Credit Crunch Caltongate

With almost daily headlines like the following,

what will become of Caltongate ?

Negative equity threat to 1.7 million properties


"there will be some, especially buy-to-let investors who have purchased inner-city "regeneration" flats, who will be very badly burnt, losing perhaps half of their stake to negative equity in the worst cases. "
The Independent 31st July 08


Insolvencies at 'all-time high'


Business liquidations
Meanwhile, figures also showed that the number of Scottish businesses falling into liquidation rose by almost 30% in the second quarter of 2008.

In Scotland, the number of businesses going into liquidation topped 132 between April to June, compared to 102 between January and March this year.

According to Blair Nimmo, head of restructuring for KPMG in Scotland, "there can be little doubt that the credit crunch is now really beginning to bite".

The worst failure rates in Scottish business came from the property, construction and real estate markets, which saw 60 businesses go under, while hospitality saw 12 and retail saw 11.
BBC News 1st August 08

Here`s to 2008, the year of the NIMBY

Yesterday I read something in a newspaper which actually lifted my spirits. Someone has articulated so well the 21st century meaning of the word NIMBY...a term much loved by the multi million PR and development industry behind the needless destruction of our countryside, villages, towns, cities.....in the name of progress and the elusive promise of increased wealth and status for all.


Above is former Council planning leader Trevor Davies who clearly did not like NIMBIES like the SOOT campaigners who sang carols when he entered the Caltongate Developer Mountgrange`s Christmas Champagne Bash in 2006.



This blog will be updated everyday where possible, with current news in the run up to the important date the 6th of February when all the Caltongate applications go before the City Of Edinburgh Council`s Planning Committee.




Nimbyism should be applauded, not despised
Published: 04 January 2008 The Independent by Terence Blacker:

from the article -


"There are certain well-used contemporary clichés which are more than lazy verbal shortcuts. They represent clichés of the mind and the heart. Substitutes for thought, they are weapons used by the spin-merchants of commerce and politics. They simplify complexity and smother debate.

A perfect example lies in that brutally neat little word, "nimby".

"Perhaps it is time to look beyond the cliché and ask, in the manner of the old Persil ads: what is a nimby?

The truth is that the values a nimby defends were, until very recently, those which most environmentally-minded people would support. The nimby believes that to contribute to a better world a person should start with the one area over which he or she can have some influence: the local community and landscape."

"Action in a person's own area is rarely glamorous – it involves work and application – but, the nimby believes, it is worth more than any number of warm words about the state of Planet Earth."



"The nimby protects the small against the big. Those with a threatened "back yard" (a sneering phrase which can be used to describe most of Britain) will know just how powerful the outside forces of profit, politics and populism now are."


"When big business and big politics are trying to discredit anyone impertinent enough to question their motives, there are more crooked clichés."

"Opposition, it is said, comes from "a vocal minority of local people". "

"Any planning department that dares to question whether an area should be transformed is described as "sluggish" or "clogged up". "

"In the face of this prejudice and propaganda, it takes courage to be a nimby."


"In the meantime, anyone brave enough to speak up for them around the country deserves gratitude not sneers. The nimby is one of the unsung heroes of these very odd times."

Read Full Article Here

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/terence_blacker/article3307548.ece