Save Union Terrace Gardens

Union Terrace Gardens

I never talk about issues on here. Not really. But today I will because it's something I really care about. Green space...no-o-o-o... please don't go to someone else's blog where they are talking about Confectionery of the Seventies that you Miss or Cute Stuff my Kid Has Said or Ultimate Sandwich Fillings. Stay, I'll be brief and to the point.

THE best park in Aberdeen, the Victorian sunken garden of Union Terrace is under threat from the monster ego of someone who wants to fill it in with concrete, cut down the trees and build a civic square covering the whole valley that the gardens currently occupy. This is someone who wants to literally cement his legacy. I mean that Big Yellow Taxi song by Joni Mitchell was practically written for this purpose. That someone is Sir Ian Wood of the Aberdeen based but internationally operating company oil services company, The Wood Group. He's like Aberdeen's answer to Bill Gates or Rockerfeller.

Here's a photograph of what Union Terrace Gardens looked like this Saturday:

Photo courtesy of Sezza

And here's a view of the whole garden from the other end so that those who have never visited can appreciate its unique structure:





Here's what oil mogul Sir Ian Wood and his chums would like to turn it into:



And here's the Simpsons episode it reminds us all of.




Sir Ian is chucking £50 million of his personal fortune at the venture. The catch? Conservative estimates claim that it will cost in excess of £140 million to build and our city council is nigh on bankrupt. Oh and there's another problem. The Peacock Visual Arts people already had funding and planning permission in place to build an arts centre into one of the less used sides of the gardens keeping the original structure and planting of the gardens in place and having a sympathetic (and world class) architectural design. But Sir Ian has some considerable clout in this town, and the PVA plans were put into stasis until his plans, or his "vision" as he likes to call it, for filling in the gardens with a multi-storey carpark with a civic square on top and some retail and cafe type outlets were considered. So Peacock were left out of a limb, facing the possibility of their funding opportunity lapsing in the meantime.


Who was to consider all these wonderful plans for the future with such baubles and trinkets as "moving walkways" (Monorail!) and outdoor cafe (in Aberdeen! Our town's name is Gaelic for hypothermia!)? Well, us- the public. And very kindly Sir Ian together with the council spent over £100,000 putting together a consultation. The trouble was the consultation was heavily geared towards prompting all correspondents to supporting the Monorail proposal, I mean, the City Square project, as it is actually known. in fact, since the votes were counted I've heard various reports that even if you ticked the box saying you didn't want the City Square project to go ahead, as soon as you filled in the box set aside for an additional comment, your tick disappeared and your submission counted as support for the City Square Project. Even if your comment said something like

"If this terrible City Square Project goes ahead I will lie in front of the bulldozers like Arthur Dent in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy!"

..which I think was my comment.

Anyway at least we had the chance to comment. Sir Ian promised that if we didn't want it he would "walk away" taking his £50 million with him.

And then Aberdeen's favourite daughter, Annie Lennox got involved. She HATES the idea of the gardens being touched at all and said so publicly on her website. What she hated almost as much was her image being used in one of the City Square's pamphlets without her permission or endorsement. Those in support of the Monorail started writing into newspapers saying things like:

"She doesn't even live here anymore and hasn't been to the city since she was a wee girl and even when she does come back she never gives us a free concert like she bloody well should. And she lives in that there big smoke with her fancy ways hanging about with Bono and stuff".

Real constructive stuff like that. However feisty Annie is made of sterner stuff. Whose business is it when she comes back up to the 'Deen and how often? She's Aberdonian and cares about her city. And she's actually from Ellon where I went to school and Ellon folk are hard so I wouldn't mess.

Still thinking of messing with Ms Lennox?

The consultation ended and despite the skew whiff biased ballot papers reminiscent of a George W Bush presidential campaign, the clever people of Aberdeen still voted 55% against the Sir Ian Wood Monorail vision. Yay, us! That'll be the sound of Sir Ian Wood walking away with his £50 million to go and see if Shelbyville want to share his "vision" then?

Except he didn't walk away. He turned around and said something along the lines of (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Ignore all that, let the elected councillors decide. My money is still on the table, folks!"

The councillors vote on Wednesday. The Chief Executive of Aberdeen City Council has already urged them to support Sir Ian's plans. We're in desperate times. The people have spoken. The people have been promptly dismissed because they didn't like what we said . (Sounds familiar, eh?)

Still, I have a sliver of faith in the councillors. Some of them are good people and many of them know a white elephant when they see one. How many of them will listen to the public is not known, but it is important to remind them that listening to the public is their actual job.

If anyone reading this is from Aberdeen and wants to write to the councillors to let them know your views then let me know. I happen to have a handy list of their email addresses. Just email me: gillianamartin (at) hotmail.com

Meanwhile, you can read this excellent, well written and informed blog from Fraser Denholm who says all of this is a far more mature and factually irreproachable way here. His whole blog is a mine of information on the whole experience but I think it's best to start with this entry in which he lays out THE FACTS. Hi Fraser, I'm Misssy M long time reader first time caller, loving your work.

I would say that I'm putting my soap box away, but to be honest I'm leaving it out til at least Thursday.

And here's Joni because I'm nothing if not obvious:





STOP PRESS: Sadly it's very bad news from the City Chambers tonight. Click here to see BBC report. Now for them to find that other £90million (at least). Think I'll move back to Glasgow...

http://friendsofutg.org/

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Henzillas

You would be forgiven for thinking that I've been caught and stranded at the outer rim of Eyjafjallajökull this past month, so light has my posting been. But I have a note from my Mum, and a handy excuse, for I, along with my sister, the legendary Misssy A, have been attending to our duties as the oldest bridesmaids in town. This is not an easy task. The hen night was last week and given our advancing ages this event had to be carefully planned to avoid the pitfalls that a bride and maids of usual wedding-y ages would be able to sidestep with ease, but those past the age of 35 might have difficulty in surviving.

These include:

Drinking in the afternoon where there are no handy cots or beds upstairs to have a wee lie down on around teatime.
There is a point in a woman's life where even the taste of a brandy snap or a rum truffle before teatime can have her needing a disco nap before long. Unfortunately the "toon" hasn't cottoned onto the money making extravaganza that's to be had with the invention of coin-operated pubside sleeping capsules, so either drink up and man up, or have a cup of tea instead and declare your life over. And no, phoneboxes do not count as coin operated sleeping capsules. A policeman kindly told me that.

Karaoke.
What would a hen night be without a group of women tunelessly belting "Stand by your Man" or "I Beg your Pardon, I Never Promised you a Rose Garden" depending on what mood you left your husband in to go out subjecting him to lone parenting the kids overnight. The bride wanted karaoke, but the last time she did karaoke she sat on the lap of a stranger and serenaded him like she was Jane McDonald when she used to work on that cruise ship. Sadly for her, we could not find a karaoke bar that wasn't a safe enough distance from Aberdeen's notorious harbour area, so that plan was safely detonated, with no-one getting seriously harmed.

Someone always brings a sex toy along for a laugh
Misguided Ann Summers contributions abound on these occasions, and it's usually from the person you'd least expect, like the bride's Mum's unmarried cousin or the quiet girl in Accounts you had to invite because she invited you to her Born Again Christening celebrations. Yes there's always one hen at a hen night who has popped into Ann Summers beforehand and gone a bit mad. Made up statistics suggest that 70% of all Ann Summers purchases are joke purchases. So much so that the vast majority of the stores' more mechanical devices don't even have working parts, as their main objective is to be screamed at and thrown about a bar hysterically, so why bother? Know this; the bride of advancing years does not want the gift of pants that don't have a hardy gusset attached, and is more likely to put chocolate body paint on her kids sandwiches for their packed lunch when she realises there's nothing else in the cupboard.

Health Issues
The following symptoms of a hen night on a bride and her hens of more mature years are numerous. Known side effects can include :

-Skin rash from the scratchy fake veil the other hens insisted the bride wear the entire night.

-Vomiting- blame it on that dodgy seafood starter you had all you like but remember one thing, you did drink more tonight that you have in the last three years combined. And you haven't drunk a Guinness since you were in the student union in 1990, so why the need for one tonight with a tequila chaser?

-Thrush- Even though you were disgusted at the time with the pair of PVC pants that your boss brought to the hen night with the zip down the front, it's now 1am and you've got them on and are dancing to Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't it be Good?" in a retro 80's theme club night. Luckily someone else gave you Canesten Duo as a hen present so it's all good.

-Burns- You gave up smoking before you had your kids over ten years ago, but suddenly you fancy a cigarette because you are hammered. Not only do you try and light the wrong end but once you've got the blasted thing going you try to tidy your hair up with that handy handbag sized hairspray you've got in your bag, and end up with severe chemical burns as the lit end ignites the hairspray and causes a blue flash that can be seen the other end of town.

Your homing device no longer works
Time was you had a reliable inbuilt homing chip that was known to get you safely back into your bed from wherever you had ended up on a night out, with no actual memory the next day of what route you had taken or even who you had been with. This device, like any mechanical equipment will fall into disrepair if not used regularly. They've even changed where the taxi ranks are since you were last out a million years ago, so it's a good thirty minutes before you realise you are actually standing in a nightclub queue. If your homing device is knackered, get a hotel room or have your husband collect you and suffer his ridicule and possible disgust if an overnight pass has not been previously negotiated.


This post is dedicated to the lovely Sezza who will be married to her man AT BLOODY LAST on 29th May 2010. Congratulations to you both.

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