Dog in Manger Throws Toys out of Pram

Do you remember this one?

http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/dog-in-manger.html

Updated today with this:

And, all the more extraordinarily, with this:

News also reaches us via The Herald of a letter which Donald Trump has written to Alex Salmond MSP, Scotland's First Minister.

Trump Declares War on Scotland

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/trump-declares-war-on-salmond.16718168

>>>>>>> 

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" 

Later, in a radio interview, he said that included wars. 

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. 

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". 

"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. 

Mr Trump says tourists would not suffer because there would not be any coming to Scotland because of the wind farm policy. 

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." 

<<<<<<<

You'll see that the article points out that Donald Trump promises to finance an "international campaign" against windfarm developments all over Scotland. Extraordinary.

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.

The BBC sought a response from the Scottish Government, and got this choice quote:

>>>>>  

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. 

<<<<<

Adding to this, Niall Stewart, who is Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables said:

>>>>> 

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. 

<<<<<

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. 

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.

But we would never say such things about a man and organisation we respect as much as we do. We daren't.

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.

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! 

Haste ye back!

An Energetic Approach to Lingo Bingo and Greenwash

Last year, we wrote an indignant piece about local development quango ACSEF (Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future) and their flagship cargo-cult real-estate project, "Energetica", which had then just benefitted from a relaunch.

The Energetica "leaflet" distributed at the time was, we said: "[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."

A Newburgh
Energetica Tenement

But we've been reading the peerless Auchterness blog, 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 refresh of the offering and rebranding with new brochures to download from a smashing new website with a dot-uk-dot-com domain and everything.

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 "stimulate synergies" and were invited to consider the "private sector vision" of "dynamic organisations"), 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 download in modern, exciting, PDF form here.

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:

"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"

Yes, it's clear that - through their stewardship of the International Design Competition for the destruction of Union Terrace Gardens - 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!

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 Mr Dr Donald Trump himself has said: 

...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. Owning a great golf course gives you great power.

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 here and here and here. 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 here and here and here and here and here and here.

And a final word of advice. In attempting to issue a greenwashing press-release, when ACSEF speak on behalf of oil service companies 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 "alternative energy". When executives with a background in oil and gas use language like that, it just gives the game away, see?

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.

More about Golf Greens than Green Energy

COLLAPSE

//////////////////////////////////////////////////
CARBON-CAPTURE-PROJECT-LONGANNET-COLLAPSE?NEWSFEED=TRUE
//////////////////////////////////////////////////

///////////http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/06/carbon-capture-project-longannet-collapse?newsfeed=true...

<<<<<<<<

--------------------------------------------------- 

Flagship UK carbon capture project 'close to collapse'  

Scottish Power expected to pull out of government-promoted scheme to build a £1bn prototype CCS plant at Longannet

Terry Macalister and Damian Carrington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 October 2011 15.32 BST

---------------------------------------------------
A £1bn flagship government project for fighting climate change – the construction of a prototype carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Longannet in Scotland – is on the verge of collapse, it emerged on Thursday. Talks between the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) and Scottish Power have run into deep trouble and the electricity supplier is expected to pull the plug on the government-promoted scheme, which hoped to bury carbon emissions from the coal power station in the North Sea. [...]

 Decc had promised £1bn of public money but the developers are understood to be arguing that they cannot proceed without more money to trial the scheme, close to the Firth of Forth. Both sides insist "talks are ongoing" but well-placed industry and political sources say the process is "pretty much over" and a statement to that effect could be expected shortly. Jeff Chapman, the chief executive of theCarbon Capture and Storage Association, said the collapse of the Longannet scheme would be a "severe disappointment" for the wider hopes of the sector. "Everybody knows the negotiations have been very difficult, so to that extent it's quite possible [the talks] don't come to a conclusion – although there are other projects coming through the system hopefully."  [...]

 The Fife scheme was by far the most advanced and spearheaded the drive to develop this new technology in Britain. Ministers have repeatedly stressed the importance of CCS as a way of keeping coal and potentially other fossil-fuel burning power stations in operation without undermining moves to cut CO2. Longannet is the third largest coal-fired power station in Europe at 2,400MW and was once highlighted as Scotland's biggest single polluter.

>>>>>>>>>>>

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

-------§§§-------

Three mega-rich (at least one of them giga-rich) capitalists of Aberdeen. Standing at the head of their multiple boardroom tables in the town which styles itself the 'Energy Capital of Europe' they are watching as this scheme to neutralise the atmosphere-menacing emissions of Europe third's largest coal-burning power-station - Scotland's biggest polluter - collapses. This project to neuter its teratogenic discharges lies close to breakdown for want of an investment shortfall - the sum of which would be less than one tenth of this cadre's aggregate net worth. That is; this project does not want for material, or know-how, or industrial capacity: no, it fails for lack of the trivial fiction of cash-money.

For this novel technology (while scientifically simple) remains commercially unproven; it is a business risk; the financial returns are uncertain. For this pecuniary reason alone - despite its promise of continual gigawatts (but scrubbed, guilt-free, of harmful carbon) from the 50-year-yet certain supply of global coal - no power station anywhere in the world has a full-scale carbon capture and storage system running. No-one yet knows just how much it will cost to clean up electricity which is manufactured from coal. No-one yet knows how much (or how little) profit is to be made.

In this town, we have a large workforce of innovative technologists and engineers with the skills and experience necessary to design, manufacture and operate systems like these. The wrangling of high-pressure gas, fluid and plasma is very much our stock-in-trade. And in our oil tycoons, we have the capital which, if deployed into these low- and no- carbon electricity and motive power sources (of which CCS is just one) would truly, finally change this town's self-styled moniker from "Oil Capital" to "Energy Capital" and so at last give truth to the conceit. 

Now, today, we all stand at the crossroads. Will these men mobilise their capital - are they prepared to take the risk? Much is made by the PR agencies they retain of their philanthropic credentials. What could be more humanity-loving than risking a small part of their capital on a chance to safeguard the atmosphere? Or is 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 distracting them?

Flashing in their minds 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 reallocation of capital crossing the minds of the tycoons. 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 risky?

The tycoons stand at the heads of their boardroom tables, their hands on the levers of capital. 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. The tycoons have their hands on the control levers of capital. But they have feet of clay.

-------oo0oo-------

  1.

/NATURAL RESERVE/

.......>>>>http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/features/Profile-Ian-Suttie-the-tycoon.6846117.jp..

Profile: Ian Suttie, the tycoon with natural reserve

Published Date: 02 October 2011

By Richard Bath

HE IS the stealth bomber of Scottish business, appearing only rarely on to the radar screen of public consciousness before quickly disappearing. And that, by and large, is the way Ian Suttie likes it. But all that changed last week when a major oil find in the Kraken field, 88 miles off Shetland, by Aberdeen-based First Oil put Suttie at the top of Scotland's rich list. With one positive North Sea seismograph, he was catapulted out of the business sections of newspapers and on to the front pages. 

For an oil tycoon with 40 directorships whose company's 30 per cent stake in the Kraken field means he is now reputed to be worth more than a billion pounds, remarkably little is known about Suttie. Indeed, Suttie is said to regard the prospect of becoming public property with unalloyed horror. An oilman who worked with him said he's "not exactly reclusive, but he's not far off it - he's very private".

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

2.

/ONE OF A KIND/

>>>>>>>>>http://www.agcc.co.uk/april-2011-cover/.........

Jimmy Milne - A journey there and back again

“I was born on Boxing Day and have been fighting for existence ever since,” he says.

Milne [Balmoral Group chairman] celebrated his 70th birthday last year but to suggest that it might be time to ease up risks permanent impairment by the Samurai sword which sits beside his desk.

“I still feel like a 20-year-old most days and I still have a spring in my step and fire in my belly.

“I am driven by throwing back the frontiers of technology and always trying to beat the biggest and the best in the world. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

“I can’t stand anyone saying ‘Jim I can’t do this.’ I say let’s just start again. Let’s get rid of the ‘t’ because there is always a way of doing it. I really believe in positive thinking and positive action and with that you can literally shift mountains. Another thing I can’t stand is people coming to me and saying ‘I tried the best I could.’

“Winston Churchill said that to try your best is not good enough - you have to go out and achieve what has to be achieved and there is a gulf of a difference between these mindsets.

“I don’t take no for an answer and I will never give up – but it is not just Jimmy Milne. I drive it but I have a terrific team of guys, very loyal and hard working who take pride in Balmoral and what we do but we never get complacent.

“My first employee is still with me and we have 54 long term members of staff and more than 1000 man-years of polymer experience - and that’s not just me!”

He has no doubt that the hard work ethic goes back to his childhood on the farm.

>>>>http://www.offshore-europe.co.uk/ExhibitorLibrary/385/Balmoral_Offshore_News_7_2.pdf.....

Demand for oil and gas pulls energy sector through recession

Although the oil and gas industry has been affected by the global economic slowdown the energy sector tends to work in longer-term cycles. This is particularly true of deepwater operations. The demand for hydrocarbon-based energy is continually increasing and this has pushed the industry into new territories and ever deeper waters. As a result of continuous exploration and production activity much of the offshore supply chain has remained relatively well protected from the worst ravages of recession. Despite the economic slowdown Balmoral Offshore Engineering’s international business has increased exponentially between 2007 and 2010 We are delighted that the industry is showing its faith in us as a premium provider of high quality, reliable products and have been successful in securing significant contracts for some of the industry’s most prestigious global deepwater provinces. To cope with the increasing demand we are investing heavily in a new manufacturing plant in Brazil 

Jim Milne CBE, Chairman and Managing Director, Balmoral Group 

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

3.

/NORTHERNMOST TYCOON/

/LOOKS BEYOND OIL/

>>>>http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/profile-in-the-school-of-hard-knox-sir-ian-wood-britains-northernmost-tycoon-looks-beyond-oil-david-bowen-reports-1405720.html .......

In the school of hard Knox: Sir Ian Wood: Britain's northernmost tycoon looks beyond oil. 

[...]

Sir Ian is proud of the Granite City. Once it had realised the opportunities of oil, he says, it did the right things. 'It would be wrong to say it would all have happened anyway. The business could have gone to Dundee or elsewhere. The harbour has been rebuilt, and the local civic leaders did what they could to encourage development. That is very much to their credit.'

Now he feels his job is to make sure Aberdeen does not drift back into economic obscurity. 'We're the lucky generation of north-east Scotland,' he says. 'I'd hate the next generation to look back and say,

 "Well, what did you leave us?" '

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Poxy-metal

http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/08/hazlehead-externalities.html

 <<<<<<<<

[...]

When I returned to the Piper Alpha garden, all the gardeners had gone. There was peace and space and air and light in which I could now contemplate the memorial, its 168 engraved names, that dreadful night.

Then I began to remember.

Then I remembered something of that time...

>>>>>>>>>

----------/////////----------

...Then I remembered something of that time.

All those years ago. Another life, in another time, I worked for an engineering consultancy in the North Sea oil and gas industry. In those days following the Piper Alpha disaster, at the fag-end of the 1980's, something new was happening with young people. Out of the London suburbs and the empty warehouses of economic decline had come the acid house rave culture. And in this town too, the drugdance fever hit: The former post-punk alternative and indie club culture mixed with the nascent hip-hop upwellings and we danced and we danced and we danced. Thursday to Sunday we danced. But this life needed funding, and funding was available from the shiny engineering consultancies of the dirty oil industry. All suited up, ties tied, shoes laced, collars buttoned-down, it was quite common - more than common; it was inevitable - that you would come across fellow ravers working in drawing offices or oilco technical libraries, print rooms, server rooms and the like. Self-employed contractors we were; junior engineers, tech clerks, tracers, data input operators, dye-line printers, hot-shot document couriers in rented saloons, coining it in through the day and necking the eckies when the sun went down. A knowing nod across a drawing office on Thursday afternoon was then later a roar of recognition and a huge hug on the dancefloor on Friday night. An expensive life for young people to lead, clubbing every night - so we funded it right out of the pockets of the oil companies, for that year the offshore disaster had blown an ill-windfall bonanza for those in the right place to harvest it.

The consultancy I worked for in the year following the Piper disaster was contracted by the company Occidental itself - operators of the ill-fated platform where 168 had died on that one awful night. We were contracted to audit and remediate the working practices and equipment on their Claymore gas production platform which was similar in layout and operation to Piper. Occidental - the company had once been know affectionately as 'Oxy' - unsurprisingly had a big PR problem in this town after the disaster. Rightly or wrongly they were seen as liable, as criminal. They were seen as having caused the deaths. They became known around town as 'Poxy' or 'Poxy-metal'. At best they were known as 'Accidental'. If you say "Occidental" in a slack-jawed Texan drawl, it sounds like "Accidental", so this bit of cheek you could pull off in front of the companymen's faces while retaining plausible deniability. Not that they would ever again dare challenge a 'local', for power had shifted in the wake of the tragedy. They had a desperate need to be seen to be doing the right thing, and so, when they let their 'right thing' contracts, money was no object, and they let them locally.

Occidental was unusual in the oil industry by being about the last of the truly independent oil companies. While it's stock was traded, it remained under the majority control of one man, a second-generation Ukrainian New York immigrant called Armand Hammer. Having spent years adventuring in the newly-formed Soviet Union during the 1920's supposedly looking for the lost Romanov treasure (but truly no doubt on the payroll of the US secret service - more on this later... ), Hammer became personal friends with Lenin. Hammer used to boast that one fine day Lenin took him to a mountaintop and, gesturing to the unspoiled vastness of all the Russias below, offered him exclusive rights for mineral exploitation in the Soviet Union. Whatever the truth of this, the similarity to the bible tale of Satan tempting Jesus is both striking and telling. In any event, Hammer did not go on to exploit the geological wealth of the Soviet Union; rather, he founded a high quality pencil manufacturing company which competed indigenous Russian manufacturers out of business. Hammer's pencil company received the Huge Central Annual Stationery Order of the Soviets, worth millions of rubles in gold. Gold which he then immediately exported to the US and parleyed into control of Occidental Petroleum.  

Genuinely a remarkable and complex character, Armand Hammer, it seems, was named after the 'Arm and Hammer' symbol which was the symbol of the Socialist Labor Party of America, of which his father was a leading agitator. Indeed Hammer senior led the splinter group fraction from that party which went on to become the nugatory foundation of the Communist Party USA. We should place Hammer's Soviet links, adventures and fortune in this context and, skating all too quickly over the surface of that frozen yet deep pond, reassess our earlier assertion that Hammer's US ties were those that bound him during his early Soviet buccaneering. The irony that Armand Hammer would one day control the company (Church and Dwight) which owned the 'Arm and Hammer' domestic chemical brand - best known in this country for bicarbonate of soda toothpaste - with its trademark iconography being identical to both that of US socialism and one of the symbols of world-wide freemasonry - would surely not have been lost on such a complicated man. 

During the first flush of our town's oil-boom, Hammer would have his private airliner piloted into Dyce, where he would be met on the tarmac by chained Provost and kilted piper before being whisked to a site north of Bridge of Don. Once de-limo'ed, he would then wander around the scrubland pointing with shooting-stick at this feature and that, planning the building of his 'Caledonia' HQ. Here the office block campus with its bronze-mirrored corridors and half-carpeted internal partition walls; there the comms tower with its direct line-of sight (for microwave telemetry and control) over and across Aberdeen bay to the Piper and Claymore oilfields some 120 miles away to the north-east. Hammer was in his element. He could not know what was to happen, how badly it would end for him and his company here. 

I remember that the oil price was actually rather low at the time, during that year after the Piper disaster, but I also remember that the consultancies around town were busy-busy nonetheless. The disaster had meant that the industry urgently needed to take a painful and honest good look at itself, lest similar happen again. The oil companies were all staring into the Piper abyss and thinking: "There but for the grace of God...", so they all really needed this work done. And because the work itself was a bit of a reflexive strange loop - being largely comprised of defining what the workscope was - contracts were let on a 'cost plus' basis. Which is to say that the contract sum - the final total - was left open-ended, undefined. Rather, the consultancies would, at the end of each month, summarise their costs - mostly labour, but also stationery (heh), mileage, subsistence and whateverelse you thought you could get away with - add on a percentage (usually 20%), add on VAT (at the time, 12.5%) and invoice the oilco, who would then pay up the following month. I never once remember an invoice being questioned. The temptation to pad these invoices with extra hours or miles or print runs or whatever, was, of course, overwhelming. And as the consultancy I worked for was contracted by Occidental, it became almost a duty for us to give in to this temptation; to chisel and chisel and chisel some more out of the 'Accidental' killers. At all levels, from board members to tea-ladies we plundered the hapless outsiders. With glee we took our pencil-necked revenge-by-proxy through our timesheets and expense claims, our invoices and our indents. 

The consultancy grew quickly as we took on more and more contractors, more and more bodies in the drawing offices and engineers' ateliers to subcontract out to the Oxy job cost-plus money machine. Day-rates ballooned and word got round. Draughtsmen and engineers who had until earlier that year been making an OK-enough and secure salary in the Donside papermills, Belfast shipyards, Sellafield nuke plants, came to work for us on day-rate. A night shift was instituted. We paid them handsomely and all from Armand Hammer's fortune. There was plenty work to go round on the Oxy job. We were spreading the wealth and a party atmosphere pervaded our consultancy. The company tripled in size over about six months. A move first to overflow portacabin accommodation on the Altens Industrial Estate site, then overflowed to hotel suites at the four-star Skean Dhu, then settling to sexy high tech offices in the city centre.

As the company grew, it also grew its own culture and group of young engineers and clerks within the consultancy set up a satirical review newsletter which very quickly grew beyond its initial aims. At times very close to the knuckle, this 'Private Eye for the North Sea' circulated well beyond our own company, becoming a clearinghouse for anonymous whistleblowing; exposing unsafe practices offshore and mercilessly lampooning individuals and oil companies involved in industrial accidents, oilspills, corruption, anti-union activity and the like and the inevitable subsequent coverups. Produced by individuals who nurtured their plausible deniability carefully, overnight the newsletter just appeared on your desk photocopied and stapled (sometimes comb-bound? With an acetate cover? Maybe.) This was before the advent of desktop email so this newsletter was a real physical item, with actual costs involved in its production. Who was to pay these costs?

At board level an inquiry was convened... It is interesting to note that the content of the newsletter was not questioned - demonstrating tacit approval for whistleblowing in the wake of serious loss of life; good. But pencil-necked businessmen being pencil-necked businessmen, the money question had to be asked: The chairman puffed his panatella and pushed the satirical-serious pages away from him across the dark teak. He placed the cigar in the brass ashtray to his left and sipped a little malt from the lead-crystal tumbler in front of him. An intake of breath through teeth. Leaning over and back, he whispered to the minute-secretary to put down her pencil and pad. Then, elbows on the high-lustre polished table, he steepled his fingers below his chin and raised his bushy eyebrows high into his balded brow: 

"Ahem, very good. But... er, who's paying for the printing?"

His right-hand man, the Managing Director - his old university friend with whom together they had set up partnership and formed the company way way back in the heady new days of Forties and Brent - provided the answer. For, of course, to ask the question - that day in 1989 in that post-Piper context - to ask the question was to answer it:

"Who's paying? Why - Oxy, of course!"

--------oo0oo--------

With respect. 
This post is dedicated to the dead, in the 
hope that such a workplace tragedy can never happen again.


----------/////////----------

The Dog in the Manger

-------ooooo-------

Pic by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>//////////////////////--------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/20/donald-trump-golf-resort-scotland

.......<<<<<<

Donald Trump's plan for £750m Scottish golf resort put on hold

US tycoon says golf course will open next year – but complex featuring luxury villas and five-star hotel postponed for now

<<<<<<<<<<

The billionaire property developer flew into Aberdeen on Monday on his latest luxury jet, a Boeing 757-200 fitted out with a master bedroom and five kitchens, to announce that his championship standard 18-hole golf course overlooking the North Sea would open for play in July next year. 

But the tycoon said that the full scheme, a £750m complex featuring a luxury hotel, Trump Boulevard, a golf academy, a second course and timeshare apartments, had been bunkered by the recession.

>>>>>>>>>

.................../////...................

http://www.aberdeenrenewables.com/

.......<<<<<<

ABERDEEN RENEWABLE ENERGY GROUP

The Future of Energy - The Future of Aberdeen

<<<<<<<<<<

Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (AREG) is at the cutting edge of the UK race to build a credible and sustainable energy footprint.

>>>>>>>>>

http://www.aberdeenrenewables.com/news/european-offshire-wind-deployment-centre-consent-application-submitted/3334/

European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre Consent Application Submitted

Important milestone achieved for pioneering offshore wind project off Aberdeen Bay

<<<<<<<<<<

The application seeks permission for work to commence on the construction and operation of the Centre. It follows extensive consultation with stakeholders and studies which have seen the project significantly evolve over the last six years from an offshore wind farm into a deployment centre to test and demonstrate up to eleven next generation offshore wind turbines, support infrastructure and other related technology.

>>>>>>>>>

.................../////...................

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/05/donald-trump-legal-fight-windfarm

.............<<<<<<

Donald Trump pledges 'any legal means' fight against windfarm

US tycoon saying proposed offshire turbines will 'compromise' golf resort – and ruin his sea view

<<<<<<<<<< 

Donald Trump has pledged to use "any legal means" to block the building of an offshore windfarm near his championship golf course in Aberdeenshire, claiming the development would spoil his view.

The proposed windfarm in Aberdeen Bay, about 1.5 miles from the golf resort, would install the next generation of offshore wind turbine technology.

The £200m energy scheme has just been formally submitted to Marine Scotland for approval. It has been cut back from up to 33 turbines to a maximum of 11 after safety concerns were raised by shipping agencies and Aberdeen heliport, the world's busiest, which serves the North Sea oil industry.

Trump, who hopes to open his first course at the Menie estate, near Balmedie, next July, in a development spanning about 500 hectares (1,235 acres), has renewed his long-standing complaints about the project. He believes the smaller proposal is still unacceptable: some of the turbines could stand up to 195 metres in the water, more than double the height of the Big Ben clock tower.

George Sorial, managing director of the Trump Organisation, said the windfarm would compromise the golf resort. "We are here to stay and I don't think it's a good idea to interfere with our investment. We are not going to support a project that compromises what we have done. We will use any legal means in our jurisdiction."

>>>>>>>>>

March Stones 49 to 51 ABD. Persley and Woodside

"49 ABD"
(the new one)
South-east parapet of Persley Bridge

Regular visitors to Other Aberdeen will well know that over the weeks and months, we've been tracing the line of Aberdeen's medieval boundary. The boundary of the land gifted to Aberdeen (the "Freedom Lands") as a salve to his conscience by Buchan-harrying Robert the Bruce is marked to this day by a series of boundary stones or "march" stones, some of which are easy to see and find - perhaps you pass one or two of them every single day - some others are quite hard to get at, and you need to do a bit of research to pinpoint their exact locations and decide how you plan to reach them.

Tracing the boundary - the Old Scots word for boundary is "march", hence: "march stones" - is one of the constructs which we hang our psychogeographical excursions upon: by setting out to go somewhere which is off the beaten track and for no other reason than just for itself, we can find out a great deal about the four-dimensional shape of the town we live in (the fourth dimension being time, heritage, the historical aspect) and over and above that, we find things out about ourselves and our relationship to all that external stuff which forms the environment which we live in.

The most recent stone (stone no. 48 ABD) we wrote about was in residential Northfield, amongst the pleasant residential cul-de-sacs and circles so characteristic of that type of mid-20th century suburban social housing. We like Northfield with its human-scale planning; with its generous gardens, open spaces, grassy public areas, civic amenities, local shops - it definitely doesn't deserve the formidable reputation that social prejudice has labeled it with over the years. From the self-employed decorator who pointed us to stone 46 ABD, to the headsquared old lady getting off a bus just having a wee cheery wordie with passers-by, and to the fat emo teenager walking his longhaired daschunt puppy - we've had genial interactions with absolutely everyone we met on the day we traced the marches through this part of our town. In its built environment, in its people and in its outlook, Northfield is a generous place. That's so much more than can be said for supposedly 'nice' parts of Aberdeen, where we've found that people often tend to be hostile and suspicious; where property and 'things' are regarded as more important than people and their activities. Where what someone's got is so much more important than what they will give.

The next stone is stone no. 49 ABD, which we walked to by following the ancient "Freedom Lands" boundary which runs the length of the Scatter Burn (Scatterburn) between Old Town Place and the burn's outfall underneath Persley Bridge. To follow the route of the burn is a simple matter - its valley (a tributary of the River Don) is quite easy to see looking north between Heatheryfold and Middlefield. Indeed, the etymology of the burn's name "Scatter Burn" means "burn with a deep eroded channel". The valley is an open grassy area with playgrounds, skateboard half-pipes and the like. While it's not possible to see the burn itself - it was covered over and tamed in its own pipe at some point in the 20th century - the route of the Scatterburn is more-or-less traced by the residential street Manor Walk which leads us down from Northfield through Middlefield into the valley of the Don at Haudagain. Here, for the first time in the entirety of our tracing of the route of the march stones, we find the environment becomes unpleasant. Motor vehicle pollution sticks in the throat, conversation becomes impossible over the roar of traffic and the entire layout of the built environment has been artificially conceived for the convenience of machines over that of people. We felt cheated, abandoned, alienated and at a bit of a loss; for in this place, pedestrians are not welcome and are barely catered for.

Not wanted.
Car journeys deemed
more important than housing.

Not only that, but things are about to get an awful lot worse. Some commuters claim that the roundabout at Haudagain is the very worst thing that there is in the whole of Britain, but we think that motorists who complain about traffic congestion in Aberdeen suffer from a hopelessly parochial viewpoint: Aberdeen traffic's really not that bad. Unfortunately, so strident have these selfish commuters' voices become that, like the child who pesters and pesters mummy for sweeties, their calls have been heeded - probably more to shut them up than anything else - and they're going to get what they want (no matter that it's not good for them, and that they'll just want even more soon). Consequently, the social housing tenements of Manor Drive, Logie Avenue and Logie Place are to be demolished to make way for a relief road "improvement" which is "vital". We find it astonishing that planners should regard it as "vital" that families are moved from their homes, that those homes be demolished and that a community be split up and scattered merely because of the exigencies of the unsustainable transport choices of a few commuters. That this maniacal wrecking-ball-based option should be seen as an "improvement"; as preferable to attempting to encourage a small minority of commuters to change their habits just a little bit is sadly, we think, indicative of some of the wrong-turns which planning policy in our town seems keen and likely to blindly take. That these poor choices are dressed up as "improvements" which "contribute" to and "complement" the Middlefield area (pdf) is nothing but doublethink duckspeak.

Anyway, once we were away from Haudagain and it's appalling psychogeographical outlook, following the slope down to Persely den to march stone 49 ABD, we first encountered the charming Persely Walled Garden, where sits this remarkable monolith memorial obelisk above the outfall of the Scatterburn.

Inscription reads:

WORKERS' MEMORIAL
Commissioned by
Aberdeen Trades Council
This monument was made possible
thanks to financial assistance from
the Trade Union and Labour Movement
It is dedicated to those who lost
their lives in industry
MCMXCVIII

Aberdeen City Council's March Stones Trail leaflet (pdf) tells us that stone 49 is, like stone 44 ABD, a doubled stone - a newer, more accessible doppelganger copy having been created and placed in an easy-to-get at spot. This is fair enough, but we love a challenge and couldn't resist crossing the toxic outfall estuary of the Scatter Burn to see the older stone. If you're going to do this, a level of reasonable fitness is required, as is decent robust footwear that you won't mind getting filthy.

Scatterburn outfall.
Toxic.

49 ABD
(the older one)
That's Duncan Bannatyne's
'fitness' centre across the water.

Weir

The boundary now follows the Don for about 2 km towards the former independent parish of Woodside. A path alongside a mill-lade (which is a high-level water-feed channel) takes us through an area rich in the industrial archaeology of water-power, water-capital: mills, weirs, lades and sluices; the evidence of ancient and more recent, now obsolescent, equipment vital to the exploitation of this water-plus-gravity equals wealth-generating resource is all around.

We met an old man walking on the artificial river-bank wall which separates a mill-lade on the south side of the river from the roaring-fast river itself. He was in his eighties and had lived in Woodside all his life. Warming to our interest, he told us tales of the many mills and their legion workers; Woodside in its wealthy 20th century pomp; a tram from The Fountain into town and a spur to the Haudagain. How the tram united Woodside to Aberdeen, but how, when it came, the dual carriageway divided Woodside even from itself.

He talked of the Crombie Mills, whence coats to the world originated - Churchill, Gorbachev, and Cary Grant, all Crombie-clad lads.  He talked of the Rag Mill ("the ragger") which pulped scrap textiles for use in papermaking, he talked of the retiral of the mills, their desuitude, and the fact that we could walk these routes today was because of their retirement: where once industry thrived, today moss encroaches, ivy overruns and the dilettante psychogeographer mooches. His whole life and work in Woodside amongst the mills, now walking "his three miles every day" beside their gently declining artifacts - this man embodied and stood as a living metaphor for the progress and decline of the industrial activity in this area. Now good for a story, now interesting but retired, he walks away from us along the path of the mill-lade. How long will he manage to keep up his three-miles-a-day. How long before his stories are away?

Rag Mill
"The Ragger"

We'll document the post-industrial Don in much more detail over the coming months: There's a great deal to explore and think about in this area, and the resonant impulses of what we saw will still animate us for a long time to come: water being wealth; a diverse and mixed sustainable economy - capital goods, consumer goods, only recently disappeared; autonomy versus agency; the remnant artifacts of a way of life and a way of work only recently past, but now as psychogeographically distant as the medieval marker stones which we were tracing when we came across these traces, picturesquely framed by benign neglect.

Past the remnants of the Rag Mill, we mount the stairs at Jacobs Ladder to find stone 50 ABD which sits against a wall at Don Terrace. Then it's under the railway, past a canal-remnant bridge span and back across the Great Northern Road dual carriageway.

Jacob's ladder

50 ABD

Under the railway

Stone 51 ABD is situated on Clifton Road, near the top of Deer Road. Deer Road was named for a moss and turf dyke which kept wild deer out of the nursery gardens of Woodside. For centuries dating back to the time of medieval Bishops' parish charters this wildlife management feature was known as the boundary between Woodside and Aberdeen's Freedom Lands. Today, we seem to have lost the knowledge or will to manage our natural resources - the wild inhabitants with whom we share our town - in this sustainable way, choosing rather the immediate violence of an eradication cull over the long-standing science of sustainable management.

51 ABD
At the top of Deer Road
At the top of the Deer Dyke

And so between March Stones 48 and 51 we've traversed the psychogeography of loss. Consider the dreams of the planners who created the pleasant social housing of Northfield - those dreams today so far lost in a debt-driven speculative fever-dream of chimerical property aspiration that now social housing of this type is thought of as being lower than the lowest. Indeed our current UK government would have it that council-owned housing should be regarded as emergency short-term accommodation only. This is a grave and dangerous loss to our sense of society. Consider the deliberate destruction of some of that very housing to make way for a big roundabout or gyratory road system or something - the twice daily commute of some cubicle-jockey office workers being deemed more important than many peoples' homes. Consider the message this policy sends to the people who lead their lives blamlessly, yet live in those very homes scheduled for what we can only regard as arbitrary destruction.

Consider now the worker's monument at Persley, consider those who died creating the wealth which we now enjoy in the comfort we take for granted. Consider those metaphorically crushed by the wheels of industry, and consider the real and literal remnants of those very wheels themselves - evident on the banks of the Don. Sentinels to a diverse and sustainable economy now past even decline, now irrevocably gone. This is a loss to our economic sustainability. 

And finally, consider the sick spiteful slaughter of roe deer, today, on Tullos Hill in Nigg to the south of our town in the cause of some dubious greenwash PR policy. When the last of them lies finally bloody, every one dead on the heather and gorse, not only will it be those deer which will be lost, but we will also have conclusively and ably demonstrated our loss of society, our collective loss of civilisation. And our loss of direction.