Some of you may already be aware of the ongoing situation in Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland recently. Two local campaigns have been trying to defend our city and Shire from unwelcome developments by some business tycoons (or robber barons – depending on your viewpoint – and for the purpose of this article I shall refer to them as robber barons) The Donald Trump Meanie estate golf and shopping complex or as he calls it “The Great Doones of Scotland”. Go see this site for more info on the campaign.  http://www.trippinguptrump.com/

And the destruction aimed at ripping out sunken Victorian gardens in the heart of the city and to replace them with a car park and designer shops, which has been spearheaded by Sir Ian Wood who runs Wood Group PLC, an oil & gas related service company. Both deals have involved the usual shady going ons with politicians local and national, the usual planning regulation avoidance and the usual “ask the ordinary folk” Public relation exercise that is then ignored when the “ordinary folk” say no to these projects. Go see this site for more info on the campaign.  http://iheartutg.tumblr.com/

I won’t go into just how murky these affairs are getting but a few “highlights” should be mentioned.

The Scottish government withdrawing legal aid for one of the Trump protesters leaving an 86 year old resident liable to pay round about £50,000, although appeals may sometime later be granted its not a very pleasant thing to have hanging over your head at Xmas time.

The people of Aberdeen were democratically involved in being asked if they wanted their gardens replaced and when we said no the council ignored the vote and went ahead with the plans. This involved selling off the land to a 3rd party made up of mainly private unelected individuals who are to decide on what will happen to council assets. The unelected, publicly funded Quango (ACSEF -  http://www.acsef.co.uk/) that was pushing for the destruction of our heritage will also be heavily involved much to the alarm of the citizens.

The massive capitulation of the local media for these millionaires and their pet projects has left the city with a very biased media who cannot be trusted to report what is going on in the city anymore. Some people have already taken action with regards to reporting unbiased news events because of the media blackout on truths we are suffering from and our local “journalists” inability to be impartial.  http://aberdeenvoice.com/

Anyway –

Whilst doing some digging about the interweb for the recent meeting on the new Aberdeen against the cuts group I came across an article about an Aberdeen company who have just won a contract to build Israel’s biggest gas power station. Which, for very obvious reasons, does not sit well with me and I’m sure does not sit well with lots of other free thinking individuals on Indymedia.

And of course it’s the Wood Group -  http://www.woodgroup.com - (the same lad who needs more car parking space and designer shops in the city) who has won the contract. Strangely this never made the local papers as far as I can see but I thought it should be brought to light. The company in Israel that the plant is being built for is – Dorad Energy  http://www.dori.co.il/dorad/e_DoradAbout.asp - who, and i know this is a sweeping statement – are probably up to their necks in dirty deals. I know im being unfair, they may be a power company that is nice, don’t involve themselves with environmental destruction, bribes, blackmail etc, etc. Hey! They IS always a first time for everything! But like you I doubt it.

So, feel free to get in touch with the local campaigns and support them in anyway you can, and feel free to get in touch with the Wood Group if like me you don’t think UK businesses should be in business with Israel whilst they blatantly ignore UN resolutions and commit genocide and murder on the Palestinian people daily.

Trump has been up to his usual dirty tricks “the protesters houses are slums and these people live like animals” and Woody is being strangely quite although his comments on Democracy in an interview may give you some idea of the problems we face up here. "I used to believe in a democratic system but really if you look at the results yielded by democracy you realise most people don't know what they are talking about. A select few should make informed decisions for the masses. I am willing to do the selecting.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Wood

Nice guys, eh?

Bleep