Download the the May 2012 Morrison plans for Bishopbriggs Town Centre (A new vision for Bishopbriggs) and decide for yourself

New plans for Bishopbriggs Town Centre released in May this year with new larger Morrison store and petrol station. New access to site and social area, with images plans and drawing this 8 page pdf has all the information.

To download the pdf file (2.6mb) - click here

No action to be taken over Bishopbriggs sport hall demolition without permission

Morgan Sindall, the company responsible for the Bishopbriggs High School demolition site, will have no action taken against them after it emerged they demolished the £800,000 sport hall with a warrant. The old school was left standing while the controversial, seven-year-old hall, was first to be demolished.

The information was sent to the Procurator Fiscal and they decided to take no further action.

Are we surprised?

You try knocking down anything without permission and see what happens...

Read the story and see the pictures on the Kirkintilloch Herald website...

Disgrace as Bishopbriggs Sports Hall demolisted without permission - The hall cost almost £1m just seven years ago!

As reported in the local press, the Sports hall, built only seven years ago at a cost of almost £1m, has been demolished. The hall, in the grounds of former Bishopbriggs High School, appears to have been demolished without the proper permission by Morgan Ashurst. Permission is now being processed through the council.

As anyone who has read this blog will know I stated the intentions of the council to allow the hall to be demolished to make way for a new development in the grounds of the old high school.

The council rejected public consultation to build the new school on the grounds of the High School. At the time the council was under the control of the Liberal Democrats but almost all of the councilors lost their sets in the last local election.

Bishopbriggs Sports hall facing demolition - again!

CONFUSION surrounds the fate of an £800k sports hall in Bishopbriggs.

Muse Developments submitted an outline planning application in May to transform Bishopbriggs town centre as part of a £32million project.

The proposals included the option to keep the former Bishopbriggs Academy sports hall after residents opposed to it being knocked down.

A campaign group was asked to come up with a business plan to run the hall as a community facility.

Read the full story here on the Kirkintilloch Herald website.

Source: Kirkintilloch Herald

Bishopbriggs housing plans on school land put on hold

PLANS to build 50 new homes on the site of a bus terminus have been put on hold to allow councillors to visit the location.Developers MacTaggart and Mickel want to create 10 town houses and 40 flats on surplus land at the former Thomas Muir High School, in Bishopbriggs.

However, several residents have objected to the proposals because the development would be built on a bus terminus, as well as concerns over the increase in traffic and noise they fear it would create.

The plans went before the council's planning board last week and were recommended to be granted, subject to a list of conditions, one being that an alternative bus terminus is provided in the area prior to work starting on the development. 
Following a site visit, the plans will go before the next planning board on June 30. 

Meanwhile, plans to build 32 new homes on a derelict site have been continued, for the second time, to a planning board meeting later this month. 

Hallam Land Management Ltd want to create 32 new homes - including at least 40 per cent affordable housing - on a site adjacent to Kirkintilloch Road, in Bishopbriggs. 
However, the application has been recommended for refusal because of concerns over access. 
The application has been continued to allow for talks to try and find a soloution to the issue with access.

Source: Kirkintilloch Herald

School buildings a ‘scandal’ claims expert

From today's Herald...

A high proportion of new school buildings in Scotland are of completely unacceptable quality and being thrown up with no regard for the future needs of education, one of the architects of the current curriculum review is set to warn.

Keir Bloomer sat on the group which wrote A Curriculum for Excellence and was chief executive of Clackmannanshire Council for seven years. He is to speak at a conference in Glasgow next week, when he will warn that school buildings too often reflect a society that places little value on children and young people.

The event is part of the Future Scotland Debates series and takes place at the Scottish Parliament on June 10.

Read the full story here on the Herald website...

Town Centre Plans - first image flats and Care Home...

Click image to enlargeCheck out this picture of the plans on display at the Bishopbriggs Library. 

You can see the plans include three storey flats, sorry 'townhouses'  on South Crosshill road. Five storey flats behind the new Morrisons. 

Now look at the size of the care home.

More posts to follow...

PPP deal councils axe school pitches

School sports pitches have been sacrificed by one-third of Scottish councils undertaking building programmes financed by controversial public private partnerships, The Herald can reveal today.

Official figures from SportScotland, the national sports development agency, show 10 of the country's 30 authorities that have used PPP projects to improve their school estate between 1996 and 2008 now have fewer playing fields.

Read the full post on The Herald's website here...

Builder pulls out of plans to build homes on Bishopbriggs High School site..

Plans for the Bishopbriggs High Schools site suffered a blow when Mactaggart and Mickel withdrew their application to build 154 homes on the high school site.

East Dunbartornshire Council are waiting to see the new 'masterplan' for the whole site as requested by the council. Fears of local residents that the sports hall, built with £1 million of public funds, may not survive the plan.

Read the rest of this blog to find out the history of the Council's decision to go against public consultation and move the school to the site of Turnbull High on the outskirts of Bishopbriggs...

The sinister truth about what they do with our children's fingerprints - Daily Mail

From the Daily Mail here...

They point out that no other country in Europe routinely fingerprints children and that even communist China has abandoned plans for fingerprinting school pupils because it breaches human rights.

They quote the Minister for Schools and Learning, Jim Knight, who this summer admitted that the police can simply help themselves to the children's fingerprints if they are trying to solve a crime.

As one IT security consultant in Britain, Brian Drury, said recently: "If a child has never touched a fingerprint scanner, there is zero probability of being incorrectly investigated for a crime.

"Once a child has touched a scanner they will be at the mercy of the algorithm [stored in the school computer] for the rest of their lives."

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More on the Leave Them Kids Alone website...

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Read what the BBC have to say....

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How to fool school fingerprint scanners with household items...

Fake finger fools fingerprint reader...

Moulding plastic, jelly, milk and tea are all the ingredients that Dialogue Box needed to get past one biometric security device.

View the video here at ZDnet...

Council to fingerprint Bishopbriggs Academy schoolchildren

More than 8000 pupils are to have their fingerprints taken so they can be tracked by teachers.

The scheme is to be introduced in all eight secondary schools across East Dunbartonshire, including Bishopbriggs Academy.

Similar systems already installed in schools in England cost up to £20,000 per school.

From the register

As many as 200,000 primary and high school children from the age of seven have already been finger printed. Supplier Micro Librarian Systems estimates that its technology, which is similar to identification systems used in US prisons and by the German military, is in use by 350 schools throughout the country.

More here...

The Sunday Mail

Milngavie Herald

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Hidden £65m PPP Schools bill

Surprise, Surprise...

Ministers claim they have inherited a hidden £65m liability for privately-financed school projects that the previous Labour-LibDem administration failed to budget for in full.

...by 2010-11 will be £165m as the true cost of the exponential rise in the value contracts has become clear.

These were only £17m last year but leapt to £48m this year before reaching £137m next year and a total of £165m by the final year of this parliament, all for projects that have already been built, are under construction, or have been approved.

More from The Herald

Never mind, just think of the money the council will get from selling the Bishopbriggs High School site plus the 'surplus' land at Thomas Muir and Turnbull.

PPP deals cost Scots £22bn

Scots will have to pay a "phenomenal" £22.3bn over the next four decades to fund all the Public Private Partnership projects across the country - around £4500 for every Scot.

New figures released by the Scottish Executive have revealed the true cost of the 102 contracts for the privately built schools, prisons and hospitals which, in some cases, will be privately run.

The PPP statistics highlight the legacy of taxpayer debt the new SNP executive has inherited from the previous administration.

Professor Allyson Pollock, head of the Centre for International Public Health Policy at Edinburgh University, said: "This is a phenomenal amount of debt being incurred and stored up, not only for this generation but for future generations too. Others have noted the ways in which we are mortgaging our children's futures.



"The high costs of PFI squeezes expenditure on public services spending. In health, there is very good research evidence of the ways in which PFI drains money from public services and as a result services are cut and closed to pay the PFI charges and profits of the banks and shareholders."

A spokesman for the Scottish Labour Party said: "When you break it down it is good value for money."

From The herald

SNP promised platform extension at Bishopbriggs

In April the Evening Times report this SNP promise...

£300m promise on rail network

The SNP's National Rail Improvement Plan are proposals for platform extensions at Queen Street and Bishopbriggs to allow increased capacity

Read the story in the Evening Times

LibDem take a beating...

The LibDems, who voted for the 'cheaper option', for Bishopbriggs Academy have been wiped off the face of the new council at East Dunbartonshire.

They could ignore the public when it came to consultation but they couldn't when it came to voting for their job.

East Dunbartonshire Liberal Democrates on May 4th 2007

John Morrison (Council Leader) - Gone
Margaret McNaughton - Gone
Gordon Macdonald - Gone
Fiona Risk - Gone
Pat Steel (provost) - Gone
Julia Southcott - Gone
Robert Duncan - Gone
Fiona Callison - Gone
Cathy McInnes - Gone
Eric Gotts - Survived
Duncan Cummings - Survived
Vaughan Moody - Survived

Of the Twelve LibDem councillors only three survived the rest were wiped out by the voters.

Cathy McInnes who came fifth out of six candidates for the Strathkelvin and Bearsden seat took a double beating.

The results can be found here Strathkelvin and Bearsden


And the council results here

Jo Swinson - take note

Kirky Herald Lib Dems Binned

Bats at St Ninian's

I understand that St Ninian's cannot be demolished as bats have been found.

Will this delay the Academy - only time will tell....

We get what we deserve...

The people of Bishopbriggs will get what they deserve after the elections in May.

Legislation states that when two schools amalgamate an election for a new school board should take place as soon as possible.

Almost NINE MONTHS later we are still waiting.

It also states that each candidate should produce UP TO 250 words presenting their case. Yet Ken Low produces more and that is accepted.

Read this site and then decide if these people are representing your interests....

I will not be updating it in the future - you get what you deserve....

Prisoners treated better than our children?

Dr Gordon Low wrote a letter to the Bishopbriggs Herald highlighting the way the Council have treated our children compared to how prisoners at Low Moss prison are treated.

During last year's public inquiry into the proposed new prison at Low Moss, Scottish Prison Service (SPS) were at pains to stress the urgency of building prisons to meet the rising prisoner population.
So it's a bit surprising now to find that they can manage quite happily for the next two years with one fewer prison. (Bishopbriggs Herald, 28th February)
But then, the SPS would tell us that they're seeking to accommodate twice the number of inmates in a state-of-the-art complex, complete with its own dedicated sports facilities and requiring the flexibility afforded by the utilisation of the whole available site.
So presumably the site has to be cleared before building work can begin, as trying to construct the new prison round the existing buildings would hopelessly compromise the design.
And of course, the SPS would probably consider it unreasonable to expect prisoners to have to live in a building site for two years.
Fair enough, perhaps. Yet it does seem just a bit ironic that the latter approach is exactly the construction methodology being employed by East Dunbartonshire Council to accommodate twice the school role at the new Bishopbriggs Academy, and with exactly the consequences the SPS are avoiding at Low Moss.
And that's before the council sells off part of the school site to the developers.
It wouldn't be good enough for the prisoners (and who would argue the point?) but apparently it's good enough for our school pupils.

Teachers can't find jobs...

Interesting artical from the Herald.

Some of the comments blame PPP projects for building smaller schools to hold more pupils (where have I heard that before).

Councils saving money on Education to finance their pet projects?

Intresting reading...