YOUR VIEWS: Inverness Common Good management, Nicola Sturgeon and Highland Council on pupil attainment
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Time to look at Inverness Common Good Fund management
Inverness Common Good is in danger from those charged with its wellbeing.
Since the politicisation of the council many councillors have a conflict of interest ie the abandonment of the town house. The staggering loss at the Hogmanay event further highlights how the fund is being ravaged by ill-judged or biased decisions.
The governance of the fund requires to be amended to ensure the owners of the fund, the people of Inverness, determine its priorities.
The fund is an inheritance from our forefathers but recent history calls into question our stewardship of the fund. In 2018, the previous five years showed a reduction of 18 per cent, taking into account inflation, in the previous 10 years that figure is 35 per cent. In the intervening years the situation has continued to deteriorate.
The political decision to abandon the town house will result in a loss of up to £500,000 per annum to the fund and revenue loss of £100,000 to one event highlights the need for immediate reform.
The extent of this crisis is highlighted by the fact that the fund cannot entertain any further applications for community projects in this financial year due to lack of funds.
The Hogmanay loss indicates lack of rigour in financial planning as the figures released indicate that this loss could and should have been foreseen.
One questions, if the trusteess personal money had been involved, would the event have been allowed to continue?
On Monday’s meeting of the Inverness committee the previous year’s accounts and the forthcoming year’s budgets were presented and no councillor/trustee had any comment or question. Really?
A more representative governance would be 50 per cent trustees from the council and 50 per cent from community organisations such as community councils and other representative bodies.
The present situation is unsustainable, so let’s change it.
John West
Dores Road
Inverness
Impressed with Nicola Sturgeon
The media had a field day in the recent UK Covid enquiry, in particular denigrating politicians that their right wing bias have never liked.
In the case of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the questioning would suggest that she was in the dock and on trial, rather than simply answering questions at an enquiry.
In her own honest admission, mistakes were regrettably made, as they were by so many others in office, mistakes were an inevitable consequence of the challenging decisions that had to be made during such a unique catastrophe.
Given the challenges that the country faced at such uncertain, frightening and desperate times, I cannot think of any other politician that could have endured on a daily basis the presence of standing at the podium and delivering the sad news of death to this devastating disease, accountable for 16,465 people in Scotland alone.
She has been accused of political point scoring at a time of crisis, yet at that time of crisis, we never heard any mention of that this.
I believe she acted in a responsible way, with integrity and good conscience, doing the best she possibly could for the benefit of all.
I could see the anguish in her face as she delivered day by day the statistical death count, and I never heard once from any Scottish politician, outrageous comments such as “ let the bodies pile high” attributed to Boris Johnson.
If she had listened to Westminster, then the bodies would certainly have piled high.
Her enduring conduct throughout all of those desperate times was admirable, courageous and encouraging. Her sense of authority and responsibility unequalled by any other politician.
Of course mistakes were made, and an enquiry holding those to account can never compensate to the families of lost loved ones for that. But let’s not forget that the former First Minister was not acting entirely in her own right over all of this. She was seeking on a daily basis the advice of health ministers and other advisers, then arriving with great difficulty at the best decisions to be reached, a position I don’t think any of us would like to be in.
Yet the media will continue in their destructive and prejudiced way to criticise and condemn the actions of politicians that they find unacceptable, and not to their taste.
But not only are they in their condemnation denigrating the former First Minister, but they are also condemning Scotland.
John McLeod
Oakwood Court
Inverness
Primary teachers blamed for low pupil attainment
Primary school teachers got the blame for low attainment levels in a report considered at a Highland Council education committee this week. In the report, the council’s highest ranked education official, Nicky Grant, along with performance and improvement manager, Beth Brown, claim teachers “are still cautious when determining whether a pupil has achieved a level”.
“Clearly the politicians’ preoccupation with blaming everybody but themselves – the “it wisnae me, it was them” culture – is now percolating across to officials. This is despicable – especially since it’s on Nicky Grant’s desk that the buck stops. She is in charge, she is paid megabucks for being in charge, and if (IF) it was inconsistent marking that was the problem, then she is ultimately responsible for having measures in place to prevent this from happening.” – Charles Bannerman
“Primary teachers are worked off their feet. Understaffed and under funded by management who are clearly covering their own backs.” – Ed Lauw
“It’s never the council’s fault.” – Dennis Taylor
“They should blame themselves and their cuts, how can you teach with a school falling around your ears, oversubscribed and staff and budget cuts.” – Karin Thain
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