Where On Earth
Friends and Readers. Pilton Sucks.com is puzzled. We are puzzled by the serious lack of information coming to us from the Waterfront development. It seems almost not to exist, deliberate do you think,well rumours abound about what has happened to this new world order. One strong rumour doing the rounds is that the chief executive Stephen Izatt has fallen out with our very own leadership contender and time lord Elizabeth Mcginnis,who as you know is the council appointed chair of this cabal.
Gone is the foresight to regenerate the existing community,if it were ever there,gone are the so called information meetings,and gone from any coverage in the North Edinburgh News,not that there was very much to start with. So fellow Piltonites what has has gone wrong.
No local jobs, no affordable housing, no consultation with the local community,and of course nothing from our local rulers,one of whom is to busy furthering her own career to be bothered with such trivia as local interests.
What a disaster what a mess,the expensive slums of the future being built by foreign labour. Both our MSP Chisholm and our MP Lazarowicz, show no interest and keep a low profile on the subject. Both have shown to be absolutely useless in showing any kind of leadership on this matter.
We at Pilton Sucks.com have looked at other waterfront developments round Europe, and they have at least one thing in common, local labour contracts/charters. This in the first instance ensures local labour is offered employment and or trained in skills required.Why did we not have one.We will hear lots of excuses why we should not have local labour agreements usually in the favour of the developers,but in an area like ours of high unemployment and low skills,this was a missed opportunity.
Where is the promised affordable housing,in some of the other waterfront developments it is as high as 23%,on our waterfronf we do not know if there will be any affordable housing at all,again an argument for having a contract that stipulates what percentage of housing will be affordable,and just as important how much will they cost to buy or rent.
We are being conned lied to and cheated,and have been right from the start. The politicians we elected to serve our interests have failed us,and turned a blind eye to questionable working practices.We should have been involved in the discussions right from the start and demanded that the existing community benifit from this new development,the biggest of its kind since the inception of the new town.
But no we had to place our trust in someone elses hands and look what has happened.Greater Pilton has lost out and no amount of excuses can escape that fact. We had the wrong people to represent us and if rumours are to be believed corruption is at hand as well.
The local elections are due in 2007 and the community must make those that are guilty of neglect pay the price. Never in the history of Greater Pilton has an opportunity like this been mishandled by so few and affected so many.
If this community were to survive another 10,000 years historians would look back to this time and shake their heads in disbelief,at how a golden opportunity for major regeneration was so badly managed and operated.Never again will a development like this come our way, never again will we have the opportunity to lift our citizens from the scourge of generational unemployment,to give hope to our young and to help restore dignity to a community stripped of it and played with by our noble rulers. They should hang their heads in shame.Â