Sir, – Regarding the vacant spaces left by the demolition of the Aberdeen Market on the Green and the adjoining BHS store, surely this is a golden opportunity to replace the Market footprint with a park of grass and trees while the BHS footprint provides room for a spacious entry point from Union Street?
No more large buildings. After all, we do not seem to be able to find full occupancy for those we already have.
Such a development would also, once again, after far too long, render the name Green appropriate.
Roddy Millar, Osborne Place, Aberdeen.
SNP ignore science for political ends
Sir, – The current disagreement about genetic modification between Scotland and England is not about genetic engineering, of which G Davidson disapproves of, but is about gene editing, which doesn’t introduce any foreign genetic material into the DNA of an organism.
It is a very common natural phenomenon. In its fundamentals it is exactly the same as traditional selective breeding. The Scottish Government’s opposition to it has nothing to do with the science, but is political.
Hugh Pennington, Carlton Place, Aberdeen.
Council transport plan is disruptive
Sir, – Buried deep within the public consultation on the inscrutably-named A944/A9119 Multi-Modal Transport Study is the admission that several of the proposed “options” involve diverting the number 3 bus service away from Rosemount, while also restricting parking and loading bays on Rosemount Place.
I have recently bought a home in Rosemount. I was attracted to the area by its great range of independent shops and businesses, many of which will be affected by parking restrictions. As a non-driver who walks, cycles or takes the bus everywhere, I was also attracted by Rosemount’s location a short walk or bus ride from the city centre. Of course some of my older neighbours can’t manage the walk and therefore rely on the number 3 bus service.
The proposed parking restrictions and loss of the number 3 service would hit Rosemount hard, threatening its businesses, its community centre and much of what makes it such a special neighbourhood. The council has been keen to stress that these are merely proposals, but if the past few years have taught us anything it is that Aberdeen planners are tenacious and will push hard for their high-level vision of how things should be regardless of the impact it will have on local people.
Aberdeen cinemas have recently been playing the NT Live showing of Straight Line Crazy, a play about the famous American planner Robert Moses, who started out with the noble intention of opening up New York State for the people, but whose rigid ideological approach led him to carve up and decimate local communities. Moses was of course obsessed with the automobile and modern planners are under strict instructions from the Scottish Government to reduce car usage, but they share the same insensitivity to the practical realities of living neighbourhoods.
Rosemount is one such living neighbourhood and its needs are now at risk of being sacrificed in the name of the Mosesian objective of rationalising transport options along the Westburn to Aberdeen corridor. The consultation makes clear that this is all underpinned by the belief that redesigning the physical environment will “encourage modal shift to more sustainable modes of transport” – which is to say, nudge people to take a bus or cycle instead of driving.
The desolation of Union Street during the temporary pedestrianisation is surely a testament to how incredibly naive this kind of pseudo-psychology is, not to mention the irony that Rosemount would lose its only bus service to develop the infrastructure on the A944 and A9119.
The built environment and its interaction with the local population evolves over time and Rosemount has evolved since the late 19th Century as a community, with Rosemount Place at its heart.
Dr Jonathan Ainslie, Richmond Terrace, Aberdeen.
Union more equal for some than all
Sir, – Apparently, during the pandemic, supermarket staff were key workers but now the pandemic has eased the solution from the UK Government is for those supposed “key workers” to get a better-paid job.
If we were key workers during the pandemic can somebody please tell me what has changed?
Is supermarket work not quite this key work that the politicians led folk to believe it was?
Is the work done by supermarkets no longer required?
Is there not a case to suggest that if you pay those in supermarkets more for doing the job they are already doing you will get more in taxes, national insurance contributions and these workers will need less in benefit payments and make a contribution to the wider economy?
In the same way, did voting for Scottish independence in 2014 mean that those who chose to do so suddenly were no longer equal members of the Union if we decided to stay in it?
Why did no one tell us that if the Scottish independence vote was lost we would all lose our status as equal members of the Union?
Now the hunt is on for a new prime minister but – as someone who voted for Scottish independence – I don’t get to vote on the matter because I cannot, even if I wanted to, join the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.
The issue of who the next prime minister will be is going to be decided by 100,000 or so Conservative members.
It kind of proves the point that some members of this Union are more equal than others, does it not?
Would things be any better under the Labour Party?
Let me just say I doubt it.
Peter Ovenstone, Orchard Grove, Peterhead.
Rank delay no good for taxis
Sir-, Weeks have passed and yet our taxi drivers are still waiting for permission to use the Back Wynd rank.
The council should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves over their treatment of the drivers who, like the rest of the working population, have to earn a living.
Bureaucratic penpushers in the Townhouse seem oblivious to the hardship they have caused for the trade to say nothing of the misconceived plan for the pedestrianisation of Union Street whose knock-on effects have caused traffic mayhem elsewhere.
Union Street should be returned to its original purpose as Aberdeen’s main thoroughfare in my opinion.
James Sinclair, Castle Street, Aberdeen.
Hammond took the ‘P’
Sir-, When Philip Hammond was chancellor of the exchequer (2016-2019) it was he who wanted to round-off prices upwards to the nearest five pence.
In effect an item priced at £2.51p would automatically rise to £2.55p.
Theresa May would have none of this and immediately slapped him down on this proposal.
If the former PM cannot be remembered for anything positive from her days in power, this one political decision, if nothing else, should be.
TF.
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