Monday, June 25, 2012
Sky City One arcology - Scotsman Letter
This letter in the Scotsman today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_City_One and
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/sky-city-one.html
This went out to the Scottish press and has, so far, appeared in the Scotsman alone. However it was unedited except for making the 3rd and 4th paragraphs one. This is almost the only newspaper mention of the fact that the previous Forth Bridge cost £320 million, in inflation adjusted money. The politician's decline to discuss where the extra £2 billion is going. By comparison China is often described in the British press as having a lot of government bureaucracy corruption but clearly, if this were so, they couldn't be building affordable housing that is so affordable - at least not remotely as much as the corruption obvious in the fact that our construction costs average 8 times what they are in the rest of the world.
The comparison between the 2 omits the fact that the Chinese building is a free market one so that the taxpayers does not actually fund it. The provincial government contribution is simply not to prevent the free market building it. Would that we had as free and entrepreneurial a government as the |Chinese communists.
There is an online comment, presumably from a nationalist, that I have delineated the failures of Scottish labour. Since the parties were united, under SNP leadership, in deciding to pay so far over the odds on an unnecessary bridge; and the SNP did not seriously question either the Parliament building or tram frauds I do not see how accusations of incompetence and/or theft can be limited to any one party in Holyrood.
It would be nice to think that either no Scottish politician will ever again say they want to build "affordable housing" or alternately that they will actually mean to do it in a manner which is demonstrably possible. It would be nice, but it would require some faith in their integrity.
Hunan province in China is following in the footsteps of the Scottish Parliamentarians in spending £400 million on a prestige building.
While our building was the Parliament at the end of the Royal Mile, theirs will be the tallest building in the world. Called Sky City One it will house 174,000 people, plus schools, offices, shops & hotels which makes it around £6,000 for a family home.
It will be built by modular mass production methods, which have been available for decades but tend to run foul of planning permission rules here.
Construction is due to start in November 2012 and be completed in January 2013. Presumably it will not be the last self contained city built.
Scotland's politicians have given us the world's most expensive tram line (twice the cost of Sky City) and the world's second most expensive bridge (6 times Sky City and 8 times the inflation adjusted cost of the previous bridge). They all boast of their commitment to "affordable housing" & now that Glasgow's Red road flats are being demolished it will be interesting to see if they continue to produce the world's most expensive version of that too.see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2158205/Sky-City-Changsa-China-plans-build-worlds-tallest-tower.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_City_One and
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/sky-city-one.html
This went out to the Scottish press and has, so far, appeared in the Scotsman alone. However it was unedited except for making the 3rd and 4th paragraphs one. This is almost the only newspaper mention of the fact that the previous Forth Bridge cost £320 million, in inflation adjusted money. The politician's decline to discuss where the extra £2 billion is going. By comparison China is often described in the British press as having a lot of government bureaucracy corruption but clearly, if this were so, they couldn't be building affordable housing that is so affordable - at least not remotely as much as the corruption obvious in the fact that our construction costs average 8 times what they are in the rest of the world.
The comparison between the 2 omits the fact that the Chinese building is a free market one so that the taxpayers does not actually fund it. The provincial government contribution is simply not to prevent the free market building it. Would that we had as free and entrepreneurial a government as the |Chinese communists.
There is an online comment, presumably from a nationalist, that I have delineated the failures of Scottish labour. Since the parties were united, under SNP leadership, in deciding to pay so far over the odds on an unnecessary bridge; and the SNP did not seriously question either the Parliament building or tram frauds I do not see how accusations of incompetence and/or theft can be limited to any one party in Holyrood.
It would be nice to think that either no Scottish politician will ever again say they want to build "affordable housing" or alternately that they will actually mean to do it in a manner which is demonstrably possible. It would be nice, but it would require some faith in their integrity.
Labels: letters, Science/technology, Scottish politics
