Someone asked, can you write something positive and supportive about the Council, as it would look so much better? Well we have tried to think of something but this is harder than it looks, particularly at the moment.
The dreaded tram project has practically made Princes Street a no-go area because it is a most unattractive place to be as a pedestrian and the shopkeepers seem to be feeling the pinch, even in this normally busy period right before Christmas. Sale and heavy discounting signs are everywhere, not only in Princes Street; while there may be bargains to be had everywhere that the tram works have adversely affected trading. One has the feeling that traders in Princes Street are longing for the tram construction to stop just so that they can get a tiny fraction of 'normality' back into their lives.
Meanwhile the Council is being taken to the United Nations in Geneva by angry residents who have seen the air quality of their area considerably degraded with huge increases in traffic levels and massive noise pollution.
The Aarhus Commission, where the residents will put their case, will hear how the Council has refused to co-operate, withheld information, issued conflicting and misleading statements and generally denied citizens a chance to express their views. They have been excluded from the democratic process or from being involved with shaping the disastrous tram project. Views expressed are simply ignored.
- Log in to post comments
Trams bandwaggon -- out of control
- Log in to post comments
The flawed design (too big, fat and fast to be a Tram)is what led directly to the well-publicised financial chaos (Just now we are being told everything's great with the project...but give anyone £235 Million to chuck down a manhole and it's a fair bet it would make most projects look 'great') .................................
The financial catastrophe then led to the perception that 'one more thing could sink this project'---and that is when the proper checks and balances inherent in democratic accountability were loosened a little...then a little more and finally to such a degree that they no longer held.
Alistair Macintosh has taken his own course to try and hold the Council to account for this negligent setting aside of the rules that are there to ensure that not only is justice seen to be done...but that it is infact done.
Everyone who lives in Edinburgh, and indeed beyond, should be grateful that he has persevered... this UN committee sits to consider cases involving National governments that have dispensed with the proper democratic processes, such as Kazakhstan, the former Soviet republic, it is no small matter that can be brushed off with a shrug that this committee now feel there is a prima facie case for The City of the Enlightenment to answer that they have mislaid their own collective sense of what proper democratic process is.
The Committee of the Aarhus Convention don't hear cases without merit.
Rather than seeing this as another challenge to be sqaured off one way or another the City of Edinburgh Council should perhaps ask themselves 'Whaes Like us?"
Iif the answer is "Kazakhstan" then perhaps take that as a sign that they take a long hard look at themselves and the Tram project to ensure the City gets the Tram it needs....and not the Tram a whole load of people may have wanted in 2003...especially as many of them have now departed the scene.