YOUR VIEWS: Inverness Common Good Fund management and city’s tourist offering
Time to look at common good management
I was horrified to see among 156 pages of papers for the August meeting of Highland Council’s Inverness area committee that no less than £53,532 of public money from the Common Good Fund has been splashed out on civic receptions. Amid extreme financial stringency, it beggars belief that such a sum should be spent on providing people (doubtless including councillors) with free food and drink.
Most scandalous of all was the £7804, including £3315 on marquee hire, splashed out on entertaining 100 people at the Inverness Highland Games. That’s £78 per head! And is there really any justification for blowing almost £6000 on feeding 230 hungry mouths at the Kirking of the Council?
But since each of these bean feasts individually cost less than £10,000, they can all be nodded through by a sub-committee.
This also begs the question of how much public money it cost to run the Highland Games as a whole, because it strikes me that what used to be a sensible combination of sporting event and tourist entertainment has now mushroomed into a great big vanity project.
Indeed, it’s apparent that the Inverness Common Good Fund is increasingly being deployed as a cash cow for a variety of vanity projects of questionable “common good”.
It’s high time, as finances become increasingly strained, for far more clever use of the Common Good Fund - within its statutory constraints of course.
Charles Bannerman
Culduthel Mains Court
Inverness
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We need to offer more to Inverness tourists
Inverness is being converted to a wee city of overpriced hotel chains. Locals do not benefit from the hotels other than some employment opportunities.
The tourists who come to Inverness are not contributing sizeably to our economy. They are not walking around with shopping bags as there is nothing to buy in Inverness that reflects the heritage and beauty of the Highlands or any Scottish traditions.
I visited Amsterdam recently - there are no empty shops in their city centre. The tourists buy mementos of Amsterdam and their heritage. I would say 80 per cent of the people I saw across our five-night stay had carrier bags with locally bought shopping.
I really think we are missing a trick.
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