Still no letters to tell us about the Great Council Caltongate Cock Up

Harry Potter's magic letters


Many of us were sort of expecting a magical letter to come through the post, there are hundreds of objectors out there waiting to be told what the Great Council Caltongate Cock Up means to them but despite the Evening News tantalising us on Thursday promising letters nothing has came. They can't blame the post as many of us live right next to the Planning Department at Waverley Court they could have popped them through many of our letter boxes or even put an announcement in the Evening News rather that an ominous article on Thursday Evening News.

How can the council cock this up? Is it incompetence? Could be! Is it because they are chaotic? Probably. The councillors and council officials have proven time and time again they are not the correct custodians for our city. It is a great insult after three years of campaigning, arguing, sweat and tears to be told via the Evening News "oops we've made a little mistake". They have lost their faculties rather than make a little mistake. Mountgrange will be sweating and swearing because in this economic climate any wobble is a bad wobble and every minute counts - they don't have the money in a piggy bank marked Caltongate they need to raise the money - Caltongate like so many developments will probably be shelved.

So if anyone sees one of these mythical letters as rare as a letter from Hogwarts please let the Republic know.

Waiting on Mr Chande

Article Dec 06

The letter below appears in todays Evening News Letters pages, it was in response to a blatant piece of propoganda by developers Mountgrange`s boss Manish Chande which was entitled "King of Caltongate heads for victory"

Well, here in the Independent Republic, this had us laughing out loud, "KING" so he wants to rule people? only problem is the place he wants to rule does not even exist!!! Well, in his mind perhaps. And "Victory"? who has he been at war with?

We await Mr Chandes`s retraction of the defamatory statement in the article, the rest of the article should be retracted too....but this statement is the one that requires immediate action.

Letter -- The Evening News has chosen the title

"Pointing the finger of blame at Davies"

I WAS very disappointed to read your article entitled " King of Caltongate heads for victory" in your paper on April 29. I found the entire piece highly misleading and insulting.


The inaccurate telling of events at the 2006 Christmas party hosted by Mountgrange where myself and others from age two to 72 were singing Christmas carols as guests entered the party, requires urgent attention.

Manish Chande said in the article: "The convener was coming in when someone hurled some abuse at his wife, and like any husband, he reacted. Maybe he shouldn't have but he's a human being and that's human nature."I had my two-year-old daughter Lily in my arms when the then planning convener Trevor Davies arrived with his wife. As we were singing a carol, Trevor Davies turned around, and appearing vexed stuck his middle finger up at Lily, myself and our neighbour; his wife looked embarrassed, quickly grabbed her husband by the jacket and pulled him in to the reception.

The incident was reported to Standards Commission and the following is an excerpt from their findings:"In the absence of a denial by the respondent of the complainants' specific description of his reaction and his admission to having made a small gesture I was inclined to the belief that the complainants' version of events more accurately described the respondent's reaction."

I now request that Manish Chande publicly apologise and retract this defamatory comment at the earliest opportunity.
Sally Richardson,
Secretary of The Canongate Community Forum,
Canongate

Standards Commission Findings

Brutalism of The Old Town

Above is the Malcolm Fraser building for Jeffrey St, this is seeing it looking along East Market St toward the former Bus Depot Site


Brutalism Architecture

Caltongate plan too big for Old Town

SHAME on Edinburgh City Council for voting in favour of Caltongate.

The scale of this development is enormous leading to the demolition of two listed buildings and one or two fine MacRae tenements in favour of a hotel, conference centre, some housing and yet more bars, cafes, restaurants.
It will ruin the area for residents of the Old Town especially the Canongate. It will lead to traffic congestion, pollution and increased noise as well as threatening the World Heritage site.

In spite of massive objections the council has decided to proceed for the sake of commercial gain.The designs seen so far look like brutal Soviet-style buildings more akin to a ghetto. The use of wood is questionable as in a polluted, damp atmosphere it doesn't weather well unless it is regularly maintained.A development of a more modest scale, catering more for residents is required.

Mrs M E Hodges, Meadowbank, Edinburgh

Grandstand view of city's priority list

IT has been announced that the council is about to commit £3 million towards the replacement of the stands used on the Castle Esplanade during the Military Tattoo.

In the same budget we are to face school cut backs or closures, delayed school refurbishments, cuts to the Adult Education Budget, and cuts to services elsewhere. Where is their sense of priorities?

Supporting the Tattoo, laudable though that is in times of plenty, is using public money to subsidise a commercial enterprise. The council can argue the benefits of the tourist trade that the Tattoo attracts, but these are commercial benefits which principally accrue to the business community. The business community in its turn will argue that the Tattoo generates jobs...but jobs for whom? Most jobs generated by seasonal tourist activities are low paid, and increasingly filled by seasonal, migrant workers.

Building new grandstands for rich tourists' bums, while at the same time savagely pruning the education (or any other social) budget is simply wrong: morally wrong. Why can't the council see that?

We have a council sitting in the City Chambers that has quite lost its moral compass. Business interests – as in the Caltongate affair – get whatever they want; while the city residents get what they are given.

The unstable and unhealthy relationship between council, business and voter must be rebalanced in the residents' favour.Politicians always claim that they answer to the voter at the ballot box. At the next local election we can all easily make this happen; just cast our votes for anyone except the sitting member in your ward. If every voter in the city did that, every ward in the council chamber should change hands. A clean sweep.

We desperately need a council better able to balance the needs of community and business interests. Power to the people!

David Fiddimore, Nether Craigwell, Calton Road, Edinburgh
Evening News Letters

Save Our Old Town Campaign Website www.eh8.org.uk

The Edinburgh Developers` News

11 days to go until Caltongate goes to planning committee www.eh8.org.uk

The Evening News has announced that Caltongate is to go ahead and Edinburgh is to be renamed Smurftown. Someone is jumping with joy! Guess who in the comments.

see todays PR article in the Eve News re the Report Report from Planning Officials to the members of the planning committee who are to vote on Caltongate on the 6th February.
Donald Anderson is director of the controversial PR firm PPS Group Scotland who are Mountgranges` Spindoctors. Remember he is the former NU Labour leader of the council and was pro Caltongate when in office. When he got booted out, he "set" up a pr company of his own for all of a few minutes, before going to PPS. He claims he does not deal with Caltongate, so what does he deal with we wonder? This is a can of worms that a Public Enquiry will have to open....There are lots of connections...rememember Mountgrange boss Manish Chande is chums with Historic Scotlands Malcolm Cooper, HS have not objected to Caltongate and the demolitions of listed buildings and others in a conservation area. Manish Chande was appointed by Tessa Jowell as a Commissioner of English Heritage in Sept 2003, where he is also on their Finance and Business Committees.
"Malcolm Cooper spent ten years with English Heritage before joining Historic Scotland in April last year". (2005, same year as first Caltongate Masterplan unveiled)
Come tomorrow to The Januaryreshuffle in Glasgow in The Pearce Institute, Govan on Saturday the 26th January. There will be a films, workshops and lots of other events and activities including ones for children and tasty food on offer from The Broth Mix cafe.

Build for Old Town, not Cumbernauld

20 days to go...www.eh8.org.uk

A Stop The Demolitions Meeting is to take place on Wednesday 30th January in Old Saint Pauls, Jeffrey Street
link for map and directions

Teas, coffees, information stall from 7pm, meeting starts 7.30pm read about the very busy successful lastmeeting

This letter appears in todays Evening News.

Build for Old Town, not Cumbernauld

WITH a political decision due soon on the Caltongate plan, it is vital that councillors realise the precedent that they are deciding. There is a long queue of controversial plans piled up behind this one. Developers are waiting to see if the new administration has the political courage to assert itself on behalf of the city as Jenny Dawe has suggested it might, or if they will roll over as compliantly as the last lot to have their tummies rubbed. The main point of contention is about what development is acceptable in a World Heritage Site, or more to the point, what is a WHS for?

Popular belief has it that it is to protect a few special places, to prevent inappropriate development and to ensure that the facades and streetscape of sympathetic developments do not strike a discordant note with the overall historic ambience of the area. If WHS status cannot do this, could someone please explain what other point it has?

The developer behind the Caltongate application has chosen a lead architect who is notoriously unsympathetic to historic context for this profoundly sensitive site, an architect who is indeed celebrated for brash, modern, glass blocks. Alan Murray has predictably produced a scheme of identikit concrete and glass structures, more fitting for replacing the centre of Cumbernauld than the missing pieces of the Old Town of Edinburgh.

Had Mountgrange engaged one of several practices in Scotland specialising in conservation or heritage work, it is inconceivable that they would be confronted now with such broad and determined opposition.

In the post war years planners and councillors allowed the architects to raze acres of viable Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian and Jacobean property, built to last indefinitely with reasonable maintenance. It was replaced with unsustainable buildings using new materials and techniques. These buildings, many of which won architectural prizes at the time, now top polls for the ugliest buildings ever. Having reached the end of their brief design life 40 years on, they are now being replaced. The materials used, glass, concrete, extruded metals and hydrocarbons consumed vast amounts of energy in manufacturing and are recyclable, if at all, only at enormous expense.

Why are we locked into repeating this? Instead of single-use snapshots of architectural fashion, could we not have adaptable buildings that might have several uses over a long life? Buildings that look as though they belong in the Old Town World Heritage Site?
Ken Smillie, Jackson's Close, Edinburgh
letter here where you can leave your comments

Yesterday Tuesday 15th this letter was in The Evening News

Mountgrange plan is height of bad taste

HISTORIC Scotland has said it finds Mountgrange's Caltongate plans for the Old Town "generally acceptable" Does that mean they are going to object to certain aspects of the plans in particular?

I do hope so because as one of the many existing Old Town residents who will be deprived of not only our view of the Calton Hill but of a considerable amount of daylight should Mountgrange be allowed to build high, we are particularly concerned about the detrimental affect these buildings are going to have on our quality of life.

Has Historic Scotland given any consideration to the impact these buildings will have on the REAR of the Canongate . . . overlooking the proposed development?

If the interests of the existing residents are of no consequence then Historic Scotland and the other concerned bodies should pay heed to what will be on offer to the tourists in the future if these buildings are allowed to be built to the height at present proposed by Mountgrange.

More akin to downtown Dallas than Old Town Edinburgh!

This monstrosity exterminates the view from the Canongate to the Calton Hill, a concern expressed by the Church of Scotland, and likewise the view from the Lower Regent Road to the spine of the Royal Mile. This should be of particular concern to Historic Scotland.

I have expressed my concerns to Historic Scotland. I await with particular interest their reply.
Helene de Battista, Canongate, Royal Mile, Edinburgh

letter here where you can leave your comments