Pot luck

Aberdeen's roads have never been the best and at the moment they are uneven, patchy, pot-holed, cannoned, fissured and just plain dangerous, and the problem is getting worse and there's not a road unaffected. Some of Aberdeen's roads are so bad it's like driving on the main roads of Egypt, and that's one hellava bumpy ride. And I'm sure I saw a tarmac mole the other day. The local council say they have no money to repair these damaged roads, but some how they managed to find £80M to rebuild, repair, and revamp a building that they are only leasing as their new headquarters.

Granted, the current HQ (shown above (28-03-10)) is a visual eye sore, and I can understand the need to have new premises, and I welcome the use of such a beautiful and historical building like the Marischal College - which is the 2nd largest granite fronted building in the world (shown below in renovation & reconstruction (28-03-10)), - but don't tell Aberdeen's citizens’ that there's no money to repair our roads.

Our Council tax already incorporates a portion of the money paid to maintain our roads, so what are they doing with it? Our city should be a shining light,- the gate way to the Highlands, Royal Deeside, some new beautiful modern shopping centres, which bring needed revenue and the Oil Capital of Europe. So why are we still bumping along our roads like we're driving dodgy shopping trolleys?

Come on Aberdeen Council, get your fingers out and sort the roads before the next onslaught of bad weather makes it even worse.

Dumping not Providing

Wednesday just past I was clearing out some cupboards and as I normally do I had a few bags to go to charity. Now as a rule I'll take the bags to the Charity shops - I do a circle donation that way all charities and not just one get something - however this time is was for the Salvation Army. I remembered that they had collection bins in Tesco car park, so i thought that I'd drop the stuff there as it was on the way to my Mother-in-laws and i could then pick up my son. The bins are very big and the SA have signs to tell you how they would like the stuff sorted. That's a sensible thing to do. I tried putting several carrier bags in, two would not fit so that stuff will be going in to a store. I was surprise, on the day, to see that there were a few black bags of items sitting at one of the bins and someone had left a single mattress and a suitcase. What is rather ridiculous and obvious is that the person or persons responsible are just dumping. Baring in mind that the local dump is not that far from Asda and Asda's not far from Tesco. I do have a criticism about the bins, the chutes do not allow for a bulging carrier bag and you would have to use several bags if you have a lot on things, so you can see why people would leave black bags if they didn't known and just couldn't be bothered to take the stuff home again, but this is dumping not providing.

I was at Tesco shopping today and couldn't believe my eyes. The Salvation Army bins were nothing short of disgusting, and the people who left the items behind should be ashamed of themselves. Clothing out of bags lying on the wet ground, now no use to anyone. Why did they waste petrol traveling to Tesco just to dump when they could have just used their wheelie bin and let the council refuge collection dump them instead?