Author: Jeremy Watson

Deep in the heart of a Stirlingshire glen, the latest in an illustrious line of Scottish inventions is about to be unveiled.

An eco-loo, housed in a recycled shipping container, has been designed to help countryside visitors answer the call of nature without having to use the surrounding woodlands. Human waste will be composted using sawdust, rendering it odourless, while the container will be lit by solar power. Handwashing gels will be provided to replace running water.

The £25,000 prototype is to be positioned in a remote car park in Inverlochlarig at the head of Balquhidder Glen, which is used by thousands of walkers and climbers every year to gain access to five nearby Munros.

As there is no conventional public toilet at the remote site, the nearby woods have become an open-air loo for those caught short coming off the hills. Now the local community trust and researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University have come up with a cheap and environmentally friendly solution. If the prototype proves successful, eco-loos could become a common site in remote rural locations.

The loo is expected to be in place in June. Alan Clarke, director of the Balquhidder, Lochearnhead and Strathtyre Community Trust, said: “Over 6,000 walkers and climbers a year visit the Balquhidder Glen. Until now they’ve had to make do with natural, open-air toilet facilities, but we want to improve this for everyone.

“We know there is a need for this facility as the landowner has said so. The car park is well used by around 6,000 people a year and waste left nearby has become a problem.

“If you build a normal public toilet then there would have to be connections to mains electricity, water and sewerage, which is expensive so far up the glen, eight miles from the main road.”

The metal shipping container to be used is around 10ft tall and 8ft wide and will be clad in Scottish wood to help it blend in with the environment. A solar panel will be used to supply 24-hour light and power small fans to disperse smells. Hand gel and toilet paper will be replenished weekly.

The leader of the design team, Derek Gallaher, head of the Kit-Out The Park project at Glasgow Caledonian University, said: “There have been compost thunderboxes before, but we believe this to be a totally unique combination of technologies.

“If it is successful we know there are other areas in which they could be used.”

The loo is to be sited within the boundaries of the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. Iona McDonald, the sustainable development officer with the National Park Authority said:

“This will be the first of its kind to be installed and will be a welcome sight for many hillwalkers.

“It’s a low impact, sustainable solution that will meet the needs of people enjoying the great outdoors. The results of this pilot project will be really important both to the park authority, partner organisations and land managers with similar challenges.”

Author: Gordon Bannerman, Perthshire Advertiser

Lucky Blackford and Auchterarder communities will enjoy a £250,000 windfall today.

Local businessman Allan King will hand over a six-figure cheque on behalf of Ochil Developments (UK), who are currently constructing the prestigious G-West International Resort on their doorstep.

The cash is being gifted for the benefit of residents – and there’s more to come. This is the first of two tranches.

Mr King said: “This is a long standing arrangement devised by the principals of Ochil Developments who were keen to do something to benefit the two communities.

“In the case of Blackford, Ochil particularly want the elderly to benefit, but they recognise that Auchterarder is a much bigger community with more complex needs.”

The cheques will be presented to Mr John Graham, treasurer of Blackford Community Council and Mr Peter Everett chairman of Auchterarder and District Community Trust.

Blackford has already established a panel to assess priorities and allocate grants and they have enlisted the help of the Scottish Community Foundation to manage and administer the fund.

Mr Graham said: “It is envisaged that the interest generated by invested capital will be used to finance projects and activities within the community but that, in time, some capital projects may also be considered.”

In Auchterarder, a Trust has been established and the trustees will perform a similar role to the panel in Blackford – in Auchterarder’s case using the Perth and Kinross Quality of Life Trust to handle administration.

Mr Everett noted: “A great opportunity has been presented to the two communities through the generosity of Ochil Developments and we look forward to making awards to local groups and individuals to the benefit of the area.”

Author: Carnegie UK Trust

Inquiry into the Future Of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland

Scenarios for Civil Society

Drawing on the analysis of the drivers of change and the subsequent Inquiry scenarios/implications workshops, four scenarios were developed (summarised below). Scenarios are not forecasts or predictions. They are plausible yet challenging stories that illustrate what the future might hold for civil society, looking out to 2025, designed to stimulate further deliberation about how civil society might better take advantage of emerging opportunities or diminish possible threats.

• Local Life: Resource scarcity and energy costs lead to the regeneration of local life. Civil society has been in the vanguard of this process, and as a result has gained significant political influence. But there is insularity and competition between localities.

• Athenian Voices (Electronic Age): Technology and innovation leads to far greater involvement and engagement in politics, and in more inclusive debate. But technology can also facilitate and encourage atomisation; it indulges individualism and can transform media from a ‘broadcast’ to a ‘narrowcast’ paradigm.

• Diversity Wars: Cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity – along with social divisions arising from inequalities of income and environmental impacts – has led to conflicts between and within communities over resources and values. But younger generations have more in common – and large scale environmental problems require co-operation to be managed.

• Global Compact: The security state constructed for the ‘war on terror’ is no longer regarded as effective. Civil society associations have led the campaign against the exploitation inherent in cheap goods and, together with global agencies, they play a key role in monitoring labour practices. But migrant labour, which is increasingly needed in Europe, is a different story. States oscillate between local populism and a global view.

Download full report here

West Whitlawburn Housing Co-operative is delighted to report that its tenants view services delivered by The Co-operative as “virtually perfect”. When asked about the Co-operative’s as a landlord and its services none of the tenant’s surveyed expressed dissatisfaction.

Following a wide ranging survey of its tenants the results and findings have been warmly welcomed by The Co-operative’s Management Committee and staff.

When asked about key aspects of service delivery satisfaction levels were all over
90%.

The results also show increasing satisfaction over the past 4 years

Advice and Assistance
Percentage of tenants who are satisfied with the quality of advice and assistance that they receive from the Co-operative.
2004: 91%
2006: 96%
2008: 97%

Concierge Service and Security System
Percentage of tenants who are satisfied with concierge services.
2004: 80%
2006: 92%
2008: 98%

Repairs Service
Percentage of tenants who are satisfied with the repairs service.
2004: 80%
2006: 90%
2008: 93%

Value for Money
5.5% of tenants do not believe that their rent represents good value for money.
2004: 76%
2006: 86%
2008: 94%

The Neighbourhood
Percentage of tenants who believe that West Whitlawburn is a good area to live in.
2004: 86%
2006: N/A
2008: 91%

The Co-operative’s Chairperson, Anne Anderson said

“The results are really quite staggering. The transformation in the area since The Co-operative took charge is really astonishing. The successes are there for all to see. I was living here in the early nineties, things were grim then, and then The Co-operative started to improve things. The difference is unbelievable.

Paul Farrell, The Co-operative’s Director said, “We warmly welcome such a tremendous endorsement of our work from the people who matter most, our tenants. The hard work of our Committee and staff is being well rewarded. It is genuinely a delight to be a part of such a great success story. Our people deserve great credit. The challenge now is to sustain such results and become more innovative in the manner in which we work, we are confident of further success”.

For more information on West Whitlawburn Housing Coop http://www.wwhc.org.uk

£1m was recently donated by the Heritage Lottery Fund to reopen Maryhill Burgh Halls and attached swimming pool.

This is the outcome of years of campaigning by local people who refused to give up and see their community resources turned into private developments as the Council originally intended.

But the glitzy media launch was marred by protests from parents of the nearby Wyndford and St. Gregory’s Primary schools, which Glasgow City Council plans to close early this Summer.

They asked why their community should finally be getting its Burgh Halls and swimming pool back only to loose both of its primary schools at exactly the same time.

Parents chained themselves outside the Burgh Halls door, forcing political grandees to climb underneath them on the way to the media conference inside.

Parents from those and other schools had earlier chained themselves outside City Chambers in George Square in similar protest for the Council meeting on the school closures.

At that council meeting, all the Labour and the sole independent Councillor voted for the closures – which was a majority of the votes. SNP, Liberal and Green councillors voted against the closures. The Conservative councillor abstained.

Ironically, the late Kenny McLachlan, who did more than anyone else to save the Burgh Halls from destruction and into its present planned future, spent his last campaign before his death fighting to save Shakespeare Primary (unsuccessfully – it eventually closed) as part of his role as then chairperson of Wyndford and District Community Council. Had he been alive today, he would surely have been outraged at the plans to close both of the two remaining schools in the Wyndford area, and would likely have himself joined the parents protest outside his own Burgh Halls

Author: Kenneth Roy, Scottish Review

One hot night in London, I spotted the greatest living Englishman pushing his bike along the west end. In the capital of the United Kingdom, they cope with heat better than they do the occasional fall of snow. The after-theatre traffic was gridlocked, the filth piled high, the odour indescribable: all was normal. But the greatest living Englishman looked disconsolate, as if he would rather be anywhere but this malfunctioning city. Had I been a friend of Alan Bennett I might have addressed the subject directly: ‘Look, you’d be happier in Leeds. You know you would. There’s that wonderful train from Leeds that takes you to your beloved Settle. Then you could just bike it to Giggleswick. Why don’t you go now, while there’s time?’

It would be difficult to think of a figure more representative of provincial England than Alan Bennett. He was once asked for a symbol of enduring national values and replied at once, ‘The town hall’. It was a superb answer, and strangely touching. The town hall, whatever its many defects, is not only the repository of such civic pride and satisfaction as we have left but is a last bulwark against the deadly centralisation of power and money in the overcrowded capital.

If we compare England and Scotland – I know little of Wales or Northern Ireland – the idea of the town hall has been protected rather more jealously in England, where the municipalities have been preserved more or less intact as powerhouses of local government. You cannot visit a provincial town of any size in England without being reminded of Bennett’s town hall, both as an architectural statement, often of Victorian magnificence, and as a place where serious people meet and important decisions are made. Likewise, from many train windows, you are constantly aware of what a marriage of civic enterprise and entrepreneurial ingenuity has achieved within our own lifetimes, transforming post-industrial dereliction into such handsome modern cities as Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds.

Of course it wasn’t just enterprise and ingenuity that made this metamorphosis possible. The backdrop was a long period of unbroken prosperity. Now that it is abruptly over, we can see all too clearly what we did not detect before: that most of the new prosperity was glittering but insubstantial, built on such froth as retail fashion, property and entertainment. To borrow the cant of the age, it was unsustainable. We have discovered in a few painful months that it didn’t amount to much, that it was no substitute for our lost ability to make things of value. Leeds, I hear, is already suffering badly. No doubt the same is true of many other places which looked invulnerable last summer. The town hall will have to work hard to magic-up imaginative solutions to the long malaise ahead. But at least in England there is a town hall, still. There is therefore some hope of local remedies, local strategies, being devised and adopted; an inherent self-resource which may prove to be resilient.

The picture in Scotland is quite different. The notion of municipalities as a potential for good disappeared with successive reforms of local government, each more alienating than the last, so that only the cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee, and the towns of Stirling and Falkirk, give their names to the councils which govern their affairs. I can see the logic of the four first-named; but why have Stirling and Falkirk survived when all others have been sacrificed to larger, amorphous units? There seems no sense in it other than bureaucratic expedience.
Kilmarnock, where I work, is part of a meaningless construct called East Ayrshire – few knowing where East Ayrshire begins or ends; fewer caring. The former capital of Scotland, Dunfermline, no longer appears on any map of local government, having been absorbed into the heterogenous all-purpose authority of Fife, while Greenock finds itself in Inverclyde, Paisley (our largest town) in Renfrewshire (I was so uncertain where they’d put Paisley I had to look it up), Motherwell in North Lanarkshire. Deprived of their status, Scotland’s principal towns have suffered a damaging loss in self-esteem. Where, I ask you, is the civic pride in North Anything? And from this loss in self-esteem other consequences have inevitably flowed: a diminished sense of identity, a loss of incentive and creativity, a detachment from responsibility for our own towns, a growing feeling that they exist only as road signs or shopping centres. Or, if we are lucky, in the names of our football clubs, to which we devote our residual local patriotism in the absence of anything else that matters much.

The recession is not here for a year or so. As we slowly pay off our debt, it will be here in a milder form for maybe 10 or 20 years after it is declared over. We need a new spirit of realism about that, but also about the limits of central government’s power to meet our drastically lowered expectations. The answers no longer lie in the capitals of London and Edinburgh, if they ever did, for London and Edinburgh have been found wanting, spectacularly so. They lie within us as communities. But as we lift our heads from the pig’s trough in which we have been buried for all the years of New Labour, and are startled to discover a barer, bleaker landscape, we observe to our dismay that there isn’t much left that we could decently call a community. ‘You don’t know what you’ve lost till it’s gone…They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’. It may not be too late to rip up the parking lot and start again; we could begin by rediscovering Alan Bennett’s town hall.

Author: Julian Dobson, New Start

Human nature must be different in Rochdale. Nothing else, suggested the writer and activist George Holyoake, could account for the unique success of the town’s co-op.

‘They have acted upon Sir Robert Peel’s memorable advice; they have “taken their own affairs into their own hands”; and what is more to the purpose, they have kept them in their own hands,’ Holyoake wrote.

By the time Holyoake wrote his history of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1858, they were already an international success story. Their modest shop in Toad Lane is considered the birthplace of a movement that now claims more than 800 million adherents worldwide.

To Londoners Rochdale may be little more than an outpost of Greater Manchester, but for social entrepreneurs outside the UK it carries a mystique -a French wine co-op uses the Rochdale label, the name is used by a driver-owned taxi fleet in Mexico, and an electricity co-operative in the US is branded Rochdale.

Worldwide influence was possibly the last thing on the minds of the 28 impoverished weavers who founded the Pioneers in 1844. They had a more pressing concern, which was that they couldn’t afford essentials like flour and butter.

Faced with the prospect of going hungry if they couldn’t obtain foodstuffs at reasonable prices, they banded together and set up their own store.

Pooling together a subscription of two pence a week, they raised £28, enough to open a shop selling a very modest selection of basics -so modest that another local trader boasted that he could turn up with a wheelbarrow and wheel the entire stock away. But within three months they had expanded their range, adding more upmarket goods such as tea and tobacco. The shop developed a reputation for selling unadulterated produce -in stark contrast to some of its competitors -and pioneered the dividend system, where customers received a share of the profits.

In 1846 the store opened a butcher’s counter, and the following year began selling fabric and clothing. A few years later it started its own shoemaking business, with three workers and an apprentice.

In 1849 the local savings bank in Rochdale went bust, and residents turned to the Pioneers, who offered interest on members’ capital- becoming, almost by accident, one of the first co-operative banks. A wholesale co-op was set up in 1852, supplying co-operative stores across Lancashire and Yorkshire; and in 1856 the Toad Lane enterprise opened its first branch in nearby Oldham.

In his Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill put the co-op’s success down to ‘carefulness and honesty’.

But as Holyoake reported, the punters loved it: ‘… crowds of cheerful customers literally crowd Toad Lane at night, swarming like bees to every counter. The industrial districts of England have not such another sight as the Rochdale Co-operative Store on Saturday night.’

Although the starting point was to provide life’s necessities at affordable prices, there was always more to it than that. Rochdale’s wasn’t the first co-op, but it’s generally regarded as the first that worked. The idea of co-operatives had been mooted in the early 19th century by Robert Owen (see New Start, January 2009) and was just one strand of a flood of radical thinking emerging from what was to become the labour movement. Temperance, universal suffrage and socialism were the great causes of the time; all were directed towards improving the lot of the people who were suffering most in the heyday of industrialisation.

The Pioneers had more ambitious plans than simply to sell food and clothes to local people. Their original aims also included building and letting affordable homes, setting up factories staffed by unemployed people, buying and running fanns, and, ultimately, the creation of self- governing ‘colonies’ of working people.

Similar ideals drive today’s co-ops and social enterprises, who can trace their radical roots back to the thinkers and activists of two centuries ago. Ethical investment, fair trade, community self-build and concepts such as social returns on investment all stemmed from the ideas of people like Owen and Holyoake, and the practical experience of the Rochdale Pioneers and their less celebrated contemporaries.

By the 1850s there were more than 1,000 co-ops across the UK. In 1862, thanks in part to Holyoake’s book, the Toad Lane shop had a visitors’ book for its international pilgrims; and by 1867 the Pioneers had outgrown the premises, which were sold. By 1869 the Co-operative Union was a formally constituted national movement. The shop was later bought back by the Union and re-opened as a museum in 1931.

There are now plans to expand the building with a new visitor centre to make the most of the National Co-operative Archive, which includes Robert Owen’s correspondence, and the Heritage Lottery Fund has announced a grant of £136,000 to help work up the £2.3m scheme.

Letter from Wendy-Louise Smith
Community Engagement (Regeneration)
Housing and Regeneration Directorate, Scottish Government

Community Voices Network

In April 2008, Scottish Ministers agreed to fund successor arrangements to the Community Voices Network (CVN), to support learning and networking in regeneration, for community activists and volunteers. We recently went through a procurement exercise to appoint a contractor to deliver a successor Network on our behalf. Unfortunately, we were unable to award the contract on the basis that no bids were of a high enough quality to meet the needs of members. Based on this outcome, we have taken the decision to disband the CVN.

Scottish Ministers remain committed to supporting community activists and volunteers involved in regeneration, at a national level and so we have looked again at how we could meet this commitment, taking a different approach. Whilst the CVN will no longer exist, we will continue to develop opportunities for community activists and volunteers. Over the coming months, we will be exploring a range of ways to build capacity and support learning and networking around regeneration. This will involve looking at how a number of existing resources currently supported by the Scottish Government can play their part. We will also look to strengthen and develop resources through other organisations that are part-funded by the Scottish Government, as well as with other stakeholders.

We would welcome your input to the process, to help develop new and innovative approaches and identify opportunities. Please contact me to discuss any ideas or suggestions that you may have, on how we could work together to support learning, networking and capacity building for community activists and volunteers involved in regeneration.

A Highland community is drawing up a strategy for its economic survival after the closure of its biggest employer with the loss of 11 jobs.

Community councillors at Morvern have set up a steering committee to investigate options available for acquiring land to help secure a sustainable future for its 200 population.

The move comes in the wake of the decision by Tarmac, the UK’s biggest supplier of building and aggregate products, to close the silica mine at Lochaline late last month.

It followed a 30-day consultation period with employees with the company blaming the economic downturn, rising costs and increased foreign competition.

Last week, representatives from Highland Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise met with executives from an England-based company which is believed to be interested in acquiring the historic mine. A council spokesman said the company had agreed to look at figures and to report back at a later stage. “Everyone is being quite cautious and hopeful,” he said.

Meanwhile, go-ahead local councillors have set up a steering group under the auspices of the community council, which in the past has seen it create a new filling station after it was threatened with closure. However, community leaders have ruled-out a local buyout of the silica mine.

Group chairman David Robertson said it would attempt to identify options available to the community under land reform and crofting reform legislation and also the forest land scheme.

“The group will identify an area or areas of land where a community-based buyout could be undertaken with a view to empowering the community, encourage rural diversity, create new crofts and allotments and facilitate access to affordable housing plots for future generations,” said Mr Robertson.

“It is hoped that a diverse and dedicated group of volunteers will begin the hard work of collating information this month with a long-term aim to enable the community to join the growing band of west Highland communities who have a stake in the land on which they live.”

Worried villagers claimed the closure would have a devastating impact on the isolated Morvern community, which is only accessible by a single-track road, and could result in plans for a new much-needed primary school being shelved.

However, Highland councillors have been told that the school will go-ahead – and will incorporate accommodation for local fire and coastguard staff.

A HOUSING co-operative is set to establish the first ‘next generation’ communications community in Britain.

New homes currently being constructed for West Whitlawburn Housing Co-operative in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, are having fibre optic cable installed that will provide next generation broadband access.

The housing provider is also setting up a communications co-operative – Whicomm Cooperative Ltd – owned and managed entirely by the community it serves – that will provide TV, phone and internet services at reduced costs in comparison with major providers.

Whitcomm Co-operative will be launched at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh today (Thursday 13th November 2008) and aims to reduce digital exclusion that compounds social exclusion.

Through Whitcomm, low-income families will be able to access the services that the majority of people take for granted.

James Kelly, MSP for Glasgow Rutherglen, says: “I am delighted to be able to support the Whitlawburn Community Communications Co-operative. The launch of this initiative offering communications packages at reduced prices in comparison to major providers is a tribute to the hard work and dedication of Director Paul Farrell and his staff and Anne Anderson and the committee.

“This is a unique project which seeks to distribute the power of the internet to the local community in Whitlawburn.

“I am sure this ground breaking scheme will be followed by many other communities in Scotland. It illustrates powerfully the benefits of working together to overcome social exclusion.”

The 21st century technology uses fibre optic cables that provide the next generation broadband, allowing access to the internet at speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps).

It provides consumers with the infrastructure for the super-fast net connections creating a range of new applications including on-demand high definition (HD) television, DVD quality film downloads in minutes, online video messaging, CCTV home surveillance and high definition interactive games.

West Whitlawburn Housing Co-operative already has a computer suite and plan to increase community based computer courses so that the most vulnerable people can use the technology to its full potential.

Once the infrastructure is in place, the plan is to develop a ‘Community Portal’ that will be a platform over which the community will be able to access voluntary and statutory services in their homes. In turn, these services will be able to utilise the new technology to respond creatively to the changing needs of the community and the individuals living there.

WWHC plan to use the project as a pilot with a view to promoting the model of community owned technology to other socially and digitally excluded communities around the UK.

Paul Farrell, Director of WWHC, says: “This project has the potential to be the most exciting development in social housing in decades and gives tenants, perhaps currently excluded from first generation broadband, the potential to leapfrog straight to next generation technology.”

The fibre will be used initially to connect 100 new homes currently under construction but plans are being developed to roll the service out to the co-operative’s 650 homes. Michael Appleford can’t wait for his new home to be ready. He has been confined to a wheelchair since breaking his back in a motorcycle accident 20 years ago.

A former World Disable Water Ski Champion, he is very active and drives his own car but he is also part of a worldwide games community.

Michael says: “Frankly, we just can’t keep up in this country because gamesters in Scandinavia and France have much greater speeds.

“Fibre optic connection will be great for me in the games sphere but in the longer term it also offers very positive health benefits.

“For example, certain weather conditions don’t help me so instead of going out to the doctor I could through the next generation technology have a consultation in my own home that does not require the doctor to have to leave the surgery.

“This really is a huge development. There is a lot more to playing games on line than people realise. You become part of a much wider community who look out to see you on line and are concerned when you’re not, a bit like neighbours looking out for each other.”

Web: www.wwhc.org.uk