Saving Green Spaces
More demos
I often make public speeches about inequality, injustice, and anti-war/anti-genocide topics. On 27th February I spoke at a demonstration outside the Council building: our goal was saving the Greensands park from being turned into an unnecessary car park by Dumfries & Galloway Council. Although some of my speech was off-the-cuff, here are some rough notes I’d made before I left home.
Greensands is an important topic for me. As is nature and wildlife.
I joined Loreburn Community Council in July 2023. In my first week as a Community Councillor I was on Greatest Hits radio defending Greensands and criticising DG Council’s plans to wreck it.
It’s why I do litter picks, why I go into the river to drag out shopping trolleys.
It’s why I'm here today.
Three points.
One. Cuts.
This isn’t just taking one little bit of green space.
In the Robert Burns Centre Museum there is a model of Dumfries at it was when Burns was alive in the eighteenth century. Greensands used to cover a huge area. But over time they take a bit here, build on a bit there. It adds up.
Death by a thousand cuts. Slice, slice, until nothing worthwhile is left. No nature, no wildlife. Then they can do what they want with what remains.
The irony is, if the Greensands was as it was back then, if it hadn’t kept getting cut into by successive councils, more concrete laid down, it would still have been acting as a flood plain, slowing the river and preventing flooding further down. The idiots who’ve been in charge of Dumfries for hundreds of years have made the issue worse. And here they are, doing it again.
Two. Money.
They say there is no money. They are cutting services we want and pay for, yet making you pay more. They are robbing us and lying to us.
It is their fault, wasting money on buildings so bodged up so they have to be rebuilt; on millions going missing from road schemes; on failed recycling schemes where we paid ten thousand a year to house empty boxes; on buying bin lorries that it turns out aren’t compatible with the bins in Dumfries so they sit there, unused. Waste, waste, waste.
This is another example, destroying green spaces.
The Council want to budget £425,000 to progress this scheme further, with the potential of it costing – what? 80 million pounds eventually? Then ongoing maintenance forever?
They are laughing at you as they waste your money.
Three. Democracy.
Democracy would be a referendum on something this important, that costs so much. But the Council don’t want democracy.
We have a Participation Request for the Greensands Destruction Project. After one meeting with the Whitesands Project Manager and the Team Leader of the Flood Risk Management Team (that seemed to go well) they have ignored us. Emails: ignored by the project lead. Complaints: not acted on. Worse, rejected by the person complained about, who somehow managed to take over the complaint.
We were polite and made an effort, and they are just taking the piss. It’s not a consultation, it’s just them telling us what they’re going to do, and we have to lump it.
In the last Loreburn CC meeting, 4th February, the SNP, Labour and Conservative councillors were all specifically asked if they’d go back to their parties and ask them to consider taking Whitesands out of their budget.
All three parties refused. All three parties still have the Whitesands budget in, and are happy with going ahead with the Greensands Destruction Project.
What can we do?
Don’t cooperate. Don’t obey. Don’t fund. Don’t support. Get angry.
And one more.
Back in 2023, Wednesday, 28th June, 10.30 am, the Planning Applications Committee made the fateful vote that agreed to push ahead with spending millions on their Whitesands project, which will also destroy Greensands.
The vote was tie. To me that’s a another sign that it should go back to the public, but the the chair, Jim Dempster, got a second vote. He was for the scheme, so got to vote twice that way, and the motion was passed.
If even one of those supporting the motion had been replaced with a Green Party councillor, it wouldn’t have gone ahead. We wouldn’t be here today. Wouldn’t be seeing potentially 80 million pounds wasted. Greensands would be safe.
So when people say “What difference would one Green make?” this is the perfect example.
There’s a law in computing. GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. My law of politics is very similar, and applies whether we’re talking about county councils or the US or UK government. Vote arseholes in, you get arsehole decisions.
If you want to protect green spaces like Ladyfield, Greensands, Catherinefield and others, vote Green.
The demo was covered in the local newspaper:
Yes, at the same time as the Council saying it has no money and has to massively increase our council tax, it wants to spend millions destroying a green space. Maybe you can make sense of that, because I can’t.