News from the dunghill
Douglas Marr
The rest, as they say, is history. The proposal was approved on the casting vote of the Lord Provost. At the end of the day everyone loses. The financial black hole and the, as yet unidentified, engineering challenges make it extremely unlikely that Wood’s vision or folly will ever be realised. The council now has the perfect excuse, for years to come, to allow the gardens to deteriorate further. The alternative proposal for the revitalisation of the gardens, including a centre for the visual arts, looks certain to fall, despite having full planning permission and nearly all the necessary funding.
Above all, democracy and the ordinary people have lost. It is difficult to recall anything in recent times that has so divided a major city and generated such passion. However the issue runs much deeper. The fight for the gardens serves as a metaphor for who really counts in modern Scotland. Is it any wonder that more and more people despair of the political process?
The project’s supporters, and above all the business community, have expressed their contempt for the city, its people and its heritage. The combination of a handful of strong-minded millionaires and weak-willed councillors has prevailed. Their breath-taking arrogance that they know best is coming within a hairsbreadth of depriving Aberdeen of a feature that most other cities would die for. Come back Paul Theroux, all is forgiven.
[click here] for Douglas Marr’s photographs of the gardens
Douglas Marr CBE is a former headteacher
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08.07.10
No 281
A kind
of victory
Day 3 of a Scottish
Review investigation
I.
The story of what happened when the Lapsley family
went to the hearing in
Falkirk yesterday
Kenneth Roy reports
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II.
A former chief social work adviser for Scotland says
that SR’s exposé of the
Lapsley case should lead to
a change in the law
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III.
A leading campaigner for patients’ rights asks: who is protecting Robert Lapsley’s interest in all of this?
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IV.
The daughter of a second
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experience before he died
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A town
under siege
Elma McMenemy
on Stonehaven in uproar
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Sport
I.
Open house
Barbara Millar
in St Andrews
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II.
The red card
Walter Humes
is unimpressed
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Islay’s Album
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