This is the text of a letter to the Herald, which they have not published. There may be many reasons, including legal ones for that editorial decision, and it is one they have a right to make.
UNPUBLISHED LETTER TO THE HERALD
Next week (20th January) Margaret Jaconelli's final appeal against Glasgow City Council's compulsory purchase of her home and eviction order to clear the way for the development of the Commonwealth Games site is scheduled to go to a Court hearing. It will be preceded by a meeting with Glasgow City Council on the 18th, presumably to attempt to reach a last minute settlement before the Court hearing
If this decision goes against Margaret, a Scottish grandmother simply trying to get an equitable price for her tenement home, she will be faced with crippling legal costs which will destroy her economically and emotionally.
Her basic position as I understand it is to get a price that will enable her to buy a roughly comparable property in an area of her choice, and to have all legal costs of that purchase met.
Meanwhile, developers have reaped rich rewards from land purchase and re-sale deals with Glasgow Corporation, by a process of negotiation - exactly what Margaret appears to be being denied .
A gross inequity and perhaps a tragedy for an ordinary Glaswegian is in the making here, and it will leave a sad legacy hanging over the Commonwealth Games.
Where are the rich Glasgow firms, the entrepreneurs and the sports personalities who will reap rich benefits from the Games while the interests of the little people are threatened in this way?
Do the Scottish Government and the Labour Party want to enter their Holyrood election campaigns with this injustice hanging over them?
What are the elected representatives of Margaret Jaconelli and the others four claimants doing while this juggernaut of big business and celebrity sport rolls over ordinary, vulnerable people?
Make no mistake, this will be some politician's Crichel Down, indeed the Crichel Down scandal brought down a government minister and almost a government, leading to the Crichel Down rules, now probably outdated half a century on, in this brutal, uncaring, greedy society.
This case should be the subject of mediation, not cold, unfeeling legalistic procedures, with all the aces in the hands of Glasgow City Council and the developers. The amount of money required to settle is minuscule in relation to the huge budgets and profits of the Games.
For God's sake, Glasgow - doing the right thing is the right thing to do!
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? I feel sorry for the woman but she and her family have been the only residents in that block for five years.
ReplyDeleteAre you seriously suggesting that one family should be able to stop demolition of tenements, which no-one else lives in because they are in a poor state? Why would someone want to go on living in a block where every other flat is steel doored anyway? I don't understand that.
You'd better believe I am serious, Indy - deadly serious.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Jaconelli is desperate to get out, and is only too willing to go, but not for the derisory offer made to her by GCC, which would destroy her utterly.
She has a simple, equitable objective - to receive a settlement that permits her to buy outright a loosely comparable home to her present one, which she owns free and clear, and have her legal and conveyancing costs met.
Values in the area were destroyed by the Glasgow East development plan - planning blight - and developers have been making obscene profits in land specualtion since, despite being subject to the same compulsory purchase legislation as Margaret. GCC have negotiated deals with all of them, permitting vast profits which are bleeding away the finaces of the Games, causing Scottish enterprise to back out of involvement.
Try and find some sympathy for an ordinary Glasgow grandmother, fighting for equity against the combined might of the Labour Party, Glasgow City Council, rich developers and a hostile Glasgow media
She meets with the district valuer tomorrow, and is in court on Thursday.