This is the basics for what is going to become a published tome. Chapter 1 is below and a further chapter will be released each week detailing the scandal that is the City of Edinburgh Council’s Property Conservation Scandal. If you want to download this chapter together with introductory notes and more information then you can do that here – http://www.edinburghsucks.com/downloads/Chapter1.pdf. If you agree that the sacking of this man is wrong, you can also sign the petition to the right.
Diary of a Whistleblower - The Property Conservation Scandal Chapter 1
Friday 15th October 2010: 10 am
I was at home. I was off sick I had reported in sick that morning. They phoned me up on my personal mobile. Not the council one, my personal one.
They actually chose not to use the council mobile. They suspended me over the phone.
I was the first one. There were 18 more people suspended. They were suspended over a period of time from end of March 2011 onwards.
[Willie Brown started at the council 24 years ago. Just following what happened since that day all paints a picture. Because, of course, people reading this know roughly what's happened.
They know that Willie has been sacked. They know that it's been unfair. They know that there's a scandal and houses all over the city are affected and may be at risk.
But nobody knows it in any kind of logical way and that's why we have this as a diary.
A picture from the beginning. We reveal the information at the same time as Willie learned it because he did things.. And things happened to him.. And we all heard things from other people and it all happened in a logical progression. And this is why it's such a fascinating story.
Here and there Willie has added his reflections from the present time. They are marked as [ ]. In other places, the ghost writer has supplemented the diary with “Editor’s notes”. Some names have been changed. Willie is not the whistleblower’s real name.
The diary begins from Willie’s first day at the Council- showing the kind of the environment he worked in- because obviously the kind of environment he was working in was part of the problem…..]
[In Willie’s previous job, before he started at the Council, he was a stone mason. He came from a building company - a general building company. He was a stonemason there: responsible for instructing and teaching apprentices and assisting stock order and stock control and so on.
He had done an apprenticeship with Historic Scotland... and had studied at Telford College from 1981 to 1985. On leaving college, he worked in the building industry for a few years.]
CHAPTER ONE
First Day
Monday 13th March 1989
My first day working at the council. I am 25.
I have a new job as maintenance clerk of works on the council-owned properties. [It was part of the Property Services Division.]
The area that I am covering is in Physical Recreation – parklands and that – physical landscaping – so I am covering the West side of the city. And my colleague John Gordon is covering the East side. It is split in 2.
There is a Team Leader there – a chap called Mac Sturton [now deceased]
My first Council job. My first team. I am in Mac’s team. He is the buildings officer. He has a manager- a senior buildings officer who is in charge of him. Each senior has 2 buildings officers. Andrew Peacock is the senior.
This is the hierarchy. Above Andrew is the manager- Jerry Cairns.
The clerks of work comes at the bottom of this tree- under the buildings officers- we are under their instruction. The manager is top, then the senior buildings officer, then the building officer, then the clerks of work.
Things get Ropey
October 1989
Everything has been tickety boo and fine until now. Things are starting to get a bit ropey. Mac is being insistent that we use a specific contractor for everything.
I’d heard stories or rumours from former colleagues who were “on the tools”. (ie had gone back to being tradesmen). With the building companies we were working with.
There are things going on, in other words, how this certain contractor is getting all the work. It was the same thing then.
Even though the Council has a framework agreement. Under the framework, the Council has specific areas and each contractor has its own area. Like, we have 4 plumbers on the list, we have 4 joiners, roofers, glaziers. We have 2 glaziers. They are in 2 teams.
The city is divided into 4 zones and we have a contractor for each zone. I have 2 because I have 2 areas. John Gordon has 2 and so on.
Then you have a minor works contractor which is for multi-trades, all trades.
And this particular contractor Mac wants us to use is a multi-trades contractor.
This is the one who is getting all the work – this multi-trades contractor. Mac is pushing everyone towards this contractor.
[They're no longer around. JS Hamilton from East Lothian. They had done an awful lot of stuff for the Housing Dept.]
I’ve been told that there is some sort of relationship with Mac Sturton. Along with Jerry Cairns as well, who is his manager.
He is involved in it heavily. Andrew Peacock is not involved in it.
Andrew’s backside is like a hot cross bun with sitting on the fence.
He is always saying (when referring to Mac Sturton and Jerry Cairns)
“Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves” – that’s his attitude.
Two of my colleagues have been getting bullied and now I am starting to get it as well.
There is James Malachy – [who's still at the Council in Building Control], in my team – and a guy called Jim Docherty, in Jack Cooper’s team.
And now Mac has started on me, so the 3 of us are getting it.
And so Jerry Cairns, the Manager, is backing Mac Sturton, the Buildings Officer, who I report to directly.
The bullying is just humiliation, shouting at, undermining, speaking down to you- just that sort of thing. Just treating us like dogsbodies. [ They weren’t calling names at this point.]
Singling each of us out for extra scrutiny on what we are doing.. rather than our other team members.
Part of me thinks it’s jealousy because there are always allegations being made about the vehicle that I drive. I actually have 2 vehicles- they aren’t council cars. From my time on the building I have a van- I use that quite a lot, but I also have a top of the range Vauxhall Senator. An old one. It is an ex-company director’s one that I bought from the lease company. But it looks like a hundred miles an hour standing in the car park. It is very flash. It is white. Alloy wheels
All this sort of gubbins electric.. all you can think of on it.
Mac drives a little Nissan of some description. Jerry has a little camper van. There are always making references made to my car, being that big – “I’ll have to be checking your mileage”, etc
I originally thought it was in a jokey way.. but now I find I am getting pulled up. “It’s no x number of miles to there.” Stuff like that.
[In those days you used your own car for council work. And we claimed. That's the way it was in that department. [the rate was around 45 p per mile] The mileage rate went up and up. As fuel prices increased it went up. At one time for some of them it was actually quite profitable.]
Well – the daft thing – or the ironic thing – it sounds stupid – but I am too honest. If it was 7.5 miles from A to B, I put 7.5 miles. I wouldnae round it up to 8.
I wouldnae put a couple of extra miles in here or a couple of miles in there.
Even so, I find the guy is checking. So for that reason I make extra sure that I always look at the direct routes. I always group my properties so I am not driving all round the city. I think “Oh I’m going to Currie today, so I’ll do Currie, Balerno.. I’ll do everything out there today.”
My standard level agreement is to do the various properties.
And there is also the thing about the contractor – JS Hamilton – because I am asking questions. Basically, when he says “give it to Hamilton’s”, I am saying “it’s no’ their area.”
I say “it’s not their area, it’s so and so- X and Y”- and he comes out with something else and… I am arguing with him about contracts. I am sticking up. I am trying to stick to the rules.
[looking back now, I see I was raw, green, wet behind the ears. Call it what you want.]
[Editor’s note: If Willie didn't tell his manager that he was wrong to be giving all the work to one company, technically Willie would be at fault because staff are meant to give their manager their professional judgement....]
[It's one of these things: the same thing followed on into Property Conservation many years later. There's so many parallels between then and now that I look at things and I see, the big scandal about Property Conservation, was the use of non-framework contractors.. ie contractors that hadn't been through Procurement .. but the good thing for the management is that it is not their name on the order. It is not their name signing off the invoice.
It's the member of staff that signs off the invoice. It’s the member of staff that submits the order.
It comes from their staff computer.]
I, as Clerk of Works, have to do every purchase order. I have to do all the paper work. So it’s quite clever for the managers.
They give me an instruction but it is never written down.
It’s not their name that’s against the job, so if there is an audit or an investigation, it’s the staff member’s name that shows up.
[It was the same in Property Conservation. the purchase orders were assigned to Officer A, Officer B or whatever... And that's the same parallels as what then happened in Property Conservation.]
Wednesday Nov 29th 1989
Afternoon. I am going to be off on the 30th with this new lady friend of mine. (We were going to meet up and have a day out)
So today I was sort of de-mob happy. There I am, sitting in the office and Jerry Cairns says “Can I see you a minute, Willie?”
And I said yep and Ed Montador – my Union official- says “I’ll come with you”.
[Sadly Ed’s dead now, but a great man.]
So we went through.
Jerry’s opening gambit was “I don’t like you. If it was up to me I would never have employed you. You’re no good at your job.” And Ed goes “Hold on a minute, Jerry- what proof or evidence have you got of this? What is this all about?”.
Jerry then says Jock Hamilton of JS Hamilton had made a complaint about me. Hamilton has claimed to Jerry that I had used the phrase “worst contractor on the books” to describe them – and all that sort of stuff. Whereas what I’d actually said was “they’re difficult, they’re awkward to deal with”.
And then it transpires that this report comes from when I had been talking to a couple of housing guys – Jacky Parker and Dan Martin [ Dan’s a good bit older than me.]. We had been having a discussion at break time at college. We are all doing an Ordinary National Certificate in Building- on day release from our Council jobs, every Tuesday.
Anyway, at afternoon break one Tuesday we had just been talking.. .. about JS Hamilton and I said..
“I’ve got hellish problems with Hamiltons. You know, getting them to return to site if there’s any snagging.” It was just a general discussion. I explained to the other two that Hamiltons were nae the be-all and end-all. They were problematic.
Anyway, it seems that got reported back to Jock Hamilton. From Dan and Jacky. [They were all at the Hamilton’s Christmas party together a week later, at the beginning of December.]
As far as I can tell, they had basically given the contractor information about something I’d said. I don’t know why they did it.
[ I wasn't at the party a week later. Hamiltons had a party and invited council staff. It was normal. But I wasn’t invited.]
Anyway, Hamiltons have now been to Jerry Cairns and demanded that I be sacked. It looked today like Jerry was about to do just that.
I ask myself. How can a contractor tell a senior council manager what to do?
Well, the answer is allegedly £100 a week, every week, 52 weeks of the year.
How did I hear this? Masonry colleagues tell me this- because they also joked that “because I was with the council, I’d be alright now”.
So I reckon this guy’s getting over £5k a year. And that’s to keep this contractor in work. And that’s one of the reasons management see a job and say “go give it to Hamiltons, give it to Hamiltons”.
[Later, I thought where is he now? Shuffling up and down Elm Row I believe. He’s not dead, but Mac Sturton is.
Jerry Cairns retired with a package. He got released in the early 90s. There's no hard evidence or proof of bribery. It was rumour, it was innuendo.
Maybe I could have asked Jacky Parker or Dan Martin to give evidence on the matter. But Dan wouldn't want to speak. He's got far too much baggage.
Anyone reading this will be thinking.. since he is still a Council worker- maybe he can be compelled to? The fact is that Dan used to have his own development company at the same time as working for the Council. That wasn’t getting contracts- that was doing development - buying property and selling property doing places up.
But I think he was corrupt. One time he asked a contractor to supply him with 5 bathroom suites and “none of your council shite”. He was working privately with contractors that were also working for the Council. Both of them, I think, were involved in the Saughton regeneration modernisation in 1988 through to 1990. Refurbishing all the council houses there. Dan was based in the Stenhouse office.]
Anyway, about what happened today. Ed basically tore a strip off Jerry Cairns for coming out with all that rubbish.
At the end of the meeting, Jerry said “We’ll continue this. But we’ll stop it for now”. After Ed had interjected.
Because of course Eddie and I knew that Jerry had no basis to claim that I did poor quality work. What did he know about my work? Nothing.
Mac Sturton would tell him how I was doing. I wasn’t failing. I wasn’t behind with anything I was up to speed with everything.
After the meeting, Eddie said to me “Just go off and enjoy your day.. dinnae worry about that stuff from Jerry”
Thursday Nov 30th 1989
Today I went away on the Thursday for my day out with my new girl. I had the day off.
Friday Dec 1st 1989
I came back to work today and heard all about it.
Looks like yesterday that all the staff (bar one staff member) collectively defended me.. You know like, the clerks of works .. all got together.
All the staff had got together apart from one member of staff who was Mac’s lap dog basically.
His gopher. Anyway, they’d all got together and decided they were gonnae make a complaint to the Depute Director, Geoffrey Bailey. About Jerry and about Mac and about their attitude toward staff, the bullying.
Obviously the others were defending both me and Jim Docherty and James Malachy. They were getting it in the neck as well.
[Surprised at such team loyalty? That was how it used to be at the Council- in the 80s. Teams would support one another. That happened even in Property Conservation, before Brian Sibbald got involved.
It was NALGO in those days. Ed was working with them. Ed was in our team- he was a paint inspector and our union official.]
Cut Adrift
Wednesday 4th December 1989
I’ve been taken off Parks & Recreation. On the authority of Jerry Cairns and Mac Sturton.
I had been taken off the Parks on Monday, just after the bosses received the complaint.
Initially nobody told me I was taken off. So for a couple of days I have been going in doing my job.
Where it has all come to a head is that I went out to Gyle Park today because I had a burst water main there that was getting repaired.
I went there and I was talking to the guys and they said we’ve already been told what to do here
.. and I says what? .. and they says a guy from the Borders has been here. I said .. called Jack Troon? Aye that’s his name, they said.
I got told that afternoon. I went in and I spoke to John Gordon (my mentor) and he spoke to Ed Montador and he said Jerry says I’ve been taken off that.
I don’t have a portfolio or a job. Nothing has been transferred to me.
I think they are trying to bore me out of the job. The guy that has taken over the parks, Jack Troon, has continued on conveniences and depots and cleansing as well.
He has continued with both.
He is doing both.
He’s doing 2 jobs and I’m doing no jobs.
Jack Troon wanted my area- he got it. Why? Mileage. He comes up from Galashiels every day and it is costing him a fortune in petrol. This extra mileage is helping him and he is Jerry’s lapdog.
He was the one person that didn’t want to sign the complaint. He was rewarded. Folk can dress this up any way they want but that’s how it appears isn’t it?
Mid-December 1989
Everyone had all sat down and there were some very, very clever and intellligent people there. So the team- they put in a formal complaint – about how Jim, James and I were being treated. It was done in the period leading up to Christmas.
[Nowadays they're far too compliant to management. There had been a strike in 1989 – a progressive strike- one day, then 2 days, Nalgo-wide. It was about terms, conditions and salaries.....
We won. We got all sort of good terms and conditions.
The unions had people who were willing...they weren't lapdogs and patsies like we've got now.]
Also, Jerry Cairns and Mac Sturton announced that I’d be looking after the slaughter house and burial ground and that. I was a vegetarian and believed in animal rights.
The slaughterhouse at Gorgie.. I was in as the maintenance clerk of works. The slaughterhouse was one of many Council properties, the crematorium; the mortuary – all came under the one banner.
At that time I was into animal rights, anti-vivisection. Because of my girlfriend… I was actually part of the vegetarian society.
I don’t know if that’s why Mac has put me in the slaughter house. It would have been quite easy for him to see my politics, because there were vegetarian society stickers on my van and everything like that.
But…if he wanted to make me uncomfortable about coming to work, I can see why he put me there… They took somebody off the slaughterhouse to get me on.
I can see no other reason why they’ve put me here, if not to make me suffer. [ I suppose if they'd been confronted at the time they might have come up with plausible reasons.]
Early January 1990
Jobs are reorganised. Jack Troon doing two jobs was a temporary thing because a couple of the staff members were leaving. John Scott is to set up his own company, Jim Doherty is going to John Menzies Ltd and James Malachy is going down to building control.
So we are getting some new staff members in and they have just started, after the Xmas holidays. The properties were divided up again. A chap called Jim Blues has been handed the conveniences and depots. Jack Troon has retained parks and recreation.
Late January 1990
An investigation has been carried out about our complaint. Obviously, I don’t know what the outcome because it was a private and confidential matter. But Jerry and Mac keep their jobs. But they get written warnings and black marks against them and such like.
[ This leads to the assault a couple of years later in '93, by the way.]
Looking back, on that Wednesday, with Jerry in his office- if he could have done it there and then he would have sacked me on the spot. But he couldn’t sack me like that.. so he wanted to threaten me. He thought he’d bully me…
But all it done was galvanise the rest of the guys into action.
Mac Sturton got a warning. I think Jerry Cairns must’ve as well.
Mac was witnessed misbehaving. His bullying and his treatment of staff in front of everyone was part of the humiliation. That’s what bullies do.
He’s treating certain people badly. Some think that perhaps it is religiously-orientated- because Mac is in the Masons as is Jerry.
Mac is a Kirk elder. I am not religious, but Malachy and Doherty are of a different religious persuasion to Mac. It’s partly thought that it is something to do with the Masons.
Now, Dan Martin – would he be in the Masons? I would think so.
I would imagine people like Jock Hamilton and others are in their various lodges, too.
Jacky Parker and Dan Martin had been at Hamilton’s christmas party. You think… “wait a minute”.
Early Feb 1990
I have been on the Gorgie slaughterhouse and the others places of death for a month and a half.
What is happening is that I am now visiting the slaughterhouse on a Friday afternoon. Jerry Cairns and Mac Sturton aren’t happy with that. Why? No killing takes place on a Friday afternoon.
Killing stops on a Friday morning and then they get the place all cleaned up for the weekend maintenance programme.
And every Friday, after work, I go through to Glasgow to see my girlfriend.
So what I do is meet the contractor who has the contract for doing the maintenance in the slaughterhouse company- that’s D Moffat and Sons. I meet their rep there on the Friday with the slaughterhouse maintenance manager Alan Brand and we go through everything.
They make a list of things and I say you’ll get your order on Monday; then they get it all done over the weekend.
I can see all the damage and all the repairs that needs doing once the blood has gone. Alan Brand, the maintenance manager, said “You’re the first man to do it this way and it’s the most sensible way I’ve ever seen.”
Alan could see it was a sensible approach.
I mean, how can anybody see floors that need repaired if they’re awash with animal blood? It’s impossible.
Alan Brand might be turning round saying “There’s a big crack or hole in the floor there.” If you’re there for half past one, they’ve cleaned up the blood.
[The slaughterhouse was demolished in the 90s, for Chesser Asda]
I have been taken off the slaughterhouse. The guy that they took off it to put me on it has got put back on again.
They have a new task for me. I must survey all the council properties. Libraries, the stuff that we look after. Monuments, memorials. All the properties we look after in the Department.
It is basically a job creation for myself and my colleague, an external clerk of works, Les Rutherford – he’s been on the Bingham housing regeneration work.
They were just marking time for both Les and I. When Bingham finished there was no other capital projects from him to go on.
I survey toilets, depots, park pavilions, monuments and things that they didn’t have a clue where they were.
We were doing that. There’s things out in the Currie and Balerno area, I had local knowledge to benefit because I knew some of the old parks guys supervisors
So I knew it was a non-job really. All this stuff that we were collating wasnae gonnae be used.
Summer of 90
Les and I are getting through the stuff. Now, rather than driving to the sites, I go on the bus with a picnic and then work my way back into town taking photographs, notes and so on.
I am making the best out of a bad job. It is a non-job.
1991- The City of Edinburgh Council Confirmation Act
[This is the legislation that sets in place the powers of statutory notices in regard to tenements. It forms the basis in law upon which statutory notices could be served on Edinburgh tenements.
The City of Edinburgh District Council Order Confirmation Act 1991 said in
26. If any works required to be executed by any owner in pursuance of a notice under this Part of this Order are not executed within the period specified therein, the Council may serve notice upon such owner requiring him to show cause to the Council why such works should not be executed by the Council, and if such owner fails to show cause as aforesaid such works may be executed by the Council and the expense reasonably incurred in so doing shall be recoverable by the Council from such owner.
27 - (1) Where any building comprises a tenement the owner of every part of such building which is separately owned shall, for the purposes of this Part of the Order, be deemed to be the owner of such building and notices shall, so far as is reasonably practicable, be served upon the owner of every such part accordingly.
(2) Every owner of every such part of such building shall be liable in equal shares to the Council for any expense incurred by the Council in executing any works in pursuance of this Part of this Order but nothing in this section shall affect any right competent to any owner of any part of such building, under the conditions of his title or otherwise, to recover from the owner of any other part the amount, or any part thereof, paid by, or recovered from, him.]
Dealing with death: The Mortonhall years begin- A happy time
Early 1991
There has been another reshuffle and the chap that was doing what they were trying to get me to do
has got promoted and so I have got moved back into his job.
There is no slaughterhouse any more for me to look after, there is just the Cowgate mortuary, the skin clinic, Mortonhall, Johnston Terrace Environmental Services, the Labs down at Crammond and next to the wire mill down at Granton on a wee industrial estate- for food hygiene stuff. All the burial grounds that the council owns. So I am doing that. And I have all the monuments and memorials as well.
I am making an instant difference because things are getting done.
It is back to having a proper job. I am enjoying it, management can still be a bit funny and such like, though.
Thankfully, Mac Sturton has nothing to do with my side. Everything is split into two sides. Mac was buildings officer on physical recreation. Cultural recreation was our side. Ivor Menzies was the senior building officer on libraries, burial grounds and that sort of stuff. [He’s taken over from Jack Cooper]
Ian Menzies is my new line manager.
Jerry Cairns has gone. He’s taken a package and left. He was getting near retirement age and it was a case that the job was passing him by. He wasnae competent to do it anymore.
Certainly, Mac Sturton it was alleged, had been taking back handers. But Jerry wasn’t cutting the mustard. There were suspicions about Jerry as well to be honest. The fact that he was defending Mac.
And as for when I was pulled in that day.. Jerry’s behaviour doesnae bode well for that, does it?
And his behaviour was nae conducive to anything other than suspicion.
Mac was still about; Jerry was gone.
I mean, there are one or two little issues with Ivor Menzies. He is a classic example of poacher turned gamekeeper. He is suspicious about everybody. I think he is one of the biggest skivers going. The big difference in Environmental Services is that jobs are actually getting done now that I have taken over this role.
A Bit of Truth About Mortonhall
I never report to Environmental Services management, I report to Elaine Tutty, the admin assistant.
Anyone that has issues, like sticking windows, choked toilets or whatever – all report it to Elaine.
I go in to get the book off Elaine and look through the book and sign the book and take a note of the jobs that are needing done. Management aren’t really involved.
I am clerk of works at Mortonhall, of course too. Ann Granham is a senior admin assistant. [It was later she became the superintendent]. George McQuinny is superintendent.
[ About the babies’ ashes getting disposed of without the parents knowing. Let's look at the facts. It's been going on since 1967. Ann Granham and George Bell were still at school in 1967. So it's not their policy. So they've been enforcing a policy. That policy has been in place since time began as far as Morton Hall's concerned. I get a bit cold when people talk about compensation and that. Handing someone £3,000 or something is not going to make one whit of difference to what's happened. If the council have to pay out compensation they should give lump sums, say £50,000 to SANDS in memoriam to those children.]
The bottom line on this is that the Council actually do a tremendous job on the stillborn stuff. They’ve got this dedicated area for those babies. It is quite leading for the time. The stillborn section at the top end of Mortonhall started in the late 80s, I think. A dedicated burial section to stillborns. They’re in the cemetery. These are not cremations- these are burials.
Each little baby gets its own individual little plot that’s marked with a little steel plaque. It’s at the top end of the cemetery…at the garden centre end.
Thinking about cremations, it just seems to be standard policy to dispose of the ashes without telling the parents. The staff have always been saying to them there would be very little or no ash.
Ashes will not just be the remains, so you’ll get coffin ashes too, from the chipboard.
You know what takes the longest to burn in a cremation? The pillow is probably the last remaining bit of the cremation.
Certainly when I was looking after it I could open up the peephole and look in and I would see the last bit. The head went towards the control room end.
There was 3 cremators in there at that time. There doesn’t seem to be a different policy between stillborn and neonatal death [this is the death of a baby within the first four weeks of life]. They all get cremated in the same way.
The babies’ ashes are put into these little white boxes. They go into these kind of corrugated plasticised cardboard boxes. The ashes for the adults are put into corrugated cardboard brown ones.
The boxes for the adults’ ashes are about 8″x4″x4″. Maybe so many white containers would fit in one brown one. The babies’ boxes are 4″x2″x3″ or something. Half or third of the size of an adult.
[The ones that were used from the mid-90s for babies I nicknamed cookie jars, cos that’s what the caskets looked like. I called them cookie jars because they are plastic drums.
The adult ones had changed from these brown boxes to these drums. Some were sort of octagonal-shaped. Some were rounded corners, square with rounded corners and a screw-on lid. And they were copper-coloured and plastic.]
The boxes are buried. There are holes dug. All the white boxes go up to the Cross to be interred.
When you get a cremation, it’s noted on a sheet… you have a box for all the ledgers for all the cremations. The sheet would state what was to happen to the ashes. Dispersal – that was the ones to be buried up at the Cross. It was on a Friday afternoon, usually. It was a solemn affair, when the boxes were interred in the ground for burial. It was maybe once a month or every month or two; there would be a few together.
[Disposing of ashes by dispersal (burying) has been happening since the place was opened in 1967, so to point the finger at certain individuals, George Bell or Ann Granham is unfair. I am defending them cos I think it's unfair. The people who are answerable are the people who made the policy.
Not the person asked to enforce it. There's many sort of connections and that 'I was only following orders' but we're talking about a completely different kettle of fish.
It may have been for administrative convenience. The funeral directors have a role in this as well.
MortonHall is not the only crematorium in Edinburgh. You've got 2 other crematoria.
If you worked for a funeral director and you were having a stillborn at say Warriston and you got remains back you got ashes -and you go up to Mortonhall, a week later and they say there's no ashes.
Would these folk not note, wait a minute I got ashes at Warriston I got ashes at Seafield or I got ashes at Falkirk or West Lothian. It does seem that Morton hall was the only one.]
If you’ve arranged a cremation then the funeral directors, or undertaker, will ask you what you’re wanting done with the ashes. That’s when it goes on the cremation sheet. Dispersal or retained. Retained means retained by the funeral directors.
They go into 2 separate stacks. Dispersal – they are the ones buried up at the cross. Were crematorium staff being asked to lie to parents to say there were no ashes? I think they possibly could’ve been .. I think the party line would have been there are no ashes to return.
The parents would have very little contact with the crem staff, usually. They would have contact with the crem staff in the sense of they’re opening the doors. They’re making sure the little coffins are placed at the catafalque and all these things.
Some do talk to parents. But there would be no – “here, you, Where’s the ashes?”. It would be through the undertaker or funeral director. Communications would be through the undertaker, mostly. I remember speaking to a couple of the crem attendants one day, just a chat downstairs. They were in pairs, they took it alternate weeks. One week the 2 were upstairs on the chapels, the following week they’d be downstairs and they’d swap it around.
There were 4 attendants.. That would be the case. Certainly, I remember speaking to a couple of attendants and them saying there’s little or nothing in the way of ashes.
But there are ashes, there are remains. The process in a cremation is that the coffin gets charged into the cremators. Obviously with a baby it’s going to be a small coffin- maybe about a foot or 18 inches long. That gets charged into the cremator.
At the end of the process you’ve got the raking out of the ashes.
Some parents have wondered- do they do one coffin at a time, they don’t put more than one in?
That I don’t know. Certainly with adults there’s one at a time. I’d think with ethics and the cremations act, you’d do them individually.. You’d have to.
You open the door and you’ve got to rake it through to the hole at the end and it falls through into the steel box. That’s when the ashes are taken through to cool and then they’re taken to the cremulator.
It looks like a big washing machine filled with steel balls. The staff check for hip joints etc, which would go into a special bin. Pacemakers must be removed before cremation, of course. They make a bang.
Everything goes into the cremulator although they’d be very fine small ash anyway.
Because in a cremation process, things like femurs and hips are still there. The cremulator grinds it up into ash.
With a baby it would be fine powder. They might just be cooled, sorted through for staples.
At these temperatures some of the staples that are holding the coffin together will be burned, melted: you’re talking about 1,000 degrees.
There were always ashes from every single cremation. At the end of the day the only people that can answer the questions about why they weren’t given to parents are the ones that set the policy.
Funeral directors…are having to lie on the council’s behalf. I think it’s if they’re enforcing policy, yeah it’s lying.
It’s council policy that’s making funeral directors lie. And staff.
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You can download this chapter together with introductory notes and more information here – http://www.edinburghsucks.com/downloads/Chapter1.pdf
Next week Chapter 2 which includes:
Mar 93 – The First Disciplinary
July 93 – Assaulted by the Boss
Sept 93 – Trying to get Justice
Dec 95 – The cleaner gets a beating
April 96 – The end of the Regions: Council re-organisation
Jan 1997 – The Mortonhall years end
Mar 97 – The Boss gets demoted
April 99 – The Grants run out
March 00 – Prop Con Time
April 04 – The new “Term Contract” begins
Jan 05 – The Tenement Act
March 05 – I become a surveyor
Related posts:
- “Diary of a whistleblower- the Edinburgh Property Conservation Scandal”
- New Director to clean up Property Conservation Department?
- Property Conservation: Where are they now? [Yet Further Update]
- More movements in Property Conservation
- More Property Conservation Exits – UPDATED
- TIE, Waterfront Edinburgh and Edinburgh Building Services to be one company.
