knit one street purl one city

edinburgh trams + tesco linwood

This is a tale of two present-day powers in so-called Scotland – one political and one commercial.

Edinburgh’s other Disgrace – The Trams
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Enter stage left Council leader Jenny Dawe and “The Right Honourable” George Grubb, “Lord Lieutenant” and “Lord Provost” of Edinburgh. They may not have much to do with the day-to-day management of the project but as leaders they are ultimately responsible. If you are not a resident of Edinburgh, of course you’ll never have heard of them. Let’s just say… they’re not exactly full of intelligent ideas and nous, right up there arguing coherently with Norman Foster. Just worthies doing their best, but with zero vision or engagement, by all the evidence.

One example of this lazy thinking is the still to be installed gantrys that will carry the power lines for the new trams. These are big, tall, ugly objects and there’s going to be lots of them – and guess what, they will thoroughly pollute the view to the royal mile from Princes street. Thoughtless stewardship and care, when alternatives to a glaringly obvious and crucial issue should have been sought and sorted right from the start – Bordeaux, for instance, has the power in the ground. If any city should reduce its street furniture quota, it’s Edinburgh. The technical difficulties of this power system are minor when you relate it to the unreal amount of money being spent overall – they’re not employing NASA to launch the Scott Monument on a five-year mission to Venus after all – it’s just some trams.

You’ll know who your city’s sockpuppets are too. For Edinburgh, this ill-conceived and wholly unnecessary Tram project has been an utter logistical disaster (um… familiar… how quickly they’ve all forgotten the parliament messups) and will result in the city remaining in yet more serious debt for decades. The contractors Bilfinger Berger are not to blame – they’re the only professionals here – and must be appalled at the mess this over-politicised and underperforming world heritage site has got them into.

Previous post on Leith Waterfront and the Tram terminus at Newhaven here Also an article and googlemap on the Gogar hinterland I did last year.

TescoTown Linwood*
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In the west the rules are broken by Wendy Alexander; mouthy MSP to the beyond-rundown Paisley North constituency. I have to grudgingly say that she is one of the very few political individuals in Scotland (Margo Macdonald is the other) who seem to have a care… and so from trams to tesco.

Tesco Linwood, in Paisley North, is a proposed tescotown, close to Paisley (a once-proud victorian powerhouse south-west of Glasgow). Let’s set the parameters right from the start – there is a large Morrisons at Johnstone and a large Asda at Phoenix park both less than 5 mins away from Linwood – Tesco desperately want a piece of their competitors, not being content with their own supersized Tesco Extra at Port Glasgow, 15 minutes away, or their Paisley Love St fiasco 2 mins away, or their midsize at Kilbirnie 15 mins away (which has completely devastated the local retail community in that small town).

So, what’s a poor megaopoly to do…

Stage One: set up an untransparent Tesco front company – in this case, Balmore Properties – who act as mafia-style landlord to the dwindling retail businesses in the nasty mall you want to flatten and re-develop. Balmore act sluggardly and earn the ire of the business community as well as concerned locals.

Bingo – you have your fall guy.

Stage Two: Oh that’s terrible, we’ll utterly renew the crumbling graffiti-and-crime-infested-nastiness that is Linwood’s centre (Balmore – boo!) and make it all nice and cuddly again. Here’s a really naff website that has been designed to make us seem part of the solution… www.lovelinwood.com – yay, see those hillman imps, makes yer proud dun’t'it.

Stage Three: the public beg you to save them from, er, Balmore. You accept that challenge. Another crap store, a sprinkling of architecturally substandard “affordable flats” and a couple of football pitches should shut them up. Much more importantly – a black eye for asda and morrisons.

HEROES! GO TESCO!! — GO TESCO!!

And now for the bill (stupidity and corruption always costs)

1 Removal of local business economy (re-instatement of some like hairdressers – as Tesco tenants, naturally – trebles all round)
2 Wage-slave economy – x number of part-time shelfstacker jobs at minimum wage – woo hoo.
3 Planning acceptance must-haves – schools, houses, all to LCD standards and with zero morals – this is not a benevolent, semi-intelligent Bournville Village exercise.
4 Another peg down the national self-respect indicator board.
5 Several pegs down the distinctive local flavour indicator board.
6 More proof that Scotland PLC is run by aesthetics-and-morals-free politicos with big mouths and small brains.
7 Oh and the profits? They fly south.

Is this what you want? Because that’s what you’ll get.

*Source: Marcus Leroux : retail correspondent : The Times : 31 August 2010

Photo below taken from a bus on west maitland street Edinburgh – Copymade printshop. I think John H might approve of the paraphrase, subject to changing the colour of the additions and the font… not quite right but we get the emotion

Noise and smoky breath

The title above is the title of a poetry anthology on Glasgow published by the third eye centre in the late 80s. Naturally Edwin Morgan featured, and this well mindmapped book has become close to me again in the past month. So it is fitting that the deid poet in word and deed is good-worded and reminisced fondly along with UCS frontman and vocalist (he was a rock star to many) Jimmy Reid this week, well above and beyond the foolishly lame-minded diversionary tactics of the scottish government regarding the very-likely-innocent “bomber” chemo’d up to the gills in the very-likely-not-so-innocent green-flag Maghreb republic.

What be may – it doesn’t do to take things too seriously and Edwin Morgan was an individual I have always looked up to at the back of my mind both in words and in graphics; allowing the death of working class ecosse to soften into the imagination. As a poet of the urban experience in this northern land he always did the right thing by shifting the perspective playfully but truthfully to other worlds and languages.

60s concrete poetry was a sort of banksy-meets-the-ancestors kind of movement and one I’m very fond of. Find out more here.

Hello. I’m Mr Cutler. Nice to meet you Mr Morgan. Shall we sing? You go first as you’re new to all this. I’ll show you around later. You can take your glasses off now.

image from the edwin morgan archive at the scottish poetry library

Ginsberg : Moloch

Another snippet from Daisysaint – from the BBC4 docu Selling the Sixties – Ginsberg on top form (abridged version of the poem from Howl)

adam curtis on debt

Best person to tackle it – should turn out to be a classic Curtis documentary.

\\I am researching this area, and I thought I would put up some of the films from the BBC archive from the time when there was moral disapproval by those in power of the “lower orders” wanting to “live beyond their means”.

And beyond that there is a growing envy and resentment.//

See the films here.

my favourite writer

The enigma/bright-worded delight that is Anne Herbert –

acts, ax, backs, blacks, clacks, cracks, facts, fax, hacks, jacks, lacks, lax, max, pacts, pax, plaques, quacks, racks, sacks, sax, slacks, shacks, smacks, stacks, tax, tracts, wax

You can swap Sausalito for a wee holiday in Scotland anytime, dear – you’re invited.

his clyde less bonnie moment

Vanilla sky, Dark city, the Matrix, and now Inception all follow a simple-as-sliced-bread storyline (mixtaped from 30s city-noir) that pits individual against system. Dopplegangers and unreliable narrators make us think fantasy, think escapism, think I am not a number, invincible against the Forces of Control for many, several, seconds, in an airconditioned box.

Raoul wrote The Revolution of Everyday Life, an almost unreadable book that is nonetheless frighteningly incendiary in its own way. Individual less system = freedom (but freedom costs).

Raoul wants to kill cops. I doubt he has read the above. But he’s possibly seen the films – more like a dull rambo fantasist though.

I have a basic experience of the north tyneside area where Raoul Moat grew up. This is the Denton of A Touch of Frost. This is Chris Killip, the Battle of Orgreave, Boys from the Blackstuff (west), Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (east). It is Scando-Saxon territory : cold and rain is not a bother.

In Hollywood, it ends in some anonymous corridor in an urban glass prick. I think he’ll take the country comfort route, like Hoskins and Campbell killing the cruel farmer/adulterer-stoning-caster within themselves in Potter’s Pennies from Heaven.

…and a feather in your cap mr oliver

Jamie Oliver might be annoying but he knows plenty about food. Andrew Lansley, CBE / MP / westminster career brown-noser is I dearly hope the first in a new long line of utterly out-of-touch frontline conservative politicians who are embarassingly hopeless – apart from being hopeless at fox-baiting and taxpayer usury, allegedly.

Food affects mood. Rubbish food affects kids big time. Oliver is completely right.

If the Right Honourable Gentleman Sir Andrew Lansley CBE / Tebbit-fancier would bring it on… shiny new sparkly suits and spiffing latex heads all round… 2000s comedy just wasn’t the same without the conservatives…

WELCOME BACK BOYS!

never mind – kittenz!

Cast my vote tonight, no Green candidate.

At least no George-Galloway-loony-scottish-wing-of-the-hezbollah-party-types either (gorgeous george – a very longstanding dis-Respect – anyone who writes for the Daily Record or Scottish Sun is beyond the pale – I could go on… but no. AND relax…).

Anyway, aside from the fiscally-motivated chancers and wide-boys and narcissists (three-in-one, georgie-boy), it’s a stark choice.

I especially love the Conservative and Unionist Party box. Says it all – I may be geographically close to northern Ireland, but why I am lumped in with a completely different population in a completely different country is, well…

Tactical Voting advantage, that’s what. The Conservatives (small c dahlings – important that we come over as SMALL c; don’t want to frighten the horses now, do we…) need those crazee sash-wearing pot schmokin’ Dutch faderlander’s to make up the ayes-to-the-right numbers.

The Fish Team – Salmond and Sturgeon – seem like ahh Kittenz-lolz in comparison, seeing that they count for nothing (along with Plaid Cymru) in the bigger scheme of things on the ballot paper, that little revelation having been driven home by the bbc; SNP/Plaid both being denied a stage in the televised debates, despite these parties effectively running Scotland/Wales.

I’ve been watching the bbc’s election coverage from the past, and noticing the car evolution – exclusively jags and rovers until an american-owned GM vauxhall omega is driven into 10 downing at the end of Blair’s third term. Bet Cameron’s car is the first one both not British-made AND not British-owned… possibly Georgian BMW or Audi, more likely a Partridgian brace of “my farts produce more pollution than this car” Lexii… definately suit Dagenham Dave. I could go on with the dagenham and right-wing and who Ford supported in the last lot metaphor but best leave it I think. Instead – as promised – kittens!

new labour – born in edinburgh

Thirteen years ago on 2 May 1997, Tony Blair ended the Thatcher years by defeating John Major. Thatcher’s period in office brought huge transition to the UK, both for country and individual; a transition that we still haven’t fully absorbed.

But it was clear to everyone thirteen years ago that this wasn’t going to be a re-run of James Callaghan’s ficticious “crisis what crisis” denouement. No – we all smelt the good times, Did We Not.

Then Diana died on 31 august 1997. But it was OK – we found that grief unified our sense of britishness; like any family, there were disagreements, yes; the Queen’s apparent reluctance to grieve confused many, for instance.

The many turned to money soon after – easy credit and a necessary inflation in the value of property to feed it… but yeah, we know how that one worked out.

So where did this golden age for the middle classes begin
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Firstly, the US
The Americans, through Blair’s more experienced doppleganger, Bill Clinton, became a dominant influence after the groundwork done by Thatcher and Reagan. The Simpsons had just started to gain an audience in 1997, and the corporate-owned internet was about to happen (these pernicious, high-consumerist, untouchable ad-vehicles still thrive today; it’s not all about physicalities like cola and starbucks and the baseball cap – that perennial sign of US cultural hegemony).

Secondly, society
Blair’s attempt to engender a fairer, more liberal society sadly resulted in a compaction rather than an enema of Thatcher’s policies – if you thought the inner city was grim in the 1970s, the 2000′s version… but yeah, we know how that one worked out too. The main problem was that the working classes (yes – working classes – this never was a flat society), demoralised by the decimation of the UK’s manufacturing base, took the liberal-left’s handout and never got up again. The Guardian newspaper then flourished as an enormous wave of social problem-solvers were recruited to look after the sub-working. But don’t shoot the messenger – I’m a guardian-reading chablis-sipper myself…

Lastly, the plot unravelled when most people – at last – at least subliminally – realised the purpose of fighting pointless, unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oil.
Insert your favourite Charlie Brooker-ism here.

Well just let me correct something there. Like the guardian, america is a hugely diverse collection of individuals and I do enjoy it. The “america” talked about here is of course our old 20c friends – corporations; unelected power brokers; their kissing cousins running the mainstream media channels.

So how come new labour and Edinburgh
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Fettes College, where Tony Blair was educated.
Edinburgh University, where Gordon Brown was educated.
Loretto School, Alistair Darling…

…and so on. The links with other heavyweights in the edinburgh firmament are manifold and eclectic.

So how come Edinburgh does London and ends up in bed with the US
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The answer is that the dynastic chain needs to remain intact, and flourishing. Cameron, Cameron, Cameron… isn’t that a Scottish name?

This reality is connected to Stephen Hawking, who said this week in connection with light-speed colonialism –

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans”

Despite the fact Hawking has contradicted himself, there is a clue here. We – as in the UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Russia, et al - would fail the DNA test if implicated in what our relatives have done since 1776.

An Old Day Has Set, Has It Not – the end of an era
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So… as mentioned in a previous post… who are you going to choose tomorrow – Diana, or Jessica?

image : Scots Dragoon Guards Museum entrance, Edinburgh Castle

malcolm mclaren : dead, dangerous still

Mclaren was probably the only person since ’68 who really embraced the situationist wholeheartedly – at a time in the uk when everything was stale. His re-appropriation and timing were perfect.

Like partner Vivienne Westwood, his approach was chaos out of chaos; then overthrow; then re-invention and capitalisation. They knew what they were doing – we just responded at 14, innocent to the deeper machinations of turning a dime thru yoof and body image.

An enormous weight of people can trace their creative beginnings to this pair. Although the situationist is rarely mentioned now, it was a grenade in their hands, spawning punk and barney bubbles, DIY fashion and hip hop to anti-globalisation.

So thanks Malcolm, and Vivienne – for the tartan trews…. I thought of you earlier today when listening to bowwowwow – never realising you’d be dead by the time I got home.

Highly recommend this interview with Malcolm by momus.