Edinburgh is a World Heritage Site.  When I ran away from London in 1988, sick of foul air and endless commuting problems, streets unfit for young children… well you get the picture!  I vowed I would never be for cities again.  By the mid 90’s I had started to appreciate Edinburgh and the fact the cities could be vibrant, challenging, artistic, cultured and … in short – great!  London is to Edinburgh as a steel girder is to a Cellini silver salt cellar.  So we start with a precious environment.  The Old Town (pre eighteenth century higgledy-piggledy, multi-layered chaos overlayed with Victorian and twentieth century propriety) and progress to the New Town, the finest Georgian City in Europe (and who else does Georgian anyway?), so actually,one of the most beautiful cities in the world that I have ever seen.

As I write there are billions of pounds being spent developing Edinburgh and in some quarters resistance to this process.  So I have visited and spoken with many different parties.  The Cockburn Association (preservationists) the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust, (self explanatory)  the City Council, dozens of developers, Historic Scotland, and I find the makings of an accord, where we all might agree on what is good for the city.

People often say that coalition government (i.e. concensus decision making) doesn’t work.  But! my friends, it is the most creative way we can go.  When was Britain’s most productive period in the last one hundred years?  I can tell you, without doubt, it was in the Second World War, 1939-45.  Undoubtedly much of our purpose in being so creative was to destroy an enemy (which you might regard as less than creative).  The reality is, that with a common cause, and a common enemy (well let’s say – objective) we deliver most when we work together.

Watch this space.  Let’s see how it progresses.  And just to confuse things further – the pictures are from Glasgow.  Just to prove there isn’t only one City that understands the need for a development accord.  Taken last weekend from the tour bus!

Building a future while preserving capital’s heritage
this article appeared in The Scotsman on 16 September 2006

Since writing the above have met with Dennis Rodwell whose latest blockbuster ( a mere snip at £48 from Blackwell Publishing) – Conservation and Sustainability in Historic Cities is an interesting and provocative amble round the topic.  Recommended for serious enthusiasts.

I had been working for a multi-media training company in London when just under a year after I joined I found my job had been made redundant.  In these circumstances it’s always difficult to hold on to your self-esteem – it’s the job that’s redundant, not me!  My solution was to stop what I was doing, swap the pinstripe for a boiler suit and go off and train as an electrician.

In nine months I qualified and (like a fool) set up on my own.  In hindsight I’d have been much better working for someone else and getting all the tricks of the trade you don’t learn in college.

Some of us are slow learners!

So I pootled along on my own for a while, but soon found it’s a difficult business to run single handed (always helps to have someone to hold the steps or pull the other end of a cable).

The problem was I had been itching to run my own business for about five years, and I’d had an excellent apprenticeship working in family businesses where I’d done everything from receptionist to draft accounts passing through costings, purchasing, sales and sales management, transport management and health and safety on the way.  Looking back I had achieved what I set out to – educate myself about what it takes to run a small business.

Good Earth was generating plenty of business, so I felt confident in bringing some other people on board.  The upshot was that Good Earth turned into a Worker’s Co-operative.  Part of my desire to do something practical and put the City behind me stemmed from my active involvement in matters environmental at the time, which largely found its expression in Green politics.  So here we were doing something practical (good) providing a service to our community (good) trying to deliver quality, safety and energy efficiency (good) and managing it all co-operatively (good in theory).

I found a quote in William Blake ‘Energy is Eternal Beauty’ which we used as our by-line.  Since I’ve never managed to find the quote again, it’s possible I misremembered it! (update: 13.2.07 – wonders of the web – found the quote today it should be: Energy is Eternal Delight)

What did we do well?

We did work for a lot of community organisations.  I’m especially proud of the work we did for the Staying Put project – helping old people to stay in their own homes by bringing their properties up to date.  Fond memories of meeting Ellen Kuzawayo in the Brixton Art Gallery which we were rewiring, when there was a show of quilting work by women from Soweto (long before the end of Apartheid).  We took on two apprentices.  We didn’t allow shoddy work or taking shortcuts.

One day we doubled our prices – and we also then doubled our order book.  Great lesson – people want good value, not cheap.  Not the same thing at all, and it made a company which hadn’t been, profitable.  Unfortunately we were now behind hand financially…

What didn’t work well?

It hadn’t been going well financially.  But I had just negotiated a £6,000 injection from the local Enterprise company which would have put us back on an even footing (seems a tiny sum from today’s perspective!).

Then I had two weks off when our first child Ruby was born at home.  The day I went back to work my Mother died, so I had another two weeks off helping out round all that.  By the time I came back the other guys had decided to pull out on the advice of the accountant.  We had the cheque for the cash injection, but no-one would agree to bank it.  I could have carried on on my own, but with a new family I joined the others in selecting voluntary liquidation and started a process which ended up with us moving to the Scottish Borders.  Stop talking about being Green and live it… but that’s another story.

Why is it worth telling this story?  Well because failure is a really important part of learning.  Years later I could see that it wasn’t a failure at all, more like a trial run.  And what I learned from my first business venture has been reused to help others hundreds of times over.  I never regret learning what it means to be a manual worker.  Being politically correct ain’t easy.  Sometimes it’s more sustainable to achieve change a little bit at a time.