Are you covered?

No, you are not!

Gull Control in the East Lothian Council Area is a discretionary service. For a number of years now the service has been made available on demand only, but I am not sure anyone round our way knew that. One might have guessed given the “austerity cuts” and direct observation, if you ever go out in Dunbar between April-September it is Guano Central.

The lack of control raises important questions about the environmental, social/health and economic costs of ceasing treatment, particularly at a time of concern about avian virus vectors.

Originally published in May 2012; Amended: May 2020

If you are a regular on Dunbar High Street or planning to visit don’t forget the brolly! It is raining today, but at other times you are in for a different sort of shower. For the Herring Gulls (aka Larus argentatus) are back to regale us with their raucus call and much more. By April / May in most years the High Street, parked cars and windows are already getting decorated with multi-colored guano, birds seem to have a perpetual diarrhea. If you are lucky enough, you may get hit from on high by the foul smelling stuff.

If you live on and around the High Street, and there is a nest or more nearby, expect to have to wash your car, windows and patios/decks several times a week at least, or even daily if you’re on a flight path.

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Masonic Lodge Dunbar – Lost and Found

The Eye of Providence - Aye Right

A mid 19th century 2-storey, symmetrical 3-bay building with extension to the side sounds very much like a workaday building of  the period, especially on Dunbar High Street, chokka with old buildings in various states of decay on the one hand and unsympathetic modernisations and bizarre additions on the other.

But take a look inside this one at 3 Abbeylands and you’ll be forgiven for thinking that the C listing (albeit in  a building “group category B”) is mistakenly undersold.

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The Conservation Premium

With over 600 designated throughout Scotland and a staggering 9,800 in England, Conservation Areas afford protection to the crème de la crème of our built heritage and environment, for which there is seemingly no direct market. With the designation owners’ property rights are restricted. Changes to the external appearance of buildings and choice of materials limited and the cost of altering and maintaining buildings to a certain standard is in many if not most cases increased. The policy directly imposes a cost on individual owners and occupiers, but all in the name of a greater public good, which recent surveys suggest 92% of the population supports.

unsympathetic alterations causing the loss of traditional architectural features … loss of front gardens to parking … lack of co-ordinated or poor quality street furniture and paving …  traffic domination and cluttered pedestrian environment … loss of traditional shopfronts

[Problems which Conservation Areas are designed to overcome]

So how can it be justified? Can it be purely on the grounds of a positive external heritage effect? And what if the social benefits exceed the private costs of maintenance? Is there some intergenerational inequality, whereby residents today pay the costs for future generations to perhaps enjoy? Is there a case for additional support – for these areas will also have more listed buildings with additional development restrictions than non designated areas, in the way that farmers get subsidy to farm wildlife. Environmental subsidies are justified because markets fail to protect landscapes, wildlife and countryside, for as the rural saying goes, “you can’t eat the view.” Well the jury is out on market failure it seems and I see no sign of incentives for householders any time soon. Continue reading The Conservation Premium

Destination Dunbar

Have we been missing a trick?

My presentation notes.

The fortunes of High streets have always waxed and waned, but the most recent decline of high streets seems inexorable and attempts to reverse it labelled by some as “mission impossible”. But the decline started long before the rise of the internet and comparison shopping, or out of town shopping became a popular pass time, but I am not here to give you a history lesson, except to say that the reasons for the decline are complex and not simple. They are rooted as much in changing attitudes and behaviours – the way we shop, work, play and holiday, as in changes in the economy, and for the that read also changes in technology, in the widest sense.

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Drive through Dumbar

No doubt there were loud cheers when McBurgher’s announced their intention to locate a new drive-through just down the road. And what better place to locate it? Although Dumbar isn’t quite the Drive Thru Town it used to be, more Drive Past, it is now officially a Take-Away and Throw-Away Town with a critical mass of cheap eateries and woeful food business recycling rates. Anyway some say this is exactly what the locality was missing – another take-away joint. As every schoolgirl knows easy access to fast food encourages better health, slimmer waist-lines (no pun intended), a better quality tourism, higher levels of inward investment and is a key motivator for homebuyers. Except none of this is true. I am reliably informed that a new home in Tranent will fetch a premium price, while in Dumbar it goes for below the average. Location isn’t everything, or maybe it is?

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