If you could change three things about the Union...

[Anon.]

I've tried the fair-trade alternative. It costs twice as much, and tastes like horse-piss.

...after the manner of fair-trade products.

[Fawksie]

But between 4 and 8 you're stuck for four hours in which you can't get any food in the Union, yet are still unable to bring in a sandwich or a wrap from Tescos.

The bar sells crisps, which is apparently enough for the Association to claim "food is available, therefore you have no excuse for bringing it in." Because after slaving in the Union all day and into the night, your first thought is going to be "damn I'm hungry, better buy two dozen bags of McCoys from the bar!"

[Hennessy]

1) Actually following the Sustainability policy written by what was then called the E&E committee, a few years ago. E.g., the policy proscribes selling Coca-cola products and bottled water, both of which can be bought in Beaton's. (1.1: later opening hours for Beaton's.)

Without necessarily getting into a huge debate, is there a particular reason Coca-Cola products shouldn't be sold? Bottled water I can somewhat understand, although I have nothing personally against it, but why would you deny us delicious Coke? Would Pepsi be denied too?

Being somewhat partial to Union murdering death-squads, I actually think that Coke should stay in Beatons...

http://killercoke.org/

Tell me, is it actually possible for you to take a position that isn't related to a stereotypically liberal bugbear? Or is it hard-wired in to your head that because you support x you have to denounce y? Interested to know how the brain-washing works.

[the Empress]

Off-topic: I can't find an 'ethical' coffee (certified, that is) that tastes good either (I love a morning cup of evil from Starbucks). I haven't noticed a taste difference between fair-trade and non-fair trade green tea though. However (although not wanting to get into a huge debate about it) I remain unconvinced about whether 'fair-trade' conditions are being verified on the ground (based on their web-site and a peer's fieldwork where workers didn't even know the plantation *was* fair-trade). So, I tend to make a judgment based on other criteria . . . . however, at uni I was put off by the unquestioning acceptance of FT at the few 'ethical' events I turned up to.

I've tried the fair-trade alternative. It costs twice as much, and tastes like horse-piss.

...after the manner of fair-trade products.

[Duggeh]

Off-topic: I can't find an 'ethical' coffee (certified, that is) that tastes good...

All of the coffee comes from the same place and gets graded. All of the stuff thats shit poor grade and makes for bad coffee they whack into fairtrade tins and jars because their market analysts know full well that theres no shortage of people ( from the do-good-little-things like seperate the plastic to the people who glue themselves to airport runways ) that will suck down the grade X rubbish because they prefer the warm glow of inner ethical salve to a drink which they'd more enjoy the taste of and that even better, they'll pay just as much if not slightly more than the price of the decent premium stuff anyway.

Nobody knows about this, so everyone is happy with what they've got, even when it is as you say, rubbish, and wouldn't sell if it didn't have the fair trade label.


Fair trade is unfair trade as Steve was so very fond of saying.

[Lukey2]

Without necessarily getting into a huge debate, is there a particular reason Coca-Cola products shouldn't be sold? Bottled water I can somewhat understand, although I have nothing personally against it, but why would you deny us delicious Coke? Would Pepsi be denied too?

Being somewhat partial to Union murdering death-squads, I actually think that Coke should stay in Beatons...

http://killercoke.org/

Tell me, is it actually possible for you to take a position that isn't related to a stereotypically liberal bugbear? Or is it hard-wired in to your head that because you support x you have to denounce y? Interested to know how the brain-washing works.

Just out of curiosity, do you support Union murdering paramilitaries?

A few days ago you wrote that over-weight people from lower income brackets weren't human. Just for the record: you are a sick fuck whose judgement is obviously in question. I am actually very pleased to have offended your deranged sensibilities. If you have a minute, perhaps you can tell me how fascists do THEIR brainwashing?

[the Empress]

Please provide sources to back-up those statements [re Doug].

Fair trade is how the bean is sourced, not how it is processed. The beans are sold by co-operatives for processing, thus ending FT involvement. So your complaints don't actually reflect the quality of the bean or the value of FT, although you may be right in that the processing is possibly sub-standard (cheap) in relation to the bean.

Also, how tiresome are 'liberals' calling people *fascists* in disagreements? It's an immediate *fail*.

re Henessey: 'Or is it hard-wired in to your [Lukey] head that because you support x you have to denounce y?' I was asked to sign a petition exactly like that: supporting renewables but denoucing nuclear. Since I'm for renewables *and* nuclear I couldn't help them out (I don't see any other way of fulling the energy gap) . . . it was a stupid petition design.

[edited 'cos I fogot stuff]

[macgamer]

[...] in a few decades folks will be mourning the terrible 2010s when everyone started tearing down the exquisite 1960/70s architecture. Give it twenty years and folks'll want to tear down the Gateway. Thirty and it'll be "Christ, that Life Sciences building looks awful!".

A lot of buildings went up and came down in St Andrews in the 1970s.

I think quite a few people regret the Union's move from North Street,


and the demolition of West Park since the University now needs the accommodation,


To make way for this:


Interestingly College Gate was also built at the same time:


Then a couple of years later:


If you compare College Gate with the Main Library or the Students' Association Building you can see that complimentary styles to surrounding buildings can be achieved and that the necessary skills were available amongst architects and builders.

Similarly I'm not a huge fan of Younger Hall:

It screams Italian Fascist architecture, so it would have been quite fitting if Benito Mussolini had become Rector and did his Il Duce thing from the balcony.

*Edited for typos.

[Al]

Wasn't College Gate built in the 1950s?

That said, your point is a good one. The buildings demolished to make way for Gannochy should be added to the list.

[Frank]

I think you misunderstand me. My point is "Stop knocking things down because you don't like them". The choices in fashion are, it strikes me as an absolute amateur in the field, fleeting.

That the library and union replaced otherwise lovely buildings almost reinforces my point entirely: what was the attitude to this at the time? Did people care for knocking down these lovely buildings, or was it all in the name of progress? (Or something else?) Would we want to knock something else down in a similar manner because we think the ideal of "They started it by building these things..." is somewhat better than the original issue?

Facist liberals

[Hennessy]

. If you have a minute, perhaps you can tell me how fascists do THEIR brainwashing?

I'll let you keep guessing while you fret about the BNP and global warming, I'm sure they're much higher on your self-serving agenda.

Macgamer,
As for Younger Hall, agreed it does look a bit domineering for its position but you can see where the University was trying to embrace modernity, albeit in a much too striking way to really fit with the rest of the town. Brutalism was a complete tragedy in many ways, there are very few buildings that manage to survive the weathering of the concrete and the multiple other problems and look vaguely habitable. Trellick Tower, in London, is one of my least favourites, followed by the Queen Elizabeth hall, which squats on London's south bank like a particularly stubborn eyesore.
QE Hall:


Trellick Tower:


Both are now Grade II* listed buildings, which is a bit of a shame because they are prominent, and ugly, not subdued and ugly. Same way I feel about the library and the union.

==edited for grammar==

[macgamer]

Brutalism was a complete tragedy in many ways, there are very few buildings that manage to survive the weathering of the concrete and the multiple other problems and look vaguely habitable. Trellick Tower, in London, is one of my least favourites, followed by the Queen Elizabeth hall, which squats on London's south bank like a particularly stubborn eyesore.

Yes new bare concrete structures going up puzzle me, such as the Scottish Parliament building, I wonder why architects have not learnt their lesson. The British climate, particularly the east coast of Scotland, is not very forgiving to such modes of construction. However I believe the architect of the Scottish Parliament is Spanish, perhaps the Spanish climate is more favourable to such materials.

I agree Trellick Tower is terrible, most of all because it not only blights its immediate surroundings, but the view for miles around. It has a very ominous profile. As for the Queen Elizabeth Hall, even the old Bankside Power station, now the Tate Modern, has more character than QE Hall. Which is a shame since the South Bank is one of my favourite parts of London.

The nearby Festival Hall is, by comparison, far more pleasing and has weathered much better. Now that they have renovated the interior, even reproducing the original carpet design and fittings, it looks quite smart.

[macgamer]

That the library and union replaced otherwise lovely buildings almost reinforces my point entirely: what was the attitude to this at the time? Did people care for knocking down these lovely buildings, or was it all in the name of progress? (Or something else?).

The University at the time was expanding rapidly and it had lost many of its more modern buildings to the fledgling University of Dundee (still bitter ). So the University had to replace these rapidly and presumably on a tight budget. So that is probably why North Street got a multi-storey car park.

The University probably just did not have the luxury to either come up with an expensive sympathetic designs or adapt the existing buildings or build on even more land out of town. They were probably lucky to get away with the amount they built on the North Haugh.

[ct3012]

That the library and union replaced otherwise lovely buildings almost reinforces my point entirely: what was the attitude to this at the time? Did people care for knocking down these lovely buildings, or was it all in the name of progress? (Or something else?).

The University at the time was expanding rapidly and it had lost many of its more modern buildings to the fledgling University of Dundee (still bitter ). So the University had to replace these rapidly and presumably on a tight budget. So that is probably why North Street got a multi-storey car park.

Am I just totally not understanding what you said, or did students in St Andrews previously have to travel to Dundee to get the use of a main library, rather than just department ones?
You're still bitter, I have friends at Dundee who I take great pleasure in pointing out that if it wasn't for my "posh" uni, they wouldn't be at one.

[schmod]

Off-topic: I can't find an 'ethical' coffee (certified, that is) that tastes good either (I love a morning cup of evil from Starbucks).

That's interesting. In the US at least, Starbucks are big advocates of Fair Trade-sourced beans.

As far as big-evil corporations go, Starbucks seems to be one of the 'better' corporate citizens (again, judging solely upon my experience with the US branch of the company. I set foot inside the St Andrews Starbucks exactly once, and wasn't happy about it.)

Wasn't College Gate built in the 1950s?

That said, your point is a good one. The buildings demolished to make way for Gannochy should be added to the list.

Egads! There was a building that was so bad that it had to be razed and replaced with Gannochy?

Younger hall always did bother me somewhat. The design seems to be more suited to a courthouse or somesuch.

(For the record, I actually think that Melville is one of the nicer pieces of modernist architecture.)

[the Empress]

I'm not sure if a portion of their beans are FT or they simply have 'ethical' policies. I'm cynical about large corportation ethical policies as I doubt they're ground-truthed; certainly if you read corporate sustainability reports you can spot various spurious claims without data and often decietful graphs (e.g. bar graphs where the depiction is not in proportion to the number they're reppresenting, e.g. so a change of 0.5% would look like 10% etc.) Industries with these ethical policies include the chocolate industry, those using palm oil, the clothing trade . . . . However, these problems are often huge and I've no idea how to solve them, so tbh, it doesn' t inform my consumerism a great deal. But I do have an interest in them, so it's always good to hear people's research/opinions.

That's interesting. In the US at least, Starbucks are big advocates of Fair Trade-sourced beans.

As far as big-evil corporations go, Starbucks seems to be one of the 'better' corporate citizens (again, judging solely upon my experience with the US branch of the company. I set foot inside the St Andrews Starbucks exactly once, and wasn't happy about it.)

[Al]

Wasn't College Gate built in the 1950s?

That said, your point is a good one. The buildings demolished to make way for Gannochy should be added to the list.

Egads! There was a building that was so bad that it had to be razed and replaced with Gannochy?

No. I meant the list of decent buildings demolished to make way for eyesores.

[Timata]

There was a building with two storeys of dormer windows demolished to make way for the Buchanan, but I'm not sure when

[macgamer]

Am I just totally not understanding what you said, or did students in St Andrews previously have to travel to Dundee to get the use of a main library, rather than just department ones?

Well I think there used to be more extensive Departmental and Hall libraries before the Main Library was built. What is now known as the Old Library in Psychology was once the University's general library.

University College Dundee, after joining in 1897 was known as University College, St Andrews and was renamed Queen's College, St Andrews in 1954 and thirteen years later received a Royal Charter granting its independence.

Since the act of Union in 1707 the University of St Andrews was in decline and on two occasions very nearly moved to Perth or closed. That is why St Leonard's College merged with St Salvator's College to form United College to pool resources. Even in the late Nineteenth century they were planning to move the whole University to Dundee which had formed a small College, St Andrews at which time had little over 100 students.

I think essentially if you did science you studied at Queen's College, Dundee most of the time and most of the arts apart from Law was taught at United College, St Andrews. So you might better understand what I mean now when I said that most of the modern buildings and almost all the science buildings were in Dundee.

So it came as quite a blow to St Andrews when it suddenly lost most of its Science faculty overnight. This explains the 1970s building spree. However they did have some leeway since, most the students were located in Dundee anyway.

So in a way it was the best thing that happened to the University of St Andrews in several centuries, since it forced it to expand to a sustainable size.

There is a good book which I was given as a present and actually published in St Andrews by J & G Innes, which I think is entitled: 'All About St Andrews', published in the late 1970s. It is very good.

[exnihilo]

Most of that building, incidentally, was funded by a wonderful thing that used to exist in the 1960s/70s called JIF. The Joint Infrastructure Fund which funded (or supplemented) infrastructure at universities and colleges from a central fund rather than each university having to raise the funds for itself.