Township clerks
I have just become aware of a wrinkle in the legislation, planned or otherwise, which might will cause nothing but grief, tears and neighbourly disputes of the most bitter kind.
I am told - and this comes from the mouths of the Crofters Commission - that Township Clerks will be expected to provide an annual township report which includes identifying each and every crofter who is not properly working the costs, and those which should be taken back by the Commission for redistribution.
This might be an admirable aim, but which Clerk in their right mind is going to put in an adverse report.
It is not the horses heads in your bed that you would need to fear, but the rapacious lawyers suing you for libel and the Commission accusing you of not doing your job.
So much for 'building new communities'.
I am told - and this comes from the mouths of the Crofters Commission - that Township Clerks will be expected to provide an annual township report which includes identifying each and every crofter who is not properly working the costs, and those which should be taken back by the Commission for redistribution.
This might be an admirable aim, but which Clerk in their right mind is going to put in an adverse report.
It is not the horses heads in your bed that you would need to fear, but the rapacious lawyers suing you for libel and the Commission accusing you of not doing your job.
So much for 'building new communities'.
12 comments:
Solution - everyone buys their crofts. Dissolve crofting as a legal entity. People will be free to rent out or sell their currently unused crofts to people who will use them or new entrants. And as for the sentimentality that saturates this form of agriculture, well those people working livestock will still get together and help each other and anything else is just PR.
The people of the highlands an islands will truly be free once and for all of 'landlords' and legislation saying what can and can't be done.
Pinch me if wrong, but I heard Brian Wilson drivling on about this on Monday morning.
Did anyone listen? or was it the usual landlord stuff?
The StorasUist have started this already. The clarks were called to a meating last weak and they told us that the common grazings will be taken off the crofters on the reason that they are not using the common grazings properly. For who is person that the common grazings will be given to then and why was he not at the meating.? Was he meating someone else.?
Is the common grazing earmarked for the windmills going to be taken off the crofters because they wont sign there robbery documents.? They can then said we are taking the grazing off you because your not grazing it. What are we going to say then because there is not a single horn on the grazings from one year end to the next and the apportionments are just are bad.
Why does the StorasUist webshite say nothing about this meating.?
There is a lot of questions to be answered here.
Why can we not get proper answers.?
1.54
You cannot get proper answers as Storas is being run as a private empire by a few persons for their own private benefit. Their funding bodies, WIE and Big Lottery, are also - by assosciation - wholly complicit in the abuse of the community.
There is no meaningful interaction between the board and the community other than the usual brown toungers, and if you dare to question anything or challenge any decision you will be both threatened and publicly ridiculed. We are being administered by a few individuals who are out of their depth while at the same time thinking that the show will go on, and on. At some point there will have to be an accounting for the hundreds of thousands of pounds that have been squandered with little more to show than a well fed face and a load of airmiles.
Rural estate management and community development it ain't.
The sly deals behind the scenes for the allocation of crofts has been underway for some time - and woe betide any township clerk that doesn't toe the line.
A good example was the transfer of the croft in Eriskay to the woolly jumper who already owned two properties in Uist. There was at the time a strong local demand from within the Eriskay community, including quite a few young people. Storas ignored local requests and transferred tenancy to the itinerant who had threatened court action against the township clerk for having the impertinence to object.
This readiness to use the courts to control and subdue the community has been a handy tool in the Storas workbox: Storas may yet find however that it can have two sides to it.
And will they need to have ear tags inserted into Crofter's ears?
It was the usual landlord stuff and he was speaking as a landlord. Imagine it! Are we to accept that the only things that motivate him are money and power. The Crofters Commission can be brought in the remove a crofter as tenant even when the croft is being used properly. Imagine the road to Bosta beach. Yes the dual carrigeway to the beach, well this road is being used as the pretext for removing an active crofter from his croft.
The real reason is that the moves made to 'buyout' the landlord and create a 'crofters paradise' were squashed so now its payback time. Kill a few off and the rest will be very careful. Typical communist tactic. Kill of 5 or 10 percent and the rest will behave. Just like Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and even his beloved Cuba. Imagine his new mantra 'Keep the crofters down'.
This is happening because a buyout didnt happen here. You guys on the bought out estates have better watch your steps or your in front of the firing squad.
Remember if he is aiming high, the gun is pointing at your head.
grazing crofters - is this a novel form of salad only alfresco dining or is it a nostop eating disorder
All township clarks(sic)should be issued with a spelling book.
Clarity as to whether its talk or talking is important.
All true about the Bosta beach road BTW.Very similar situation to the dissenter on Kirkibost pier who wrote that the white shed was 'partly funded from the proceeds of vice and extortion'. Remember what happened to him. These scams are all controlled by 'place men' just like the mafia and hardmen are brought in to make the people behave. The hardmen are council working in tandem with the local member. A perfect example of this is how the system went about stifling legal and proper use of the buildings at Kirkibost pier. Again all because the placemen in the council, wie, etc etc were being controlled and using the system for a political's purpose. The tweed industry is being used in the same way as fishing and is just as tightly controlled. Controlled by how grants, work and money is given out. Controlled for the same Old-Labour commisars who became New-Labour millionaires who then had a spending spree on our money.
Dear Angus,
The line I hold on land changes all the time and you are getting out of step. I'll send round Jim straight over with his green hunter wellies to stamp on your toes for stepping on mine. No hard feelings, but a man in my position can't afford to look ridiculous.
Blaming my pet Darling is the thing to do these days and I'll just have to follow fashion as I usually do. Bleating on about the bankers is just so like bleating on about the Berneras - they cant take advice, they want it their own way, my way is not what they want, they dont listen. Enough for a book, and now he's done just that. The place needs a good clean up by he was just too wet to do it. My henchmen are having a good go though. Bad lawyers are really useful but high minded lawyers are impossible.
You mentioned offshore earning and I need some advice. My AfganIrac war is now recycling so much of George's public money into my private coffers that I'm difficulty counting it. My company did 18 thousand million pounds in the last few years across there at two hundred percent profit. What a wonderful war I'm having. Anyway, I reckon that the UK money that I'm earning outside the UK is not registered for tax, so its all mine.
But I must dash, all of your money that is now my money needs to be counted.
Excellent, Excellent.
Yours ever
Wee Woc
Maybe I'm wrong but isn't it the crofters commission who are repsonsible for assigning tenancies, decroftings etc and not landlords?.Surely landlords are consulted and have a right to comment but the final decision regarding who gets a tenancy, apportionment etc lies with the commission.
7.50
As with most things which are controlled by the civil service your observation is - on one side - correct. However the murk begins to aqppear when you realise that the decision that is taken by the commission is the last part of a consultative process.
The commission seeks the view of township clerks, local assessors, DEFRA, and the landlord, and generally makes their decision based on the information before them.
DEFRA view an application from an agricultural stance and it is usually a dispassionate and professional summation of where a particular croft sits within the agricultural activity in its township.
The clerk however is often inclined to view an application on a personal basis. There are a good many clerks working away for the benefit of their township and community. However, there are also the sly carpetbaggers who are operating on a personal agenda and are running mini fiefdoms.
Information regarding decrofting applications and assignations comes to a township in the first instance through the clerk. He may or may not choose to inform the township and seek their view, unfortunately it is at this point that the process often falls of the tracks.
Take an imaginary township -say, down at the south end of Uist - where house sites are pegged out without the shareholders being aware that that plot of land had even been taken out of crofting tenure. To further enhance the community we could then decroft perhaps a site for an ambulance station or even a fire station. Sadly the shareholders are then kept in the dark as to the value of the income these sales are bringing in to the township, any any query to the clerk to have a look at the township accounts is met by bluff, bluster, and veiled threats. Couldn't possibly happen of course.
Then we move on to the assignation of crofts, to assume that this is an even playing field with a slight tilt in the direction of the younger members of the community displays a naivety last seen with Snow White. The Eriskay assignation to the woolly jumper is almost a specimen case of how a landlord can ride roughshod over the community and not be challenged by the Crofters Comission. In defence of the commission, they can only respond to the information which is presented to them. In Eriskay the clerk was threatened with court action if an objection from the clerk was the critical factor in the assignation not going through. The fact that the landlord, Storas, connived with the applicant and did not uphold the objection from the community only serves to undermine any claim that Storas may make to be 'promoting crofting and strengthening the community'.
Storas may be completely out of their depth at running a crofting community but unfortunately they are not the only landlord who pays lip service to promoting and sustaining crofting and communities within the crofting counties.
Post a Comment