It hasn’t taken long for councilors, past and present, to throw their voices behind the appalling and disgusting erection they are thrusting up alongside the beautiful and environmentally sensitive River Ness.
Highland Council art – only £750,000
Highland Council leader Margaret Davidson welcomed it (unsurprising when you look at her track record of supporting the blot on the landscape at Urquhart Castle , which is so ugly that every advertising photo is carefully angled to exclude any sight of it).
Former councilor Thomas Prag has been involved with various awful so called “art” projects and was another enthusiastic endorser of the Berlin Wall Project. The provost (we wonder if she actually sleeps with her chain of office on, as it appears to be melted onto her skin or fixed with Gorilla Glue) also welcomed her own decision making process. From top to bottom, Highland Council has taken its tax payers to the cleaners, ram raided the common good fund for cash and slashed the budgets of essential care services to build its drunks and druggies den and make Inverness River Mess.
This fight is over: Highland Councillors have thrown money, art, culture and the environment into the sea as they voted 15 – 7 to squander £750,000 of tax payer’s money on their own bigwigs’ vanity project: A Berlin Wall built on wild habitat alongside the once beautiful River Ness.
Highland Council art – only £400,000
A spokesman for the campaign to stop this folly told us, “at least when the council leader and provost tell us there is no money for elderly and disabled care, educational needs or road repairs we can shove this wastage down their throats and say ‘we know why, you burned all the money'”.
In an astonishing last minute intervention the Director of Eden Court Theatre in Inverness threw his support in favour of the scheme and accused protesters of standing in the way of cultural progress in Inverness. The sad reality is that Inverness is already losing its Ironworks music venue to be replaced by another grey stock built hotel and Eden Court is the only cultural venue left. Its Director should have fought for any funds that were available for art to go to it – instead of this total “vanity” mess pushed through by apparently artistically challenged councilors who just seem to want a memorial erection in the city centre dedicated to themselves (at any price). £750,000 (and it will probably go over a million as developers rarely finish on time within budget) is much too much to waste on bulldozers scraping away the green sides of the River Ness, destroying its nature to build a druggies’ den that will be filled with rubbish, dog excrement, old needles and graffiti within weeks of opening.
In years gone by we had this cultural and environmental vandalism years ago – with the Urquhart Castle visitor centre at Loch ness (its real monster). The place is so absolutely hideous that every photo of the castle that you see on a card or biscuit tin or the quango’s (Historic Environment Scotland) own marketing material is very carefully angled to exclude the monstrosity. There is precious little left of value in Inverness, it isn’t worth a visitors’ journey and now there will be even less.
In an astounding confession Highland Council has admitted that it can’t cope with a bit of rain and homes and businesses will just have to flood. The kitty has been spent on consultations for a Soviet Era Berlin Wall to wreck the beautiful River Ness. The idea is to concrete the popular natural riverside to provide a space for drunks, druggies and graffiti vandals to make a mess. Naturally there is no money left for flood prevention, elderly care, disabled care or anything else that is really important.
The council leaders have told the populace “if you don’t have bread then eat cake” while they treat themselves to lavish canapes and wines in buffet lunches and parties – all at the expense of the local tax payer.
Unelected and therefore unaccountable in any meaningful way to the cash strapped residents of the Highlands, it’s head mandarin , Highland council Chief Executive, Donna Manson says the £100,000s of public money wasted on The River Ness Mess is well spent and the calamity must proceed.
Highland Council art – only £400,000 and counting
Once a beautiful part of Inverness (perhaps the best part), this crackpot scheme apparently dreamed up by a few councilors in the privacy of the council chamber will see a huge concrete wall resembling the Cold War Berlin Wall built alongside the water’s edge.
Meantime, elderly and frail people in the Highlands freeze, starve and suffer from a crippled care service but the bosses at Highland Council are hell bent on their vanity project that will leave a massive ugly erection in the heart of the so called city for decades to come.
Inverness Councillor Ron MacWilliam has been spearheading The People’s Rebellion against Highland Council’s ludicrous and profligate wastage of public funds (£300,000 so far – and nothing has even been constructed yet!)
River Ness – about to be lined with a Berlin Wall
Now MacWilliam has reportedly been summoned for a dressing down and told to personally attend to apologise to the Highland Council bosses angry at his defiance of their diktats and refusal to be “muzzled”.
He was on the front page of The Inverness Courier this week and both he and fellow champions against The Wall have used The Freedom of Information Act to successfully crowbar the numbers showing true scale of the waste of public money out of the council (already spent and gone) because it is determined to build Inverness’s very own Cold War Era Berlin Wall alongside the (currently) beautiful River Ness. Photo it now folks, soon it will be a concrete catastrophe.
Many of us believe this is a disgusting waste of money by a local authority that is currently chopping and cutting every budget including elderly and vulnerable persons’ care and even charging 50p for use of toilets. But of course The River Ness Mess is a Vanity Project and nothing pushes big wigs’ buttons like the thought of a “legacy” – in this case a massive erection in the so called city centre, whatever the cost and loss to its citizens and the environment. What a way to literally pour The Common Good Fund into the sea. The councillors and officers behind it owe the people of Inverness and the Highlands an apology and should hang their heads in shame, while also cancelling this River Ness Mess.
Sort out the mess first, Highland Council
We are proudly one hundred percent behind Councilor Ron MacWilliam and the group fighting this disaster. The council’s River Ness Mess is not art, it’s a blot on the landscape that will harm fragile wildlife and the environment and be nothing more than another litter and graffiti strewn cesspit for druggies and winos – and Inverness already has those in spades.
Wanted for some 25 alleged charges including multiple rapes and sexual assaults (some of the charges reportedly involve a girl aged between 12 and 16), the former street pedlar from Inverness, Kim Gordon aka Kim Avis aka Kem Avis has reportedly given up his fight against extradition back to Scotland. After initially failing to attend his trial at Edinburgh High Court, the man who some Highland Councilors had branded “the finest ambassador for Inverness” fled to the United States and went on the run as a fugitive. He apparently faked his own death in California and then legged it in a van – but US Marshals acting with Interpol and the Scottish authorities captured him in a cheap motel 1300 miles away in Colorado.
Fugitive extradited back to Scotland
According to reports he may be returned to the UK this week and will apparently be accompanied by US Marshals and probably well cuffed to his seat!
There is more about Inverness’s “finest ambassador” here. It might be thought that the councilors who came up with that title would have the grace to resign.
As Highland Council struggles to care for its elderly, half a million pounds has been wasted on a pitiful new concrete mess that resembles a section of the old Berlin Wall planned to be sited alongside the beautiful River Ness.
Highland Council art – not built yet and £500,000 already spent
Some members of the public have called on the provost and other councilors to resign as they have been key actors in the secretive cabal of Highland councilors determined to push through their vanity project in the face of public outrage.
One told this blog, “the days of ‘if they don’t have bread let them eat cake’ are long over and we have old people freezing and dying and a broken care system but the figurehead of Highland Council seems to think she in Marie-Antoinette”.
Highland Council had to be FORCED by law to reveal the scale of its profligacy as the local campaign group, OpenNess, which is pledged to fight the provost’s nightmarish mess had to use The Freedom Of Information Act to obtain the figures relating to the secretive and vast wastage of public money.
You can read more about this awful tale of arrogance and indifference to the lives of Highlanders in the Inverness Courier.
Outraged tourists were dumped at Preston and told no buses were available to take them on to London at 5.20am. They were allso told to shell out for new train tickets in the latest mess to embroil the new Caledonian Sleeper service. Last week a runaway service ploughed through Edinburgh Waverly station as its brakes failed and was only brought to an eventual halt with the emergency brake.
To add to the woe carriages have been plagues with problems and no food was served on a service last month. Now staff have said “management has lost the plot” and voted overwhelmingly to strike.
An Inverness street pedlar known locally as Kim Gordon aka Kim Avis aka Kem Aivs Gordon etc. was due in the High Court in Edinburgh earlier this year but fled the country instead and faked his own death in California. He swam Loch Ness (allegedly for charity) and was often seen selling knick knacks outside Marks & Spencer in the High Street. Some at Highland Council (unavailable for comment at time of going to press) called him a “fine ambassador for the city”.
How things change: Now US Marshals working with Interpol, the Scottish authorities and the US police were able to locate and arrest him at a cheap motel in Colorado – over a thousand miles from where he disappeared. He was allegedly trying to d a runner to Mexico.
Kim Gordon is now due to appear in Denver Courthouse on 12th August to face extradition back to Scotland where the rap sheet has some 24 charges including alleged rapes and sexual assault, at least one involving a child. Other charges include breach of the peace.
The tiny Highland community surrounding Loch Ness was left reeling today as Boleskine House, former home to Satanist Aleistir Crowley (once dubbed “the most evil man in the world”) burned to the ground. The 18th century Grade B listed mansion was also owned by Led Zeppelin member, Jimmy Page, who bought it for its historical connection to Crowley.
Fire crews from Inverness, Foyers, Beauly and Dingwall spent hours battling flames that seemed to rise from the depths of hell itself to overwhelm and engulf the structure, leaving acrid sulfurous fumes so overpowering that emergency personnel had to wear special breathing apparatus just to get near to the site.
