Edinburgh Sucks! | Council forgets the veterans

City Council

Council forgets the veterans

By The Basa ⋅ June 27, 2006 ⋅

In a blaze of publicity in February, Labour’s president-in-waiting and waiting and waiting Gordon Brown announced that June 27th would forthwith be Veteran’s Day. On June 27th the city’s council that is Labour, Conservative, Lib-Dem and SNP all dutifully decided - screw the veterans!

With at least one contributor to EdSucks who is a veteran who was wounded in action we obviously think this is not a small oversight by the council and there should be hell to pay.

It is not the first time that the council has crossed swords with vererans. The following is a post from ServicePals.com where the council leader got into a spat about the use of words and stopping traffic at the Hearts war memorial.

Councillor Anderson:

Further to your email earlier today and my short reply to you, I hereby lay out my full reply.

To find out that my email to your Business Manger had shown a degree of malice that you have seldom seen confounds me. I am not sure if you actually read past the greeting in the email, however paragraph three of that email explains exactly why I used the German translation. I think the fact that I took the time to explain why I used the German translation proves, beyond any reasonable doubt that there was no malice. In fact not only the tone of the email but also the contents shows clearly and beyond doubt that no malice was either intended nor shown.

Councillor, I don’t know how much business you do in Germany. Now, as a civilian, I have a division of one of my companies in Cologne, Germany with over 30 full-time employees. Earlier today, I had a conference call with my German office where 17 of the members of my staff were brought into the conference room and on the screen in a single PowerPoint slide was the standard reply your business manager sent out to members of the ServiePals.com web site. The slide had a white background and black text in the Verdana font which is exactly how I read my email in Outlook 2003. Also in the office in Cologne and in attendance at this conference this morning was Business Development Manager of AOL.DE which is the German arm of America Online. This was not planned; it just happened that he had a meeting at our offices planned for some time and was curious.

All 17 members of staff were shocked beyond belief and the signature on your Business Manager?s signature. They thought it was insulting and rude. The Business Development Manager of AOL.DE went further to add ?that?s why politicians and civil servants don?t run companies ? they would go out of business in days?.

Even if in your quasi-political mind that may forever be looking for sound-bytes to annihilate anyone who disagrees with your point of view, after I have taken the time to explain why I used a German translation of the title that YOUR business manager was the originator of, can?t you see how that signature is offensive generally to German people and also to ex-servicemen, the majority of whom have probably served in Germany and have a much greater grasp of the German language and German culture that you and your business manager obviously has.

I would also point out to you that I wasn?t even the first to bring the point up. There was in fact yet another poster to the ServicePals.com site who brought the fact up before I did, so you now must see that your business manager’s signature is offensive to some people and not a small amount of people.

I also have a background to make me qualified in this respect. My company was the developer of the FIRST multi-lingual and multi-cultural databased and searchable website on the internet in 1997. We had to take into account cultural differences and how people sourced and purchased in countries that used the 11 languages we developed for. The languages were English (3 versions) Dutch (3 versions), German (2 versions) French (2 versions) Italian, Spanish (2 versions), Portuguese (2 Versions), Chinese Traditional and Simplified, Japanese, Russian and Arabic.

We further went on to develop the only searchable CD-ROM for all users of the above languages and is able to be run on any versions of Windows 9X, no matter what the native language be on the computer. This project was so successful that Microsoft asked to see the source code we developed to ensure that we were not breaking the license of the Windows operating system.

Our work on these two projects led to us advising other major websites and organisations developing multi-lingual and multi-cultural interfaces including Weather.com, CNN, BBC News, IBM, Microsoft, Microsoft Developer Network and very many others. In fact we have advised 4 of the Fortune 10 and 23 of the Fortune 100 companies. We also hold a number of patents in this field.

I think you will find Councillor Anderson, that I, do not put pen to paper without first knowing what I am speaking about.

Can I suggest that your business manager’s signature on his email be amended to the following?

Andy Nichol
Business Manager
to the Leader of The City of Edinburgh Council

I would also take the opportunity at this point to remind you that the occupation of the person who put the German word Führer into such disrepute was a politician. Had he stayed a corporal, the world would not have lost some of my late comrades, I would have met an uncle who was killed in France and your father may have had a very different life.

I hope that explains the actions in my email. I hope it also shows that there was indeed no malice neither intended nor given and that your email to me and the other members of ServicePals.com who were kind enough to post it in the board which accuses me of being malicious has now been shown to be totally incorrect.

I do however have an extremely recent example of maliciousness on your part against the voters of Edinburgh. I hope this shows you as a person, not a politician, what the meaning of the word ?malice? actually is.

The council of which you are the elected leader decided on questionable research to close either Brunstane or Lismore School in Edinburgh. Your council went through farce that was the public consultation. I attended one of the meetings with the council and Brunstane School which was packed with YOUR constituents 100% against the closure of either school - these constituents aged between 4 and 93 years of age. I believe the same was true at Lismore School. However the Council in their infinite wisdom proceeded to totally ignore the communities that would have been torn apart by this decision.

When the time came to vote at the council meeting to close Lismore School and 3 of your own Labour party abstained from voting and the motion failed, giving your party the first defeat in 12 years in the Council. Now, (this is where the malice comes in!) you and your remaining colleagues decided to suspend the three Councillors who voted against you and for the people they were elected to the Council to represent. Sir, this is malice in its purest form. There are a number of definitions of malice in dictionaries on the Internet. The two that I have chosen here seem to fit:

Feeling a need to see others suffer
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
Princeton University

A spiteful state of mind
www.lombardiperry.com/glossary.htm
Lombardi and Perry Glossary of Legal Terminology - Civil Law

I believe that takes care of the first paragraph of your email which I can confirm at this stage will be the longest paragraph to answer.

In the second paragraph you mentioned your response to the issue raised with you. I am presuming, although it is not mentioned in your email that it is case of Haymarket and not Contalmaison.

On the further point, I am extremely happy that the Council today decided to send representation to France. May I be so humble as to suggest you search the elected members of the council or indeed civil servants and send a former serviceman (preferably a Hearts supporter) to represent the City? I do not think Edinburgh’s two highest profile Hearts supporters, Councillor Cairns and Former Lord Provost Councillor Milligan would be a good idea. After the highly publicized trip to Glasgow to see Hearts play, using an official police car and driver which included them joining the high and mighty for drinks after the game, then being driven back to Edinburgh, spending an hour in a pub in Edinburgh and then being driven home and finally dismissing the car and driver. I don’t think the Council Tax (formerly Poll Tax) payers in Edinburgh would stand for that one. It would also be more fiscally responsible to send one ex-service Hearts supporter on behalf of the City of Edinburgh as the Village of Contalmaison only has a population of 98.

In your third paragraph you mention your father seeing active service in Italy. He should be commended for it as should the millions of others who have served their country in the Armed Forces. I indeed have seen active service myself in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Belize, Various middle-eastern countries and others. Among the honours I have been presented, I count a Military British Empire Medal. It is interesting that you call me puerile because of one email however for a huge amount of years I was not characteristic of a child whilst serving my country and putting my life in danger on numerous occasions to help make it possible for people like you to sleep in your bed safely at night. Further, I was injured twice on active service. Once in Cyprus when as a member of UNFICYP in 1974 when I was shot in the leg when moving British service families onto VC10?s to fly them back to the United Kingdom immediately following the Turkish invasion of that country. I was also a member of the team who escorted Archbishop Makarios III from his home to the aircraft at Nicosia to have him flown to safety in the UK. I, sir, do not think that these are the actions of a puerile person.

I have a B.A. (Hons.) from University College at Oxford, I am a biographee in Who?s Who in Media in the United States, Who?s Who in Business and Finance in the United States, Who?s Who in America and Who?s Who in the World. These have all been over the past few years and are current. In fact in 2001 when I attained biographee status in Who?s Who in America, I was the person who had been in the United States the shortest time and was covered by various media throughout the United States and the world. I served for 7 years during the Clinton Administration on the First Lady?s Committee for New Technology. I speak, read and write five languages fluently. I am not a puerile person.

With regard to being offensive, that of course is subjective. I feel that my mother’s local Councillor in Edinburgh was offensive when she voted against the people who trusted her and voted her to represent THEM in the Council but she decided to vote for the closing of Lismore School against the wishes of her constituents. I also think it was offensive of the Leader of your party to take the country to war on what most of the country think and it has now been proven was a lie. It is offensive to allow serving and ex-servicemen to watch their comrades going to war without the correct equipment. That, sir, is offensive. Because I do not agree with all you do or say is not offensive.

You mentioned my hatred of the Labour Party. Your intelligence (like that of the Prime Minister in his decision to go to war in Iraq) is obviously wrong. Indeed all the times I have voted in the U.K., I have voted Labour. I was even asked by a former Leader of the Council to stand as the Labour candidate for the Milton Ward. I have canvassed for the Labour Party in the Milton Ward and in Niddrie, in Bingham and Craigmillar. You really need to check your sources. While you are checking those sources, you may also consider the sources you used to try to close Lismore School. I have uncovered sources which are more up-to-date, are more relevant and totally destroy the statistics used in the public meetings by the Council. Should the closure of these schools again come to the agenda, I will be more than happy to disclose them to yourself and your party together with the public and other parties. If I have some hatred in my emails or postings, it is not for a political party (oh well, maybe the Republican Party! - but you should see it over here, it’s a bloomin’ nightmare!) but for actions taken by people in power against the wishes of the people who elected them to that power and they do it with massaged and subjective facts to meet their point of view.

Finally for this paragraph, about me being a Hearts supporter. I’m not. When I was a kid, I used to support Celtic. I have a brother who supports Hearts and most of the rest of the family support Celtic. For myself, I really hate spectator sports. My sports are parachuting, mountaineering and flying helicopters. I have also been known to have partaken in Egyptian PT- if you had served yourself you would know what that means. The reason I posted the comment initially on ServicePals.com is a friend referred me to the posting on craignet.org.uk and I thought that ServicePals.com would be a good place to post something of that matter. I was proved right. You will notice from the emails you have received that the contents I suggested for those emails was non-confrontational and polite as indeed I hope you find this message.

Your final paragraph was short and I shall keep mine short to compliment it. My comments were not offensive; however, because of your sheltered upbringing you may have thought that the translation was offensive. I hope that my explanation at length has cleared up any misapprehension from which you may be suffering.

I will also be posting this reply in ServicePals.com to answer your postings there and to keep the community abreast of the situation.

Your comments are welcome and awaited.
—–Original Message—–
From: Donald Anderson [mailto:donald.anderson@edinburgh.gov.uk]
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 10:56 AM
To: XXXXXXXX
Cc: Donald Anderson
Subject: Re: Democracy Lives

Dear Xxx
I read with shock and horror your e-mail to my Business Manager. For you to translate ‘Business Manager to the Leader’ into German, and then to try to falsely imply that anyone in the Council would answer anything in this way shows a degree of malice that I have seldom seen.
For the record, I have responded to the issue raised with me. To my knowledge neither myself, nor the Council, has had this issue raised before.
Also, for your information, I have just come from a Council meeting where we agreed unanimously to send representation to the unveiling of a memorial cairn by the Hearts Great War Memorial Committee at Contalmaison, France. Previously we unanimously agreed a contribution of £5,000 to the memorial.
I would also say that at a personal level, as someone whose father saw active service in Italy in the Second World War, I find your behaviour both offensive and puerile. My father was also a life long Hearts supporter who, were he alive today, would be thoroughly ashamed of any other supporter behaving in such a manner over such serious issues. Your hatred of the Labour Party, and the Council, comes through very clearly in your correspondence and you are perfectly free to express your view.
Due to the offensive nature of your comments I have asked my staff not to respond to your correspondence if it contains similarly offensive material.

DONALD ANDERSON

Leader - City of Edinburgh Council

—– Original Message —–
From: “xxxxxxxx” < xxx@xxx.com>
To: “‘Donald Anderson’” < donald.anderson@edinburgh.gov.uk>
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 1:31 AM
Subject: RE: Democracy Lives
Geschäftsführer zum Führer(Business Manager to the Leader):

Thank you very much for your timely reply. Perhaps you should be made aware that there are two postings in the following forum
http://www.servicepals.com/forums/s…&threadid=26957 where replies you have sent to two of the members of this worthwhile community both said that, and I quote “This is the first occasion that this matter has been raised with him.”.

Sir, unless New Labour have either extremely short memories, I would say that your office is lying to ex-servicemen and would appreciate your comments.

Not knowing your age or historical qualifications, I think it may be pertinent here to give you some information on living ex-servicemen. They either grew up watching “The Leader” come to power in Nazi Germany, fought “The Leader’s” troops in the Second World War or served in Germany where nobody (German or otherwise) calls themselves “The Leader” because of how it sounds to the outside world after what happened to and in Germany and Europe leading up to, during and after the second world war.

For you to answer ex-servicemen as ‘Geschäftsführer zum Führer’ and for Councillor Anderson to allow you to answer his emails in this format is not far from abusive. Again, I would appreciate your comments. I would also appreciate your entering the abovementioned forum and apologizing to those ex-servicement.

Looking forward to your reply and posting.

—–Original Message—–
From: Donald Anderson [mailto:donald.anderson@edinburgh.gov.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 8:11 AM
To: xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Donald Anderson
Subject: Re: Democracy Lives

xxxx
Councillor Anderson was grateful for, and has noted, your e-mail of earlier today.

Regards

Andy Nichol
Business Manager to the Leader

In the article in the Evening News Conservative councillor Alastair Paisley a veteran himself, said June 27 should be recognised by Edinburgh in the future. Well councillor Paisley - the future is the future. You have let down your comrades today.

More Info: ServicePals.com post - Help Needed to Stop traffic at war memorial
Veterans’ anger over war heroes ceremony snub