Goodbye Planning Magazine!

You know, anyone with a couple of brain cells could have seen this one coming. I received my own personal copy of Planning from the goons in London last week and it's the last one I will see - thank goodness!  I've only just stopped laughing - what a bunch of idiots!

Sixteen years ago, the RTPI decided to have its official journal published by an 'outside agency' - Haymarket.  Good idea!  It's the same with school meals isn't it? Glutinous lumps of junk food passed off as healthy fare!  And it's the same with toilets - at Auchterness we get 'external contractors' to come and clean them every night. A horrible job for poor wee Margo but she doesn't complain - she just pulls on her rubber gloves and gets on with it.

Now the RTPI and Haymarket, the publishers of Planning, have fallen out and the Journal is dead in the toilet.  Who cares?  I was once proud to receive the official journal of the Royal Town Planning Institute.  I remember how I used to place it on the outside of files when I walked about the office so that people could see that I was a planner - and respect me of course.  Now I am ashamed of it - ashamed to the point where I wish it arrived in a brown paper bag instead of a transparent one. But now I don't need to worry because Planning magazine is dead.

But wait! Is it really dead? The flyer says 'REGISTER NOW and get them FREE for the rest of 2013...'.  Sounds like desperation to me - who would want this terrible publication?  Haymarket and Richard Garlick think it is a runner - are they serious??? It is probably one of the worst 'professional' publications around, responsible for reducing town planning to the intellectual stump that it is today.  A weekly source of gossip and tittle-tattle - nothing more!  A fantasy world of  powerlessness and pointlessness in the face of The Enterprise! It sounds to me as if Richard Garlick is the one who has to put his rubber gloves on now and get his hands in the dark and bubbly!

Meanwhile the goons themselves will try to come up with their own Journal sometime next year. Laughable!  Who will care or read this?  Anyway we have our own lovely wee Scottish Planner publication up here and that is fine with me.  I hope to write an article for it soon.  It will be a winner!

My hearty congratulations to everyone who was involved with the RTPI in the decision sixteen years ago to hive off the Journal to an outside contractor.  It's certainly been a good decision - something to be proud of!  BTW (that's By The Way!) I hope you noticed my finest beech executive desk top in the lovely wee photie above, courtesy of Auchterness.