European market comes to Stornoway

Everyone, everywhere, will have seen a European market (sic) which purports to be a traditional composite traditional French/German/central European market, and which arrived in Stornoway this week.

I have no problem with these traders trying to make a living, although a couple of comments by customers suggested that as a cash business, there may be issues with record keeping to ensure the correct amount of tax is being paid. But that is a matter for the retailers.

Some of the shopkeepers in the immediate vicinity have had problems ensuring continued access to their premises, and it certainly appears to be a causing a crush through the pedestrian precinct.

However, the issue I have relates to an item of private correspondence within the Fire Brigade locally and at HQ level.

I am told that the local Fire Safety Officer raised very serious concerns about emergency access to shop, houses and public buildings in the immediate area, and was against giving approval to the market for these reasons.

I understand that the local officer's advice was ignored by the Civic Government Licencing, and approval was granted because the local Fire Brigade were supposedly pre-occupied with local management issues.

I'm told that there is also an email in circulation confirming this and advising that the Comhairle can bury the news, due to familial influence over a Gazette reporter.

Can anyone forward this email to me? All sources treated confidentially, and incoming emails will be deleted.

LazyChicken adds 6/8/10: The Gazette would want to make it clear that they would never surpress a story due to family relationships.

Censorship - who knows?

I am tickled to find that reading my blog is an unapproved activity in the Comhairle offices.

Some managers have been told to stop staff from reading this blog, and that some of them are enforcing this instruction from the top.

Why is this happening? Which other websites are unapproved reading? And, who took the decision? (I know the answer to the last one, but why haven't they told the Councillors?)

I suspect the fear comes from the knowledge of the unpleasant facts about the activities of senior staff to which I have access and evidence. But the senior staff should have thought about that before they did what they did.

For instance, why is one department continuing to suffer huge financial losses for reasons that have been pointed out to higher and higher management over a number of years? Councillors have been given a completely incorrect picture with the real facts hidden, and I suspect that internal and external audit are unaware of the reports that management received. Want to know more Mr & Mrs Councillor, or will you accept the reassurances that you don't need to know - or can't know - about the real situation. More to follow on this one fairly soon...

Censorship - updated

According to one comment placed on an earlier post about Castlebay School, this blog is now apparently blocked at that school.

If this is true, then there are two follow-up questions:

Is it blocked by the Comhairle or the school? and

Now the Comhairle know that the internet is being censored, what are they going to do about it?

I know that the truth can sometimes be unpalatable, but acting like Big Brother is just a bit excessive and paranoid, isn't it.

What other sites are you going to block now?


So here is the agenda for the next Council Meeting - unless the Councillors have enough bottle to stand up and allow an open discussion about what is actually going on in Castlebay School.

I don't know the rights and wrongs of the matter, but it is obvious that there is a HUGE problem that is not being addressed to the satisfaction of many parents and pupils, and at the very least the Council needs to recognise that, rather than try to bury it.

I grant full permission for anyone/everyone to copy the blog post and the comments found here onto any other websites, social networking or any other medium you wish. Please, just link back to the original post.

Update: Is this site blocked from any other schools; from other Councils sites in Barra; or from any other Council sites.  It will be interesting to find out just who need 'protecting' from a free and open debate.

Attempted gagging

Having experienced a concerted and long running campaign by a certain individual who doesn't have the balls to have a face to face debate and who has tried to gag this blog through backdoor smears, I have decided to hand over the control of this blog to specially selected third parties.

They will be wholly responsible for all editorial decisions although I assure you that the quality of postings and incisiveness will remain the same.

This individual's fear of criticism is particularly un-endearing, but I continue to remain determined that all who hold a position of authority are held to account and that local issues continue to be debated and criticised or applauded where appropriate.

The hand-picked team have promised to continue to entertain, broadly in my style, but pulling fewer punches and (with their permission) I will continue to post sporadically until such time as the attempted gagging ceases.

Who?

Why can the rest of the world know about Viscount Lindley?

Remember the Spycatcher fiasco, and how that made everything worse?

Members Informal

Every series of meetings at the Comhairle, there is an informal meeting, usually on the Monday, at which the key issues for the week are outlined, and at which members can identify matters that concern them.

Contrary to popular belief, no decisions are taken, and it is usually an opportunity to give a verbal going over to the Convener, Vice-Convener and/or the Chief Executive on anything they have done wrong. Or have been perceived to have done wrong. Or sometimes, just for sport.

Whispers reach me that this blog may feature at the next Informal, with one member very keen to rebut any suggestions of double-dealing, duplicity, being two-faced and generally trying to protect (what he thinks is) his reputation. Hopefully, he'll remember to mention the threatening lawyers letters he sent me about the blog.

No doubt there will be much sniggering behind hands as the sanctimonious words are mixed with staged self-pity, and I hope to have an early full report with some verbatim extracts for your delectation.

Standards Commission

Readers of the Stornoway Gazette may remember that a complaint was lodged with the Standard Commission just before the elections, claiming that a number of members were in Breach of the Code of Conduct. This was specifically as a result of our involvement in various bodies dealing with the windfarm applications.

I was specifically accused of having compromised my objectivity by being a member of the 'Focus Group' to discuss the detail of benefits with developers, whilst also being Chair of the Environmental Services Committee. The decision is that none of us contravened the Code and the case is closed, but it raises wider issues.

I was placed onto the Focus Group because of my specialist skills and knowledge of the planning system combined with my business and professional skills. Would some of the public prefer that the Comhairle negotiate from a position of weakness rather than have the best skills available?

I also recognised the possibility of a conflict, so that I removed myself from active participation in the Focus Group when there was a live planning application if front of the Comhairle, which as it turned out, meant the vast majority of the time.

The role of the objector needs to be looked at, and he has graced these pages before. Murdo "Esso" Morrison lives in Wishaw, where he is a JP and frequent contributor on anti-windfarm themes to the Stornoway Gazette, in fancy, overblown and generally insulting terms. One attributes such "Lord of the Manor" attitudes to his experiences as a Tory Candidate in the Western Isles, a place he visits briefly and occasionally.

As a retired publicity man for Exxon, Murdo is well placed to advise the wider community on the harm that windfarms can bring to an area, compared to the benefits of traditional sources. However, not one to let a single conflict of interest affect his judgement or his pension, Murdo has another string on his bow.

His holiday home.

The reason for Murdo's ire is that he believes that the view from his holiday home - the old family home - will be adversely affected by the windfarm development, and consequently that his not insubstantial income might be diminished. Does that conflict of interest ever get mentioned in his complaint?

What particularly irritated me was an offensive and threatening email I received from Murdo in 2006. One Sunday - obviously after a long leisurely heavy lunch - Murdo threatened my three houses (?!?), and promised I would get what was coming to me(!), based entirely on a complete misreading of my entry in the Register of Members Interests. I was very close to reporting it to the Police, but instead emailed back advising that I would do so if ever wrote anything similar again. Perhaps the Justices of the Peace Committee in North Lanarkshire would be interested...

No doubt Murdo is sitting back furious with the Standards Commission for not agreeing with him. So can I suggest he use his energies on opposing the ship-to-ship transfers in the Forth, which is near at hand, and given that he has such important and invaluable experience of how oil companies operate. Or perhaps his pension is more important.

Moral dilemma

I've only had to delete one comment in the past six months (other than two which were entirely infantile swearing). A great many of these comments have been personally insulting to me and/or my council colleagues as a body corporate.

It's what happens when you are in the public domain; you are rarely - if ever - off duty. I've just done eight years of it, and I can tell you it is very wearing, but comes with the territory.

The previous post on "Polling Cards" (which I have just suspended - not deleted) included some rude comments about a candidate in the coming elections. I'm going to decide whether to delete the comments, or let them stand later.

Rather than censoring the postings, I'd rather give people a right of reply and let them shoot their critics down in flames.

My problem is that a previous blog posting attracted a threatening (but ultimately empty) lawyers letter in an attempt to gag me.

Unfortunately, in order to fully explain the situation, I'll have to place some more information into the public domain, and I'm not sure about the correct way forward.

Decisions, decisions.

Update 10.40am : phone call wanting me to disclose the identity of those who were making comments (Answer, I can't and I wouldn't). Complaint about my website hosting these *defamatory* comments (Answer, I don't host them, Google do). Perhaps I need to place all the facts garnered through FoI requests into the public domain, but I suspect that this isn't what was intended either.

Gagging - again

Further to my previous post, about being gagged by the SNP on Isles FM, I thought the matter was closed.

Not so. Yesterday the format was changed to three pundits to give more varied "comment" on the events of the week. Last night the Chair of the Western Isles SNP phoned the host of the show to complain about the third guest, my old friend and colleague former Councillor Angus Graham, who was "unacceptable" to the local SNP. As it turned out Angus Graham was not invited onto the show, but nevertheless the SNP obviously have a list of which commentators are "fair" and which are "unfair" i.e. those who will parrot the SNP line and those who will not.

Today, they have launched a concerted campaign to have me removed from tonight's programme on the grounds that I might say something they don't like.

I gave the benefit of the doubt last time, but this is definitely too far and too much. Just who is approving this censorship, and why is free speech under threat in the Western Isles?

Am I on the programme tonight? Wait and see on 103.0FM!

Being gagged

I pulled this post as it appeared that the information communicated to me was incorrect. I then made some comments based on a misunderstanding, but I'm not too big to correct it. The threat of legal action was based on a confusion between comments made yesterday and last Friday, but the substance of the comments was as I indicated in the original post.

The programme was pulled due to the nature of the mostly anonymous calls being received by the volunteers at Isles FM. The Managing Director of Isles FM, Ann Moqbel, said, "Isles FM is a community station which wants to reflect all points of view and be a vehicle for that. There were many calls to the station which were aggressive and nasty to our volunteers. Some were anonymous. I will not have our volunteers intimidated in that way. We hope to have the pundits back on Friday."

It is clear that someone somewhere is running a nasty political operation. Whether it is the SNP or Labour pretending to be SNP supporters to discredit them, I don't know, but it is certainly very aggressive. There is a decidedly nasty streak running through some of the postings on some local internet forums (fora?) which seems to be more interested in gagging those with certain views, rather than debating points.

I have let virtually every posting onto this blog (one was cut to the an inappropriate link), insulting or otherwise, and I will continue in the same vein.

Gagging dissidents is never a good idea. It is better to defeat their arguments. That is democracy.


The original posting from last night is below:
I was supposed to being on Isles FM tonight as a "pundit" discussing the election campaigns. Because I was not standing again, I am totally free to speak without any right of reply, as is my colleague Callum Ian MacMillan - the former Labour Group Leader on the Comhairle.

About two hours before the programme was to go on air, I discovered that the SNP had threatened to take out an injunction to prevent the programme taking place on the grounds of "bias". Now this is true, really true, but apparently I was unacceptable, the journalist who was chairing the programme was unacceptable, but the former Labour Group Leader was acceptable. Yes, read that again. And again!

Sorry, but the brave new Scotland does not need censorship, a restriction on the right of free speech, or commentators who are obliged to toe a particular line.

Is this what the SNP represents? If so, count me out. I've publicly advocated voting SNP on the list (but not the constituency) for well known reasons. This behaviour crosses the boundary between democracy and dictatorship as far as I am concerned, and I hope it is totally, completely, and utterly withdrawn immediately or I will not be able to tell anyone to vote SNP anywhere.