A welcome to Pamela Ewing

The wonderful Pamela Ewing

You know, this morning when I opened my own personal copy of the Scottish Planner (aka The Barton Willmore Times) I burst out laughing! My fans will know that I'm partial to a bit of dressing up so when I saw the Convenor's Comments on page 3, I assumed that the lovely wee photo top right was Stephen Tucker - in drag. As I've explained before, cross-dressing is rife in the world of planning and property development. It must be some deep-seated desire to have a more interesting life than that of a grim Development Manager.

But after a bit of research I realised that RTPI Scotland has a new Convenor. Stephen Tucker has left the building although his wonderful company Barton Willmore still has a stranglehold on Wee Craigie McLaren's empire, with a bigger logo on the cover of the Scottish Planner than RTPI Scotland. What does that tell you?

So welcome to Convenor Pamela Ewing! Being an older planner, the very name conjures up memories for me of the Dallas TV series and the oil-rich family that inspired the transformation of Aberdeen from a village of gossiping cod wives and farmers into the most successful and dynamic city in Scotland - if not in Europe! Pamela is the Brown Owl of TayPlan, an important strategic organisation that, among other things, keeps perma-tanned Dundee planning boss Mike Galloway in check.  A useful and important role!

Significantly, she is deeply embedded in the public sector so she supports the weak and the feeble - such as those who have written articles for this issue of the Barton Willmore Times - and that's great!  These folk need all the help they can get with their floundering careers!  I'm also full of praise for Pamela because she has laid a glove on the treacherous John Glenday of gossip magazine Urban Realm, pulling him up for his ridiculous and ill-informed Carbuncles Award which my fans will know was presented to Aberdeen this year in a disgraceful and uncalled for attack. Pamela has called out the ignorant Glenday for negative plaice branding but to be honest, I'm not sure if he knows what this means! After all, he is only using the Carbuncles Award to get publicity for his magazine - which is really just 'Hello!' for architects in Scotland. Mind you I could change my mind about that if he would let me write a few articles for it!

But apart from the great news about our Convenor, this issue of the Scottish Planner is very boring. Big Pudding Face Alex Neil MSP presents a dreary article obviously written by a civil servant. Most of the contributors need to go back to school and learn a bit about grammar and sentence construction.  Sadly many fine words are lost in seas of badly punctuated drivel. There seems to be a love of the cliché and the platitude. For example on page 15, 'we must look to the long term and be pragmatic as well as creative'. For goodness sake!  The Barton Willmore Times needs to draw a line under this sort of vanity publishing, exercise stronger editorial control and say a firm no to self aggrandisement.

Also, these contributors look like scary folk with police records - don't they? Barton Willmore need to look at sourcing some more user-friendly photographs from their contributors. Or perhaps this is a calculated move to make public sector folk look ridiculous.

West, Prentice, Hilton and Blyth
Prisoners from Cell Block H

I'm impressed by young Pamela though - she seems to have done more in a few weeks than Stephen Tucker did in a year. People say that he was too busy strutting around trying to win work and writing endless dreary articles of self-praise laced with faux-modesty. So it's a clever move by Barton Willmore to bring Pamela on board for the year and I'm looking forward to more from her. I'm also happy to provide her with a list of people that she could lay a glove on next.  As the Barton Willmore empire continues to expand we can only stand back in amazement and applaud their dynamic efforts. 

All the best from Auchterness. I'll be back soon with more exciting news and action from Scotland's dynamic planning scene. Cheeriebye for now!