Dear Spurtle,
I am writing to vent my frustration at the loud arbiters of taste amongst us who carp on about ugly modern architecture and overgrown sick and dying trees. In short: the beige reactionary mass who seem to drag Edinburgh down to a lacklustre same-old, same-old banality.
We are blessed in Edinburgh with mesmeric views and vistas, all too often obscured by absurdly overgrown huge trees. This cult fetish for trees gets my goat. King George V Park is so much improved by the recent judicious cutting back and pruning of shrubs and trees: space and distance opened up.
The space in the valley of the park offers a perfect location and opportunity to create a well-constructed and landscaped homogenous modern quarter. Modernity benefits from a cluster of buildings and not being isolated next to an old sandstone facade.
I strongly believe that the proposed development will create a vision and a delight at last in our capital's centre that will convince these welly-booted dog-haired-ridden hippies that the shining light of modernity can be beautiful, not just endless pastiche classical masonry and columns. Yawn.
We need to inject theatre and taste into our capital city as it is crumbly and rundown in many areas.
Take a look at the brown-furnished rancid interiors of these objectors, and their anger at progress, and ask yourself: Why do they get to shout so loud when their aesthetic is so poor?
Your recent edition of the Spurtle moans on about sandstone and trees. Go travel and see beautiful modern urban design all over Europe, and please try to be less provincial and dull.
Michael Worobec
EH7 4HX