Cockenzie House Development

So the controversial revived plans to build a care home in the grounds of Cockenzie House have slipped through, with the casting vote in favour by one Norman Hampshire, not terribly well known for espousing traditional labour views. Not surprisingly, with strong objections from the community and authorities like Historic Scotland, many will be dismayed by the inability of the committee to reflect its constituents views.

You’d think there’d be plenty of places in around the locality to plonk a 60-bed home in the workaday cheap 80s style, as developers today are want. First you identify a site which is in a sensitive area, currently under multiple occupancy and clearly having some useful community and wider benefits. Then you put forward a daft plan, cobbled together by a draughtsman or architectural technician, presumably as proper architects are too expensive. You then surreptitiously submit the plans in the summer recess when everyone is on their hols.

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Dark was the night

A Dunbar Night Sky
A Dunbar Night Sky

Well it ain’t no more.

For some time now – a century? –  our towns have been enveloped in a yellow / orange glow. That warm, sometimes reassuring, glow is turning a bright white as incandescents are phased out and LEDs phased in, and it seems that wildlife won’t be celebrating. No doubt there are others (incandescent climate change deniers?) who will miss it too, and will campaign vigorously for their reinstatement. I for one have acquired some retro Edison style bulbs, but only because I am a debauched aesthete and they look great. Maybe they – the deniers – will campaign to leave the EU, and dump the Environmental Acquis that brings with it all those punishing directives that make life so difficult for businesses, who would rather sell you untested, unproven, unreliable, and uncertified products for the sake of a few lousily paid jobs.

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