visits and spend the most collectively. This isn’t the only connection – a German study found similar results, calling cyclists ‘better customers’ due to them making eleven trips per month compared to seven for motorists. And the Swiss are in on it too, where research into parking space profitability found that each square metre of bicycle parking generated €7500 compared to €6625 for cars.</i></span></blockquote>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U9atn93ziGY/TsvNQuA0r2I/AAAAAAAACZ4/M3mtjVj_ujY/s1600/ideopolis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U9atn93ziGY/TsvNQuA0r2I/AAAAAAAACZ4/M3mtjVj_ujY/s320/ideopolis.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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When will Aberdeen get the message? In the past, when they didn't know what else to do, physicians used to allow fevers to run high - kill or cure. Perhaps the motor-centric policies of Aberdeen - with our forthcoming orbital motorway, accompanied as it is by this new bridge and other access projects at Haudagain, 3rd Don Crossing, Bridge of Dee replacement, Berryden 'Improvements', and a great big new carpark where Union Terrace Gardens used to be are an attempt to provoke just such a crisis - for once these projects are complete, large volumes of high speed traffic will power unimpeded into the heart of our town, causing atrocious levels of noise and chemical pollution, heavy congestion and destroying liveability for the communities the expressways bisect. Once this crisis is upon us, policy will - must - inevitably shift, for there will be nowhere left for new roads to be built.</div>
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Or will there?</div>
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<a href="http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1778791" target="_blank">Tunnels Vision for Aberdeen Transport</a><br />
(a must-read)<br />
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If we tolerate current plans, the risible nonsense of grandiloquent proposals for tunnels and monorails and god-knows-what-all will surely follow. For that reason, as well as everything else above, we wish the Tillydrone community and the author of Why a Third Crossing is Wrong every success in their resistance.<br />
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But finally, there is another reason why a "<i>Third</i>" Don Crossing is "wrong". For, having successfully framed the discourse - the promoters of this scheme have managed to get us all to use the name "Third Don crossing" when referring to it. But it is not - if this scheme goes ahead - this will be the <i>sixth</i> bridge over the Don in Aberdeen. Count them.<br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-49878980026652294522011-11-18T15:49:00.001+00:002011-11-18T17:54:39.031+00:00The Spectacle of the Symphony<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/public/VmA9eKAmnvz9MR_8vymU0ISuoLD-gVdw1RQeTRN59F4vihqgeufdletmjTbpuFb-_pAwKwUPsyrJac3OPsuSG9QopWmjsJzwru2UyY_e-jY5P3EMamna76NpFyE" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/public/VmA9eKAmnvz9MR_8vymU0ISuoLD-gVdw1RQeTRN59F4vihqgeufdletmjTbpuFb-_pAwKwUPsyrJac3OPsuSG9QopWmjsJzwru2UyY_e-jY5P3EMamna76NpFyE" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">1.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>THE WHOLE LIFE of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>IMAGES DETACHED FROM every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-life.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><i>The Society of the Spectacle</i></b><br />
Guy Debord<br />
La société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967)<br />
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994)</span></blockquote>
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To Aberdeen’s down-at-heel Georgian/Victorian concert-hall - The Music Hall - last night for a performance of Sibelius’ 5th Symphony, the concert forming part of the “Naked Classics” series from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra</div>
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<a href="http://www.rsno.org.uk/index.php?option=com_jcalpro&Itemid=80&extmode=view&extid=272&date=2011-10-11">http://www.rsno.org.uk/index.php?option=com_jcalpro&Itemid=80&extmode=view&extid=272&date=2011-10-11</a><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The RSNO's successful Naked Classics is coming to Aberdeen for the very first time!<br />Presenter Paul Rissmann uses an innovative mixture of projections, lighting, on stage demonstrations and interviews with players [sic] to reveal the stories behind musical masterworks and the composers who wrote them. Then, after the interval, sit back and enjoy the work being performed in all its glory by the RSNO.<br />A distant horn-call, a flight of swans, and copious quantities of vodka – Jean Sibelius got his inspiration from some unlikely places. But when it all came together in his Fifth Symphony, the result was one of the most stirring masterpieces in modern music (and a tune so good that it's been covered by everyone from the Beach Boys to Sinitta). Paul Rissmann and conductor Christian Kluxen take it to pieces and show you how it all works.</span></i></blockquote>
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The RSNO’s “Naked Classics” format forgoes the traditional programme of an orchestral concert. The first half of the concert - in which the orchestra usually will play an short overture (opening) piece followed by a concerto (a longer piece, featuring a soloist) is dispensed with in favour of a 45-minute lecture with a sort of son-et-lumière and power-point presentation which tries to explain both the composer and the symphonic work in an <i>informal</i> and <i>entertaining</i> way, the intended aim being to improve the accessibility of symphonic music.</div>
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We had serious reservations about this format from the moment we learned that we were to be subjected to it. Firstly, we felt we were being short-changed - we knew we would feel keenly the absence of the overture and concerto. Particularly felt was the lack of a soloist, for often (yes, even here in Aberdeen) we are delighted to be treated to a virtuoso performance from a world-class musician at the very top of their world-renowned talent. But not yesterday. Instead we got a quite boring talk with slides not enlivened even slightly by all the possible bells and whistles of special PowerPoint page-turn and cloud-puff transition effects and the like.</div>
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Now, a symphony can be <i>programmatic</i> - which is how the piece is described when it attempts to render an extra-musical narrative or explores a particular thematic subject in linear progression. But more usually the symphonic form exemplifies <i>absolute music</i> which is intended to be appreciated without any specific reference to the outside world. The unity of the symphonic form and its effect upon the listener is enabled by that self-same continuous <i>unmediated single experience</i> which is the symphonic form itself. Other than competent musicians, their instruments, a hall to play in and the score, no other thing is required. It is not textual, it is not pictorial, it is not verbal; it is pure music, it is symphony - the artistic pinnacle of rendered human emotion. So, once the lecture was underway, we were disquieted by the risibly literal interpretations and pat explanations mapped directly one-to-one onto the musical forms and intentions of Sibelius and his work. We were issued a Baedeker, a guide for tourists. We were spoon-fed an insultingly childish sequence of comfortingly primary-colourful pictorial and textual symbols to use as a meaning-eliding gazetteer with which to summarise and contain, categorise and control the abstract and terrifyingly vast depths of unfathomable emotion which are the true content of the monolithic work of genius which is Sibelius' 5th Symphony. The first movement is a bit like a flower opening, apparently. The second is a stream or river - who knew? And the third is exactly like some swans, seemingly. There. Now you know.</div>
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So the interval came, and we thought, with relief - good; that’s that then, we can try to forget all about that crap, disconnect from the imposed context, and engage exclusively with the symphony in the second half. But no, the symphony itself was accompanied by powerpoint slides throughout, projected onto a big screen above the audience; the visually intrusive imagery and text referring back to the words and pictures expounded during the lecture in the first half of the evening, reinforcing their asinine associations. It will take all our kung-fu skills and a passive effort of accepting resistance to expunge those hyperrealistic, over-simplistic and literal images and text from their imposed association with this masterpiece symphony. An association where none should exist - uncomplicated words for a complex non-verbal form, unchallenging images for an elaborate non-pictorial artwork - keeping us from a true appreciation of the artwork, quarantining us from the emotional freight which is the true content of the symphony. Not only all that, but the high-intensity digital projector, from which the powerpoint slides were projected, also issued an intrusively insistent and incessant susurration from its position suspended up on high, at the very acoustic focal point of the concert hall. Thus, the unity of the symphonic experience was polluted and rendered into a juddering discontinuity of distraction and false images, caroming over the mutilated surface of a disjointed experience.</div>
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So, this “Naked Classics” is a patronising and didactic cheapening of high culture that fails even on its own terms. Rather than bring the audience closer to the music, as is its intention, this “Naked Classics” format does not succeed, for it imposes a cognitive burden of additional and spurious sensory content - redundant barriers which keep the audience at a distance removed from a direct appreciation of the music. The symphony, the highest form of musical composition, should not be presented as a multi-media ‘event’ - it is a single-media artwork. It is not an object to be contemplated from the outside, by external means - for it requires no explanation other than that which is contained within it itself. It requires no representation other than that which it itself offers, directly and personally encountered by the listener’s abstracted perception, a direct intercourse (mediated only by instruments and musical virtousity) between the mind of the composer and the emotional topography of the listener’s consciousness, directly lived in real time. Any further exposition is redundant, a pointless distraction, a misdirection.</div>
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We go to symphonic concerts to avoid the Spectacle. We had thought in our idealistic naivety that orchestral music would remain a safe refuge from the common stream. But last night the RSNO - an organisation which should know better; an organisation with a royal warrant to serve as guardians of high culture - took symphony away from us and instead we were spoon fed with the Spectacle of the Symphony.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>THE WHOLE LIFE of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i>IMAGES DETACHED FROM every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-life.</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><b><i>The Society of the Spectacle</i></b><br />Guy Debord<br />La société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967)<br />Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994)</span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-45623050505601192472011-11-17T13:07:00.001+00:002011-11-19T14:23:57.011+00:00An Energetic Approach to Lingo Bingo and Greenwash<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2010/08/a-to-z-of-aberdeen-e.html" target="_blank">Last year, we wrote an indignant piece</a> about local development quango <a href="http://www.acsef.co.uk/default.cfm" target="_blank">ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) </a>and their flagship cargo-cult real-estate project, "Energetica", which had then just benefitted from a <i>relaunch</i>.</div>
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The <a href="http://www.acsef.co.uk/uploads/reports/4/Energetica%20leaflet%20KITE%20FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">Energetica "leaflet"</a> distributed at the time was, we said: <i>"[a] self-satirising work of pompous cut-and-paste managementspeak buzzword grandiloquence [which] is both a plea by vested interests for development land to be released to construction companies and a sales brochure which sickeningly flatters potential buyers."</i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Newburgh<br />
Energetica Tenement</td></tr>
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But we've been reading the peerless <a href="http://auchterness.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Auchterness blog</a>, where we learned a much-needed thing or two about planning, so now we take it all back, all that nasty stuff we said about Energetica. For it seems that last year's relaunch of Energetica went so well that they've decided to have another relaunch this year, with a <i>refresh</i> of the <i>offering</i> and rebranding with new brochures to download from a <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/" target="_blank">smashing new website with a dot-uk-dot-com domain</a> and everything.</div>
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And so we congratulate ACSEF on this re-launch, not least because it shows a praiseworthy evolutionary approach to the use of language in support of the promotion of real-estate ventures. Whereas the previous iteration of Energetica transparently telegraphed the oil-industry legacy of the ACSEF board members (last year we were instructed that the project would <i>"stimulate synergies"</i> and were invited to consider the <i>"private sector vision"</i> of <i>"dynamic organisations"</i>), today, things have moved on, oh yes, and an altogether more modern and forward looking and thrillingly emotional offering is published, ready for you to <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/pdf/energetica_brochure.pdf" target="_blank">download in modern, exciting, PDF form here.</a></div>
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For on the Energetica website and in the lovely new brochure we were very thrilled to see a use of words which is designed to push the reader's psychological buttons - evocative words, expressive phrases laden with an abstracted emotional freight - words which connote a softer kind of power than that of the oil-service companies who are largely responsible for promoting this real-estate scheme. Here's the sort of stuff they're saying now:</div>
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<i>"Here, now, and on the horizon" - "Inspired through a deeper understanding" - "If it can be imagined, it can be realised" - "Passion and opportunity should be shared" - "We should take responsibility for our world"</i></div>
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Yes, it's clear that - through their stewardship of the <a href="http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/10/open-goal-uncontested-scrum.html" target="_blank">International Design Competition for the destruction of Union Terrace Gardens</a> - ACSEF have learned a thing or to about peppering their publications with the very latest kind of Starchitect-style boilerplate. See - the Union Terrace Gardens debacle wasn't for nothing after all!</div>
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But above all, one of the most admirable aspects of the Energetica project is its greenwashing credentials - the use of the word "sustainable", for instance is a big favourite of our local oil company tycoons here in Aberdeen, and is highly evident on the Energetica website and brochure. There are, on the exciting, innovative, forward-looking Energetica interactive maps, little glyphs which denote the locations where a handful of wind-turbines might go in-between Aberdeen and Fraserburgh one day. Sustainability, see? And we all know that golf is a "green" activity (geddit?!), so it's heartening to see a preponderance golf courses decorating the map of Energetica - many indeed are the the chances afforded by these exclusive mostly-male bastions for high-ranking executives to discuss important matters in a low-pressure unminuted environment, away from the attentions of the busybody stickybeaks who just wouldn't understand the finer points of high-end real-estate dealings anyway. And as saviour of the future <strike>Mr</strike> Dr Donald Trump himself <a href="http://www.golf.com/courses-and-travel/golf-magazine-interview-donald-trump" target="_blank">has said</a>: </div>
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<i>...if I added the deals I make on my course to my portfolio then it would be a much bigger part of my business. If I didn't play golf at my course in Westchester County (N.Y.) then I wouldn't have four major buildings there. <b>Owning a great golf course gives you great power.</b></i></blockquote>
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We offer a word of caution, however, to ACSEF. We know how difficult it is for them to shrug off their existing high-carbon motorcentric and frequent-flyer world-view, but if they are to truly achieve world-class breakthrough greenwash, they should leave out (or at least de-emphasise) all their talk of the Aberdeen Airport Expansion project, which is mentioned in the brochure and on web-pages <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/infrastruture.aspx" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/connectivity.aspx" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/transport.aspx" target="_blank">here</a>. Moreover, they might consider leaving out (or at least not trumpeting quite so loudly) all their needy-pleading promotion of Aberdeen's mooted orbital motorway project (the AWPR - Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route) and the accompanying intended increase of capacity on the A90 trunk road to Ellon which are mentioned on the Energetica brochure and on the web pages <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/locations.aspx" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/links.aspx" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/infrastruture.aspx" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/transport.aspx" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/pdf/ezine-story-11.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/pdf/full-speed-ahead-for-new-energy-community.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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And a final word of advice. In attempting to issue a greenwashing press-release, when ACSEF <a href="http://www.energetica.uk.com/pdf/Energetica-Intertek.pdf" target="_blank">speak on behalf of oil service companies</a> who have leased a shed at the Energetica industrial estate, if they are to have us believe that these companies are truly the sort of enterprises which are committed to plotting an entrepreneurial course for Aberdeen "City and Shire" into a future beyond the exploitation of oil and gas reserves, its probably best if they stop referring to sustainable and renewable sources of energy as being <i>"alternative energy"</i>. When executives with a background in oil and gas use language like that, it just gives the game away, see?<br />
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But, to sum it up, we congratulate ACSEF once again on their re-launch of Energetica. We think it's gone so well that they should have another re-launch, really soon.</div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6007305602804756486.post-3896569559481165172011-11-15T14:09:00.001+00:002011-11-15T15:45:12.360+00:00Unbearably Hideous and Detestable<div style="text-align: justify;">
UP AT the top we say: <i>"something is very wrong with this town - psychogeography might or might not help…"</i>. And indeed today we are at a loss, for nothing we can say or show could possibly help mitigate the growing horror which creeps across the consciousness as the most recent implications of the budget apocalypse at Aberdeen City Council become ever clearer. No amount of urban exploration or ludic walking could eliminate the hollow feeling of distaste felt when the implications of of the cuts crystallise into words in a policy document which will, in a short time, become facts on the ground.</div>
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A summary of the forthcoming budget cuts, how they have been prioritised and what that means for public services can be <a href="http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/nmsruntime/saveasdialog.asp?lID=41080&sID=13437">read here (PDF)</a>. It's tough going - the opaque language of the document is as dry as the bones which may be all that remains of our town's civic sphere once the budget reductions have been implemented.</div>
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If you can stomach it, the reading of this most recent document will demonstrate to you what our local political representatives, their publicly-paid bureaucrats and their unaccountable businessmen puppet-masters have decided is the prioritised hierarchy of cuts for the coming 5-year period. It's a sort of civic triage, aimed at the <i>delivery</i> of £35.7m of budget savings. The document summarises how these savings are to be <i>achieved</i>, and breaks the savings down by how they are spread across council directorates: Social Care & Wellbeing; Education, Culture & Sport; Housing & Environment and so forth. It is an object lesson in doublethink that these directorates are flagged up along with their corresponding <i>contributions</i>. Contributions which consist of things taken away, that is.</div>
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Local readers will probably be aware that the cuts detailed in this document are in addition to the existing tranche of cuts made over the last two years which <i>achieved</i> a <i>contribution</i> of around £15m. Those cuts fell largely upon provision of services for physically and mentally disabled people, and the terminally ill, including children.</div>
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So, additional to that, among the new measures explored and prioritised are:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Increasing primary schools class sizes by up to 78% (recommended maximum number of pupils in p3 to be increased from 18 to 33)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Sacking pupil support assistants</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Shutting five primary and two secondary schools</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Reducing services for the homeless</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Stopping day care for mentally ill people</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Closing recycling centres</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Closure of parks and gardens throughout the city, selling the land.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Reduction then cessation of school crossing patrols</li>
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We note that there is, in this document, no de-prioritising of our council's continuing push forward with the old-fashioned multi-million pound urban dual-carriageway and radial expressway projects which were dreamt up in the centre of the car-crazy 20th century. Rather than consider a suspension of these motorcentric policies and instead explore the cheaper and more modern transport options common in continental Europe and even the USA, by contrast our local government has, in this budget document, demonstrated its commitment to continuing the enablement and authorisation of car-dependent lifestyles by ruling out the introduction of a congestion charge for Aberdeen. Moreover, the document shows our local authority's foot-dragging resistance to the implementation of the higher penalty charges for illegal parking which the Scottish Government has requested that local authorities introduce.</div>
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No to congestion charge, no to higher parking charges. Yes to more urban dual-carriageways. Yes to bigger class sizes, yes to the sacking of lollipop ladies. The council signals that the right to drive unimpeded at ever greater speed around Aberdeen and park where you will is more important than children's education and safety, more important than services for the disabled and disadvantaged, more important than public parks.</div>
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Measures also considered but listed further down the list of axe-ready <i>priorities</i> are the closure of all 16 of our community libraries and the shut-down of all museums and art galleries for one year. It's no surprise that <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/joanna-blythman/granite-city-is-in-thrall-to-the-philistines-1.1000851">this philistine town</a> should consider the suspension of cultural services, but its a source of spine-chilling horror that, for want of a total shortfall of £70m over ten years, such grave damage is being done to the civic sphere of our town. That these cuts should largely fall on the blameless, the vulnerable, the marginalised, the disenfranchised, the poor, the ill and the disabled - while parallel council activity is intent on borrowing a similar sum in order to realise the vanity project of a highly affluent and locally influential billionaire oil tycoon in his grandiloquent plans for the privatisation of public space in the town centre is beyond distasteful. </div>
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That our local government should seriously consider the closure and sale of many public parks, while doing all they can to toady to the got-lucky businessman - effectively mortgaging the commonly-held land in the centre of our town to discharge the plutocratic aspirations of one citizen and his cadres - while thousands upon thousands other citizens face serious detriment to or cessation of the local authority services which maintain their quality of life - is beyond offensive. Though it is instructive, for it demonstrates the contempt in which ordinary people are held by the politicians, bureaucrats and capitalists who run Aberdeen.</div>
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There are other policies both explicit and implicit in the budget-cut document, which we might decide are worth exploring later on. For instance, the document implicitly shows that there's a bit of jiggery-pokery being considered with regard to our Common Good fund. And there is an explicit demonstration that our local authority is reluctant to implement government policy which would see the reduction of council tax reliefs on second homes, but is quite content to implement policies which will remove vital help from homeless people. Something is, indeed, very wrong with this town. In the words of <i>Private Eye's</i> 'Piloti', </div>
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<i>What exactly does one have to do to stop a fine city like Aberdeen self-harming, not to say committing suicide?</i></blockquote>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">otheraberdeen.blogspot.com</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4