A daughter, Charlotte Mary Campbell, was born to the Duke and Duchess of Argyll on 29th October. Mother and baby are doing well, a familiar phrase but one which means a great deal to the family concerned. For Argyll offers every best wish to the Argyll family on this happy occasion – and we’ve given the new arrival her first, personal Google tag.
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Promoter of Inveraray’s Connect Festival goes into red
The company promoting the annual Hydro Connect Music Festival in Inveraray has revealed a pre-tax loss of around £1.1million in its accounts to year-end March 2008, the year in which the Connect Festival was launched. This loss compares with a modest pre-tax profit of £21,267 in the accounts to March 2007. The group’s gross profits has slid to £2.9m, compared with £3.5m the year before.No turnover figure was provided.
DF Concerts, the company in question, suggested that its downturn was, in part, due to the significant investment it had made in establishing the Connect Festival.
The company’s Managing Director, Geoff Ellis was in London yesterday for the UK Festival Awards, with the company’s main festival promotion, T in the Park, now in its 15th year, named last month as the 4Music Festival of the Year, seeing off Glastonbury and Leeds. (And – 1st November footnote – T in the Park won the UK Festival Awards’ prize for best line-up.)
He has pointed out that as well as the cost of establishing the Connect Festival, the company had invested heavily in its infrastructure and in a new accounting system. These are obviously foundation-building actions for the future strength of the company.
The figures have been described by Mr Ellis as ‘expected’, with the comment that they: ‘don’t obviously represent how positive this year has actually been for us’. He evidenced this year’s stable audiences for the flagship T in the Park festival.
There are some illuminating additions to the picture. Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Argyll and the Islands, the enterprise body for the area, invested a significant amount of public money in the Connect Festival for a three year period. This year’s (2008) Festival, while hit by heavy rain on its last day, attracted significantly more support and markedly more positive responses from its local audiences than was the case in its establishment year.
A cynic is never taken by surprise, so let’s pose a cynical perspective on the statements around the publication of DF’s summary accounts. Without access to the details of specific costs on the ‘infrastructral developments’ and the ‘new accounting system’ in relation to the cost of establishing Connect – with the enterprise sponsorship set against this – it is impossible to get a clear picture of the relative facts.
However, the almost by-the-way focus on the set-up costs of Connect in the revelation of an accounting loss may be worth a second look. This could be hoped to have a diuretic impact on the funds available from a rural enterprise agency anxious to see tourist industry development on its patch.
Should such a consideration arise, HIE Argyll and the Islands would be advised to stay the re-opening of the purse strings until they have concluded a rigorous analysis of DF’s overall accounts.
It is understood that DF Concerts were delightedly surprised to be offered the three-year enterprise funding for the event in the first place. Urban businesses routinely regard rurally-based agencies as wet-behind-the-ears soft touches. There’s something of a smack of this in the current DF song-and-dance. Caveat emptor and all that.
Coll-based charity, Project Trust, gets higher than ever application rate for gap year work
The charity, Project Trust, based on Argyll’s Isle of Coll, has had higher than ever numbers of applications this year from school leavers for the life-changing experience of a gap year working abroad with the Trust.
Already the office in Coll is swamped with communications from this year’s 185 successful applicants as they find their feet in new places around the world.
In India volunteers are getting used to living on a bamboo houseboat; discovering that the normal experience of a trip to the cinema requires getting involved in communal cheering and booing; and being awestruck at an Indian bridegroom’s arrival at the ceremony on an elephant. (Although if they’d watched Coronation Street they’d already have seen this happening in darkest Manchester.)
In Honduras, one volunteer in early difficulty with the language convulsed her primary school class when she asked: ‘Who’s stolen the biscuit from my desk?’ Instead of using the word ‘galleta’ for biscuit, she’d said ‘guillina’, which means chicken.
The cost of a volunteer’s year working abroad with Project Trust is £5,000, half of what it would cost them to stay in the UK for that time, estoimated at £10,000.
Expect bad news from Scottish banks next week – and its starting now
Lloyds TSB have just announced that nine of the top eleven jobs which will operate if the proposed merger takes place will go to managers from within its own organisation with only two going to former HBOS people.
Eric Daniels, CEO of Lloyds and already named as CEO of the giant bank that would emerge from the takeover says: ‘We had to make a judgment around who would be able to be most successful in leading this much larger, much more complex organisation. The process was absolutely impartial’.
The two HBOS executives to be appointed to designate senior roles are Harry Baines, slated for General Counsel and Company Secretary of the new bank; and Jo Dawson, who is to be Director of the new Wealth and International division.
In another serious blow to Scottish hopes, there will be only one member of the senior management hierarchy based in Edinburgh. He is Archie Kane, to be Group Executive Director of Insurance. He currently runs Lloyds TSB’s Scottish Widows business and is already based in the city.
Sir Victor Blank, chair of Lloyds TSB has already been announced as the designate Chair of the new bank.
National pride apart, it’s hard to argue with this coming landscape in the context of HBOS’s performance, fuller details of which will emerge next week – as we report below and have, uniquely in Scotland, covered before.
Next week will see trading updates from HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB . There will also be more information on the capital Lloyds and RBS are raising from UK taxpayers. And there’ll be more on the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds. as shareholders in both companies start to play an active part,moving towards the point where they approve or reject the proposed takeover.
Expect the results from both HBOS and Royal Bank to be bad. There will be wider public focus on a matter on which to date, For Argyll has been the only news service in any medium in Scotland to comment. This is what we called ‘the back story’ on the HBOS collapse, in an earlier report.
This is about a little talked-of but significantly more toxic lending than sub-prime mortgages and one to which HBOS has a massive exposure. Read our earlier article. This situation will have to emerge next week so expect some shocks.
Holyrood backs proposal to British-Irish council for Scottish leadership in renewable energy
On Wednesday this week (29th October) the Scottish Parliament voted by 65 – 30 in favour, with 16 abstentions on a Scottish Government motion that the British-Irish Council should support a proposal by Scottish Ministers to lead work on renewable energy.
Anything to do with renewable energy is of core interest to Argyll, with its significant resources in almost all forms of renewable energy – wind, wave, tidal flow, marine and fossil biomass.
Scotland as a whole has huge resources in the field and the Scottish Government is driving strongly ahead in developing them.
There is a logic in the proposal voted through at Holyrood. It would make sense for Scotland to take this lead. It is the only part of the UK to set its face resolutley against nuclear power and to turn energetically to harvesting energy from alternative and renewable sources.
Update on Argyll strike situation from council to coastguard
Argyll, like the rest of Scotland, is currently facing the possibility of industrial action on a range of fronts, disrupting public services. There has already been industrial action arising from most of these disputes. The question is whether they can be resolved without further and progressive action.
This is the timetable of upcoming key events:
- 10th November: Around 30,000 public service employees and Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) personnel will join in UK-wide strike action.
- 11th November: Ballot of Scottish Water staff on taking industrial action over pay closes.
- 17th November: The result of a ballot of members of Unite, Unison and GMB will be announced, with the decision on whether local authority employees take further industrial action on their pay dispute.
Argyll and Bute Council is involved in this Scotland-wide dispute between local authorties and workers represented by the three major trade unions named above and relating to pay offers, the most recent of which is the subject of the ballot of members. The unions have recommended that members reject this offer.
Thomas Cook Air Europa charter from Glasgow overruns runway at Lanzarote
An Air Europa flight (AEA-196) chartered by Thomas Cook and with 74 people on board has this morning (31st October) overrun the runway at Lanzarote airport in the canaries. Said to have been dealing with problems with its undercarriage, the aircraft skidded off the end of the airstrip and came to a rest above a main road near the beach.
No one has been injured although most were shocked by the experience. Passengers have now been taken to their hotels. Lanzarote airport is now closed to incoming and outgoing flights while the beached Boeing 737 is moved.
Thomas Cook say that they had not formally chartered the flight but that they had organised holidays for several of those on board.
Neither the Thomas Cook nor the Air Europa websites have offered any news on the incident nor any contact phone number for concerned families. While this is far from acceptable customer care, there is no apparent need for concern for any of the passengers aboard.
Young Argyll physicist is best in the UK
Susan Skelton from Minard in MId Argyll who graduated this summer with a first class degree in physics from St Andrew’s University has been recognised as the best physics student in the UK.
St Andrew’s nominated her for the award which she received from Steve McQuillan, Managing Director of the National Physical Laboratory at a ceremony and gala dinner at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel.
Susan is now doing post-graduate research at University College London, working in the field of biomedical optics and in particular on techniques of measuring and imaging brain activity.
Mull Theatre building is go
Argyll’s Mull Theatre, one of Scotland’s busiest touring companies, now sees its new production centre at Druimfin completed.
This will be where the company will prepare each of their touring shows. As a fully equipped and technologically up-to-the-minute establishment, it has also been designed to be hired as a production facility to other theatre and performance companies.
The National Theatre of Scotland, for example, has been conceived of much as Sir Humphrey memorably briefed Jim Hacker in Yes, Prime Minister. It does not have its own theatre. It is a creative focus not a physical one. Like Mull Theatre, it tours all the time. The new production centre at Druimfin will support such companies by making available a first class, purpose-built workplace in what is effectively a retreat.
The new building will therefore give Mull Theatre themselves the best possible base to work from and, when they are on the road, it has the capacity to earn them money on hire to other companies.
In announcing the completion of the building, Tony Cox, Associaite Director of Mull Theatre, gave particular praise to the work of the company’s project managers for the build, Hardies Property and Construction. The budget for the project has been very tight from the start and rising inflation in the local construction industry has tightened it almost to choking point. But Mr Cox described Hardies as having worked to ‘squeeze every last drop of value’ from the contract.
Argyll will be looking forward to the touring productions emerging from this new base, securing a well loved company’s future.
Argyll’s health authority – NHS Highland – to make £36m savings
NHS Highland has confirmed that it is having to make efficiency savings of around £36 million over three years. Its Chair, Gary Coutts says that the amount is a ‘very, very small bit’ of NHS Highland’s budget and that this is clear when set against a spend of £1bn during the same period.
Mr Coutts insists that: ‘It will not affect the outcomes for patients. Patients might see the way that they get services is different, but waiting times are going to come down, cancer waits are going to come down, the length of time you wait for a consultant is going to come down’.
The Scottish Government said the health authority’s baseline allocation for 2008-09 represented an increase of 3.15% but that like other NHS boards, NHS Highland would have to make 2% efficiency savings over the next three years.
In 2006 the territory of NHS Highland was expanded to provide services within the boundaries of the Argyll and Bute Council area. This followed the dissolution of Argyll’s previous health authority, Argyll and Clyde Health Board which served 420,000 people and was then £80m in the red and still running.