The street lighting contract

Finally, the legal action between Iain Crichton and the Comhairle has come to a conclusion, and the Council have lost.

This all arose in 1996 when the contract was awarded under 'strange' circumstances to the Council DSO.

Although Mr Crichton submitted the second lowest tender by a few thousand pounds, the tenders did not appear to be on a like-for-like basis, and crucially the DSO ignored the costs of TUPE and some capital expenditure.

Some Councillors moved that it be awarded to the existing contract holder (item 83), but this was defeated on the casting vote of the Vice-Chair, who was in the Chair. Before it could be discussed at Policy and Resources or at full Council it was accepted on the instructions of the then Vice-Convener when he became aware of a likely challenge to the award.

Chickens have now come home to roost, but the fox has retired, as has virtually everyone else directly involved in this scandalous decision.

This left Mr Crichton struggling to ensure his business survived, after being improperly, unfairly and maliciously treated in an attempt by a Councillor to build a Soviet-style power base around the DSO.

With the ever changing panoply of Council lawyers fighting a rear-guard action and the Council stalling, prevaricating and failing to release all documentation to Mr Crichton in the hope he would go away or go bankrupt, the inevitable has now happened.

If someone else doesn't ask exactly how much this has cost the Council, then I will.

Many businesses in the Western Isles have the view that the creeping nationalisation of every business by the Council has not slowed since then; indeed the distrust in the ability of the private sector - or more accurately the LOCAL private sector - to deliver services is the underlying principle on which the Council operates.

That may be harsh, but perception is the truth in the eyes of many people.

One again, the Council run buses have run at a loss - have they ever run at a profit??? - after winning a contract that, er, significantly undercut the existing operators but omitted some of the overheads in calculating the operating costs. Sound familiar?

Nurseries are being absorbed into the management of the Council through a series of (entirely co-incidental!) delays in making payments for free places, and though increased demands from the local regulators. Hourly rates have risen and available places dropped as a consequence.

I regularly argued for removing many services from the control of the Council during my time there, but the fear of being responsible for 'job losses' meant I was almost totally unsuccessful. That the 'jobs' would be transferred to the private sector was irrelevant, when there are empires to be built.

Thankfully, not all departments operated like that, despite pressure to do so, and I hope that the Council can now use this disaster as an opportunity to review WHY the Council does what the Council does.

Job(bies)worth

Thanks to The Register for drawing my attention to this important issue, which too many Councils seem to ignore:

Auckland Regional Council (ARC) has required the inventor of a worm-driven composting toilet to get professional confirmation that his workforce was not "traumatised or stressed" by its crap job, the Sunday Star Times reports.

Colin Bell was looking for official approval for his "wormorator", which relies on a colony of tiger worms to tackle solid waste while the resulting liquid residue can be filtered and "disposed of in underground trenches". A council operative duly paid a visit, but became "concerned" at the worms' working conditions.

Bell recounted: "She felt that the worms were being unfairly treated, being expected to deal with human faeces, and that it could affect them in a psychological way. I said, `Well, what do I do about that?' and she said `you have to have someone with the necessary qualifications to say the worms are happy'."

Senior consents officer Robyn Floyd described the woman's concerns as "fair" because Bell's application was to deploy the wormorator at a campground "where sewage flowed mainly for two weeks a year, with little flow during the rest of the year".

He explained: "The phrase was used by a new member of staff, but it did relate to a valid concern with stress on a proposed worm population from huge fluctuations in flows and thus feed for the worms, and the corresponding performance of the system."

Mercifully, vermiculture consultant Patricia Naidu was able to assure ARC that the worms were "in excellent health and breeding happily".

Stressed worms relaxing with a large G&T
after a hard day in the office

Christmas joy

Tonight saw us at the school Christmas concert, having been at the nursery Nativity play last week.

It's that time of year, when little children ingratiate themselves into the souls of the massed band of parents, grandparents, assorted relatives and a few strange strangers.

The concerts were a triumph with the children playing musical instruments and singing their little hearts out as they hit every note, often in the right order; and recited their lines and did their little piece of acting/moving/participating at or near the right time.

The happiness on the face of the children to see their families, having come to see them perform, was tangible and worth every moment perched uncomfortably on undersized chairs and squashed worse than a budget airline flight.

The happiness on the faces of the proud parents and families as the concert ended was also tangible, as the realisation that it was only 365 days until the next performance.

Extra cash for Gaelic

Alex Salmond will announce: "This new funding includes £1m per year to be directed towards Gaelic education, £1m per year for the implementation of projects in the National Plan for Gaelic, and an additional £0.5m towards support for Gaelic broadcasting."

Too Little. Too Late.

Nicol Stephen might have something...

Like many people, I felt that Nicol Stephen may have doing the political thing in his attacks on the Trump decision, and his calls for an investigation into apparent improper behaviour.

Despite the obvious incompetence of Alex Salmond, Aberdeenshire Council, the LibDems on that Council, Chief Planner Jim MacKinnon and the Scottish Government in handling this matter, I was happy to let it run and see where it ended up.

It is obvious that this application as been clutched warmly to the bosom of many of those concerned, instead of being given the due deference one should give to an angry skunk.

Until I read the words of the The Donald's representatives on earth on the BBC website:-

The Trump Organisation said: "The Trump Organisation is dismayed at the political attacks. These attacks are more than misguided, they are malicious, inaccurate and potentially destructive and they threaten to once again endanger a £1bn project which has the overwhelming backing of the north east of Scotland. The politician responsible should cease and desist before real and permanent damage is done."

If you don't now know that Nicol is on to something, you cannot read through the bombastic, bullying, and offensive attitude that oozes from beneath His Self-righteous Wigness.

Go for it Nicol, and find out what he is trying to cover up.

Let's start with the numbers, and some wild guesses:
950 holiday homes @ £100k each = £95m
36 golf villas @ £200k each = £7.2m
2 golf courses @ £2m each = £4m
Infrastructure, say = £5m

All of which equals a mere 11% of the proclaimed £1bn investment, which either means that the staff are on fantastic wages, or there is a lot of bullshit being swallowed by the gullible speculative double-counting.

Tommy Sheridan

So the tanned one has been lifted by the polis in connection with their perjury inquiry, after his miraculous libel victory last year.

At the time it struck me that both sides were talking about very different events as the disparity between the stories, the basic facts and even the dates of certain events.

An intriguing and scurrilous story from the News of the World, based either on 'exposing hypocrisy' or 'part of a campaign to oppress the poor' depending on your view point.

Irrespective of all of that, I think that there is much more to come out about massage parlours, extra-parliamentary 'bonding' sessions, and much discussion of the SSP policy on Uganda. It's going to be fun for everyone except Mrs S.

One worry I have about the whole process is a paragraph on the BBC website:-
The talk107 station reported on its website that Mr Sheridan had just finished his Citizen Tommy show and was leaving the building on South Gyle Crescent at about 1310 GMT when a white Mercedes estate pulled into the car park at speed, coming to halt directly in front of his car.

It looks like Inspector McKnacker may have been watching too many episodes of Starsky and McHutch, and may be more concerned with style than substance.

Lothian & Borders Polis maintained
a low profile before arresting Tommy.

Manford is 'mushroomed'

It's cannot be often that the leader of a council political group is kept in the dark and fed bull$hit by the Minister, MP and MSP of the same party.

But that is what has happened to my old friend and colleague Cllr Donald Manford, who Chairs the Transportation Committee on Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.

And the issue?

Well this week Cllr Manford announced that the Scottish Government had instructed CalMac to search for a suitable vessel for the Lochboisdale-Mallaig route.

Unfortunately for Cllr Manford, it is a wide-spread knowledge in the shipping industry that CalMac have been searching for a vessel for the past three months, since the Minister instructed them to do so despite a previous refusal to consider the service, and after subsequent lobbying by Angus MacNeil MP and Alasdair Allan MSP (and Storas Uibhist).

The Convener of the Comhairle is a director of CalMac, so he knew this was in the offing. Many Councillors knew it was happening, including the Labour Group - who in a final, vicious, twist have assumed that Cllr Manford was in the loop and have spread the word that he was keeping the Council in the dark for party political gain.

Donald - I am told - chose his words carefully, saying that he had just become aware of the situation. But that was lost in the noise.

But the final (and utterly undeserved) attempted humiliation for Donald from his own side is that the deal that the Government is pushing is for the current Oban-Castlebay-Lochboisdale service to become a Mallaig-Lochboisdale-Castlebay service, leaving Donald's constituents with a much worse service, and to a location they have little connection with.

The result of all this duplicity is now public knowledge in Barra, and the people there are up in arms with a public meeting this week certain to express total opposition to the plans brokered behind Donald's back by their MP.

That'll be a fun meeting, at which I hope the truth comes out, and Donald does not become collateral damage.

Council Tax freeze

According to the Comhairle's annual report (page 9):

Council tax raises £9,467,000
A forecast 3% increase would take in £284,000

Total Central Government support is £83,003,000
A 0.7% real terms increase is £581,000

Therefore the real terms extra funds available for developing the Western Isles after freezing Council Tax is £297,000.

And the next year the shortfall due to a Council tax freeze will be the £284k above, plus £292k for the following year due to compounding, meaning that a 3% increase will actually be totally used up funding the freeze and not in delivering any new services.

Council Financial Settlement

So the Comhairle has received a budget increase of 3% (or 0.7% in real terms).

With salary increases running in excess of that; it means that cuts will be necessary.

As the (discredited) budget formula is based on population growth and changes in school rolls, the Western Isles is pushed further into a vicious circle of decline with only the 'floor mechanism' ensuring that there is any increase in the budget.

Against this, the decision to centralise schooling i.e. close small rural schools, looks not just eminently sensible from a financial perspective, but any contrary decision is simply storing up problems for future years.

Having long forecast that these four years would be financially very difficult appalling for the Comhairle, I now look forward to seeing what is to be cut, and how the books are to be balanced.

At least we seem to have been spared the ritual embarrassment of the sitting MSP telling us what a wonderful settlement it was for the Western Isles.

Trumpted in Trumpton

I have the greatest sympathy with Councillor Martin Ford of Aberdeenshire Council, who was until today the Chair of the Infrastructure Services Committee.

Having had to deal with more than a few contentious planning applications in my time, I know that some decisions are more difficult than others and that there has to be respect between the applicants, the officials and the councillors to allow applications to be properly dealt with.

In this instance, Cllr Ford was faced with an intransigent developer who was trying to force through the plans without (as far as I can see) any concern about discussing and trying to resolve the matters that were causing concern.

And then attempting "take it or leave it" blackmail, instead of using the normal appeals process should they be unsuccessful.

However, Aberdeenshire should have removed the delegation from this matter, given the contentious nature of the matter, and referred the decision of the committee to the full Council for them to come to a view.

That's all immaterial now, as the Government have called it in - in great haste and under mysterious circumstances - leaving an unpleasant taste in the mouth for how this has been handled at every level.

The Committee that I Chaired refused tricky applications in the past, and allowed applicants to resubmit revised applications with no fee, which resulted in better plans being presented, and focused the minds of developers (and officials!) on resolving the problems. Some applications were deferred or withdrawn more than once before the majority gave approval.

However, it is with incredulity that I read the comments from my an old friend:
Leader of the SNP group on Aberdeenshire Council, Joanna Strathdee, said: "Aberdeenshire Council needs to restore the confidence of the business and wider community in the planning process and show the world that North East Scotland really is open for business and serious about inward investment."

What this is telling rich developers is that they can make unreasonable demands from the system - if they can meet with leading politicians - and then the Council will descend into an orgy of self-destruction and recrimination over their own inept mishandling of the situation.

Demonstrating spectacular ambivalence over the seriousness of the matter, the votes were:

• 26 for removal
• 10 against removal
• 29 abstentions
• 3 absent

Cynics like me will be barely able to wait to see the political make-up of the votes.

If anything, I would say that today's decision demonstrates the inability of Aberdeenshire Council to manage it's own affairs.

Good news for Arnish

The success in getting a contract for 49 towers for Turkey is fantastically good news not just for the current and future employees of the yard, but also should underpin the future of the yard.

During the next six months the owners need to secure further future work, and the Scottish Government need to get their finger out to determine the existing planning applications, so that IF the proposal are to go ahead, then Arnish will be well placed to bid for the work.

And with the prospects of off-shore wind....

Uncertainty over windfarms 'killing' communities

I'm copying the story straight from the Gazette:

The uncertainty in Lewis over the windfarm issue is 'killing' communities, according to Moorland Without Turbines.

Chair of the organisation, Catriona Campbell said that islanders were 'sick with worry' over the issue. She pointed out that this month marked the third anniversary of the windfarm planning applications 'that would see the Isle of Lewis transformed into one of the biggest windfarms in the UK'. In 2004, Lewis Wind Power applied for 234 turbines on Barvas Moor, and Beinn Mhor Power applied to build 133 turbines on the nearby Eishken Estate. Other applications are also in the system' leaving a cloud of uncertainty over the island', she said. "At the outset, everybody said that this should not turn into another Lingerbay quarry saga. But that's exactly what's happening. These proposals are a noose hanging over the affected communities," she added.

MWT and I have long agreed that an early decision on the applications was necessary, as the best thing for the community was to have a decision and for us to then live with it -- whether we agreed with it or not.

Clearly, I totally support the applications.

It is just a pity that Donald Trump wasn't financing the turbines, as a speedy decision seems to be guaranteed by the Executive in cases involving millionaires. Despite a promise from the Energy Minister, to speed up decisions, this only applies to new applications. And if the Executive order a PLI, you can add 3-5 years to the entire process.

Not exactly what MWT expected (or were promised) when they supported our MP and MSP in the last elections.

But the expected announcement of a rapid growth of offshore wind would possibly remove the need for onshore wind, and keep everybody happy/happier.

But, to do that you need the inter-connector. And if everyone had been pulling in the same direction from the beginning, we could have had an inter-connector promised to allow us to exploit off-shore wind, and the possibilities of tidal and wave power.

That was the long game that the Council was engaged in, but some who should have understood this never engaged with the Comhairle to find out what was actually going on.

And sadly, we might all lose out as a result.

Trumpton

The problem with being 'holier than thou' is that if you aren't.....

The news that Alex Salmond met with the Trump representatives to discuss the planning application the day before the call-in decision was made is absolutely loaded with the possibility for innuendo, suspicion and public disgust.

As the mere Chair of the Planning Committee for four years I was scrupulous about meeting with and discussion planning applications with either the applicant or any objectors, and I tried to instil this ethos into the other members.

I can recall having a shouting match over the phone with a constituent who was trying to discuss an application that was coming to the next meeting (I forget if he was the applicant or objector) and I told him that I couldn't discuss the matter over the phone, and he would either have to write or meet with me with others present.

I recall a fellow Councillor meeting with objectors and the applicants to try to amend a planning proposal and then him actively campaigning for the revised proposal. Thankfully, he didn't attend the Committee to discuss the issue.

One only has to look at the inability of Councillors in the NW of Lewis to discuss the very contentious wind farm proposals before they were considered to realise just how careful you have to be.

Alex Salmond has acted in a manner that is obviously perceived to be improper, and that perception will not go away. If he wanted to appear squeeky clean, he should have met the Trump team a long time before (oops, he did, in New York) or AFTER the call-in had been announced.

This is a gross and disgraceful error, and leads one straight to the conclusion that money talks.

Just for the record, I think The Donald is committed to making big money, not committed to Scotland (or Ireland), and not committed to anything other than his own vanity. And, if the scheme is so important, then the chancers Government should have called it in before the Council came to a view.

Gordon of Cathcart

The slow car crash that is the Labour Party donations revelations continue to amuse, baffle and elicit a sense of total disbelief.

I thought that the internecine fighting couldn't get much worse, but how wrong I was.

Charlie Gordon MSP is unsure if he is coming or going; unsure if he is retaining the party Whip; not sure about the position of some donations to his parliamentary campaign; and trying to draw the flak away from Wendy.

Meantime, a Labour Councillor in Wendy's constituency of Sleaze North, South, East and West is undergoing a Police investigation into forged timesheets for his job with Glasgow City Council.

Now, one of the top funders - Willie Haughey - is refusing to give any more money until Labour put their house in order.

From my personal knowledge and experience of Labour in Glasgow, none of this is new, it is just that the loss of power has led to loss of control over the (gagging) mechanisms of power, and the shock to the system has not been taken on board by the majority of the activists.

I prophesy weeks if not months of further bad news for Labour on this topic, culminating in a low-level resignation/suspension, a smack on the wrist from the Electoral Commission and Standards Commission.

And poll ratings only slightly better than the Tories.

Team Alexander await tomorrow's papers

It's our money!

In 2001 and 2002 Labour was given grants of £183,000 to help it understand the new rules on election funding. Given that they had written the law that was just been enacted, and their subsequent failure to understand what the hell was going on, the Electoral Commission should ask for their money back.

But let's skip the easy 'fish in a barrel' kind of kicking that Labour deserve over the continuing saga of party funding.

But the really unbelievable part of it is the overall picture.

The Electoral Commission gave grants totalling £700,000 to all parties to help them understand the new rules.

Let's get this right - the new legislation is enacted in 2000 by MP's who one would expect have read and understood the legislation and now they want grants to understand how to apply the Act. Section 54 is the key section, and it is quite easy to understand, even for someone like me who has never been involved in writing it, reviewing it, debating it and then enacting it in law.

Yet, the Electoral Commission dish out our money to help "install new systems" or "employ new staff". Just tell the greedy sods to raise the extra funds themselves. Get sponsors - David Abrahams to sponsor an identity checker, or Paul Green to fund an employee to check the donors names against the electoral roll.

Or better still, get the MP's to bother to find out who was actually giving them money, rather than allow them to sit around working out how to squander our funds.

Alternatively, and less charitably - but probably more accurately - the parties didn't have the faintest idea of the legislation they were discussing, far less how to implement it. Which would explain much of the bad law that comes our way.

I've returned

Having come back from my week long retreat to the foothills of the Himalayas where I spent the time learning yoga, breathing techniques, and consuming fermented yak curd, I feel revitalised and ready to face the world again.

Seven days of Assam tea colonic irrigations has flushed my system of all negative thoughts, all my vitriol and my deep-rooted cynicism. I could feel the scales being removed from my eyes - which was not in any way connected to the colonic irrigation.

Back in Stornoway and reading the Gazette I have found new vitriol and cynicism to replace the flushed ingredients, but this time with added -and invigorating - splenetic disdain.

Angus studies his political future

Please sir, can I do the opening?

Across the road from the SNP office in Stornoway, a new and spectacular building is taking shape.

The Bridge Centre is a mixture of a new building for the local YMCA; student accomodation for the University of the Highland and Islands Western Isles Campus; combined with commercial letting accommodation and public facilities. I was lucky enough to get a tour around the partly completed building recently, and compare the actual development with the hard-fought planning application over which I presided.

Our MSP has written to the chair of the Bridge Centre, enquiring when it will be completed and offering to open the facility along with a Ministerial colleague.

At this point anyone with local knowledge will be spluttering on their cornflakes; but let me expand for the benefit of those further afield.

The Chair of the Bridge Centre - and the person to whom Mr Allan wrote the personal letter - is a Donald J MacSween.

Mr MacSween has two dark and dirty secrets that Mr Allan is obviously unaware of, but which I can exclusively reveal to Mr Allan's staff (who I know are regular readers of this blog).

Brace yourselves for a shock, but Mr MacSween is a Councillor and also the Labour Candidate as MP for the Western Isles, and his response to Mr Allan is unrecorded, but I guess it was in the negative.

The wing of the new building directly obscuring Mr Allan's view of the world has been officially named 'Lamont Lane' after Johann, the former Labour Housing Minister, who ensured that the (very hard fought for) funding was delivered.

I also understand that Mr Allan (and Mr MacNeil) have never been in contact with the Bridge Centre during the entire building process until now, when headlines might be able to be grabbed, which has severely irritated the Bridge committee.

As a Labour supporter commented, "Why not walk across the road and talk to someone, rather than write an ignorant letter from Edinburgh and make an arse of yourself!"

Jobs for the islands

It is excellent news that the supply chain for the proposed Lewis Wind Power scheme has secured all the construction work for the islands.

With all the jobs and work going to be guaranteed for the islands, which politician is now going to campaign on a platform of "No jobs for the islands!" - apart from the MP and MSP who already are?

Wendy Alexander's resignation

Is not appropriate, unless she

• Covered-up the donation
  
• Lied anywhere
  
• Offered special privileges to the donor
  
• Knew he was not entitled to give a donation
  
• It was part of series of transactions

Having staff who get things wrong is part and parcel of having staff. It is how you manage the mess-ups that is the mark of the person.

I must say, I found it difficult to write this posting, but I have given the whole position a lot of thought, and considered the alternatives before I came to a conclusion.

£950 is such a minor amount that no politician of any standing would be swayed by such a tiny sum. Even if they knew about it.

The alternative, is that we expect our politicians to be so anodyne, squeeky-clean, untainted by anything that passes for a human trait, and without any experience of life. The bland have been elected in 1987 in the Labour landslide, and look how good that was for politics.

I'd rather have a politician who has seen life, made mistakes and learned from them, and NOT repeated them (lying and duplicitousness are probable exceptions from this rule) rather than have a a clone factory churning out political inadequates in the same boring mould.

Alternatively, let's make every mistake - no matter how minor, and which junior member of staff committed it - a resignation matter for the politician. Ban private donations and let the political parties soak the public purse for the larger, larger, and ever larger sums they persuade us they need to spend to persuade us that they will manage things less badly than the last lot.

Cynical, I know, but there are our choices - Stepford politicians or humans?

A vortex of doom

Polly Tonybee has written in a recent Guardian article about Labour needing to develop policies to unify the party as being the only way to avoid the vortex of bad news into which Labour is spiralling.

Too late, Polly.

The wolves are out, scenting blood, and the weakening death-rattle of the Labour Government is only too self-evident.

Next year is going to be an economic disaster for Labour, as the economy suffers with increases in mortgage rates; the impact of sub-prime loans in the US; and the unravelling of Gordon Brown’s micro-managing of the economy.

All of which will be Alasdair Darling’s fault. But he can’t be sacked until the other side of the election, as it will look like a desperate act of a desperate PM.

Instead, the polls will worsen, the Labour Party will implode in internal argument; the Tories will unite behind their leader behind whoever is most likely to bring them to power; and Gordon Brown will be boxed into a corner over selecting an election date, until he appears totally out of control of the circumstances, and he drifts to a major defeat.