Monthly Archives: January 2009

Argyll’s Loganair airlinks now secure until 2013

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A recent tendering has seen Loganair emerge with a renewed contract to operate the air services between Glasgow and Campbeltown, Tiree and Barra in the Western Isles. This new contract will run from 1st April 2009 until 31st March 2013.

All three service contracts have been awarded under Public Service Obligations (PSOs). These require a minimum of two return trips a day between Glasgow and Campbeltown (excepting weekends) and one return trip a day between Glasgow and Tiree and Barra (excepting Sundays).

These airlinks are crucial to community and economic life in Argyll’s islands and remote places. The renewed contracts have been welcomed by Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson for thieir support for local economies and their continuing extension of Argyll’s transport system.

CalMac subsidiary CMAL revises Argyll pier and harbour charges

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CMAL’s previous charging structure was not entirely clear and was found to be erratically applied. This has led to a revised system of fees at Argyll’s piers and harbours. These include: Coll, Colonsay, Fishnish, Kennacraig, Oban, Port Ellen, Tiree and Tobermory as well as nearby linked harbours at Kilchoan, Lochaline and Lochranza.

Berthing chages are currently based on Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT) at a rate of 34p per tonne. From 1st April (and no, it’s not a joke) this will come down to 30p per tonne, aligned wth charges imposed by other port authorities.

Traffic dues for cars and passengers will increase by no more than inflation. Fees for commercial vehicles will come down from the current £2.62 per metre to £0.95 per metre. Livestock will be charged at 65p per head.

Also from 1st April fishing boats will be able to pay a composite fee for berthing and landings. This was not previously available to them. Until now, a boat of up to 10 metres (the size of most West Highland fishing boats) paid a berthing fee of £19.65 and 8% of the value of their catch at each landing. From 1st April these boats will have the opportunity to choose to pay a composite fee of £22 for each berthing or an annual composite fee of £456. They may also choose to pay on a berthing-only basis of £13.50 per berthing or an annual berthing-only fee of £116.

Oban Port Users Association feels that the new system of composite fees will be fairer for pier and harbour users in Oban and a significant benefit in the other ports. Why the difference? This is because the Oban situation is currently more complex. Landing fees at the South Pier are paid to CMAL while berthing fees for tying up at the CalMac pier are paid to the parent company.

Once everything is coherently organised, Peter Tosh, Chair of Oban Port Users Assopciation sees fishing boats paying around 25% less than they do at present.

The other side of the new arrangements – there’s always another side – is that leisure craft may find themselves charged at piers and harbours which they had previously used for nothing.

Appin Burns Supper moves to Pierhouse Restaurant at Port Appin

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Ticket holders for Appin’s Burns Supper can be reassured that the event will go ahead, although the venue for the 24th January will now be The Pierhouse Restaurant at Port Appin.

The planned venue at Appin’s recently refurbished Creagan Inn restaurant has been temporarily closed, threatening the Burns Supper which has now found its new berth at Port Appin. All tickets have been sold.

Business as usual at Oban’s Caledonian Hotel, the Ballachulish Hotel and the Isles of Glencoe Hotel

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The above hotels were part of a portfolio of 36 hotels owned by Folio which went into administration in early December 2008. Eighteen of these have now ben acquired in a management buyout by Mulbourn.This is a group of 13 former managers with Matthew Welbourn as Managing Director and Alan Murray as Finance Director. The two men held the same posts under Folio, which will continue to be their flag of convenience.

The deal takes Folio out of administration and saves a total of 1,200 jobs across scotland, 76 of these in Ballachuislish and Glencoe and 36 in Oban.

Sorting out the facts on Michael Russell’s proposed forest leasing scheme

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For Argyll has spent a fair bit of time and space on the Scottish Government’s proposed forest leasing scheme – which means we’ve done a fair bit of research on the proposals and a fair bit of thinking about them.

The proposal is to lease around 25% of Forestry Commission Scotland’s forests – in Argyll and Aberdeen, for up to 75 years, raising £200million to spend on creating new forests. The volume of planting proposed in these new forests – about 10,000 hectares – will absorb carbon by 200,000 tonnes per annum by 2020 and by a projected 1.2million tonnes per annum by 2050.

The proposals have been attended by some of the clearest examples of irresponsible political black arts we’ve seen in a while. Facts have not been worth garnering or have been kicked into touch in the interests of whipping up knee jerk opposition to the proposals simply for party political gain. Jobs would be lost… Forestry Commission Scotland would have no role to play…

As For Argyll has repeatedly stressed, both of these unfounded scares have been robustly countered by Michael Russell, the Minister concerned, on so many occasions that he must recite the facts in his sleep.

Now another matter has been raised and in the raising, more inaccuracies have been coined alongside some genuine concerns.

Saturday’s (17th January)  Press and Journal has an article disclosing that the Scottish Government has now confirmed that it is indeed to allow lessees of the forests to apply for grants to replant the harvested areas they lease. These grants are to come from the Scotland Rural Development Programme.

The paper then quotes Richard Baker, North East MSP, as saying about this matter: ‘This is a win-win situation for these private firms. They could chop down timber that has been planted at public expense, walk away with the profit and then get paid to replant more trees’.

This statement suggests that the private firms involved would be getting the taxpayers’ timber for nothing in the first place.

The fact is that the taxpayer has of course paid for the timber Forestry Commission Scotland have planted. It is also the taxpayer who would be selling the leases for their initial harvesting and for the ground. It is the taxpayer receiving the revenues. And it is the taxpayer applying those revenues to the reduction in carbon and the fight against climate change. There’s no give away involved in any of that.

However, the disclosure that the private firms will have access to Rural Development funding as an additional sweetener is a quite different issue. This has not been previously disclosed, as far as For Argyll is aware.

Peter Peacock MSP makes the very real point in the Press & Journal’s article that: ‘… the interests of farmers and other forestry organisations which compete for a share of funds under the Scotland Rural Development Programme..’  would be damaged. They would be competing for a smaller share of the Rural Development Programme’s funds, with a part of its budget probably topsliced to fund replanting by these private commercial interests.

The grants to be made available to the commercial forest lessees would have to be subtracted from the estimated £200million raised by the leases. Only then would there be an accurate picture of the much less substantial revenue the proposal would raise for the taxpayer to spend on reducing the level of circulating carbon emissions.

A commercial transaction is a commercial transaction. If there are private firms interested in long leases of parcels of Scotland’s commercial forests then they should themselves expect to bear the cost of replanting after harvest in the normal way.

What was – and is – an innovative and defensible, if controversial, strategy to combat climate change without additional cost to the taxpayer may well now fail. It may fail because of the volume of highly irresponsible scaremongering which has gone on. It may now also fail in the face of reasonable opposition to a very uncommercial element of what was presented as a commercial proposition.

The Scottish Government points out that all the issues raised in connection with the proposals will be addressed within the consultation now taking place. It has urged people to take part before the consultation ends on January 27. You can do this online at the Forestry Commission.

Surfer rescued a mile off Kintyre’s Machrihanish beach in Force 11 winds

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A man in his early twenties, surfing off Machrihanish beach on the Mull of Kintyre with a friend was reported missing at 15.40 after they got separated. An hour and twenty minutes later at 17.00 he was found a mile off the beach by a rescue helicopter from Prestwick which picked him up. The winds had whipped up to Force 11 – one point below hurricane level.

The surfer was taken to hospital as a precaution but was uninjured.

The helicopter has had to stay at Machrihanish airport because of the curent wind strengths – a fact underlining the risks the crew took to rescue the surfer in these conditions.

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Ennstone disposals continue

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The Ennstone Group is continuing its asset disposals. It has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Ennstone Inc., has agreed the sale of its wharf facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to West Penn Aggregates Inc. West Penn Aggregates will pay, on completion, $1.73 million cash.  Completion of the transaction is conditional on Ennstone Inc.’s lenders releasing their security interest over the wharf facility.

Ennstone anticipates that the sale will be completed by 26th January 2009. The Group will then be required to repay approximately $0.21 million of outstanding finance leases of parts of the property concerned. On 31st December 2008, the property had a net book value of $1.95 million and had generated a loss of $0.66 million in the financial year which ended on that date.

Ennstone Inc. is currently negotiating with its US lenders on how the proceeds of the sale – which will be retained in the US – will be applied.

Ennstone Group is continuing to seek and negotiate on either a refinancing or an offer for the Company. However, it concedes that its financing situation remains critical and there can be no certainty of a satisfactory outcome.

This means that the four Argyll quarries – at Furnace, Dunbeg, Benderloch and Bonawe, operated by the Group’s Scottish subsidiary, Ennstone Thistle, will have to continue to hold their breath.

Contents of Bute’s Ascog Old Manse go for over a quarter million

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When the Ainslie Collection was sold earlier this week at Lyon and Turnbull in Edinburgh, it saw the contents of the Bute home of antique dealers Gilbert and Lillian Ainslie go under the hammer.

Interest was intense with telephone bids coming in from Europe and America and bidding was competitive. The auctioneers estimated that about 50 of the 250 present were dealers. The Ainslie’s chose not to be present to see their possessions go as part of their preparations to retire to Perth on the mainland.

They had evidently tried to retire once before – on moving to Bute. But the interests and habits of a lifetime don’t go away so easily and they soon found themselves edging back into business.

Although the Ainslie’s had decided and the auctioneers had advertised that no item would carry a reserve, when it came to it this policy deserted them.16 items were not sold because bidding had not reached their value. These included the two most expensive items: Bal Costume – a Demetre Chiparus art deco group of figures estimated at £30k-£50k; and a pair of huge Japanese cloisonne vases estimated at £25-k-£35k. The Ainslie’s now intend to keep these for their new home.

The sale total came to £275k including the 25% buyers’ premium.

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DGS TV is GO

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DGS TV in first public vewingStewart Shaw, Headteacher of Dunoon School, now finds himself with a television station on his hands – and a very capable in-house production team.

DGS TV was launched today (16th January) to the entire school, the local press, For Argyll’s TV unit, Argyll and Bute Council’s Education Spokesperson, Councillor Isobel Strong and fellow Councillors Bruce Marshall and Alex McNaughton.

As the school’s population finished its lunch there was a loud countdown to the start of the first DGS TV weekly magazine programme. As the count hit zero – there it was. A stunning set of animations from Sam started in outer space with a view of earth, homing in to Google Earth, zooming down to Dunoon and – the doors of Dunoon Grammar School. The hall went silent with a sense of the cosmic significance of the achievement and many chests visibly swelled with pride – Councillors amongst them.

DGS PresentersDGS Gavin, Diana, MarieThe presenters of the programme, Steven and Kirsty, confidently managed the show from a set that looked like a cross between a contemporary cathedral and the Starship Enterprise – a studio that certainly is not within Argyll and Bute’s education budget and cannot possibly exist in Dunoon Grammar School. It doesn’t.

This is the same technology used daily by television stations, for eample in weather forecasts. Chromakey allows presentations and interviews to take place before a green screen which, in production vanishes against a background set which is a computer generated image (CGI). These are the newest media production tools and the students at Dunoon Grammar are clearly in control of them. (Many of the photographs here have been taken against the green screen to let you see how it works and how, in some, people seem to be suspended in mid-air.)

At the moment there is a voluntary team of up to thirty students from across all the year groups in the school. There are others waiting in the wings. The plan is to move to a point where there are several distinct production teams and they take responsibility for a weekly show in rotation. Skills will be cascaded from the pioneer team whose work was showcased today to other teams as they are put together. This is first class educational practice, with skills passed on student to student.

DGS Leanne campbellDGS Chromakey - Lynda Ben and SamSo what was actually in the first show? There were announcements – of the biggest ever Burns Supper in the School on 23rd January, and naturally being filmed for a future show. There was live music – from singer songwriter Leanne Campbell accompanying herself on guitar. And there was more music, from Mahmoud Mahdi on the Oud – twelve-stringed and teardrop shaped, considered the most important Arab instrument.

Here we had respect for the very real specialist skills of fellow students, given pride of place in the first ever outing for DGS TV.

Talking afterwards to some of the production team and to some of the other students who had seen the show for the first time, a lot of interesting perspectives emerged.

  • The technology used is causing genuine excitement among students using it and those who are queing to start.
  • Three spectators, Gavin, Diana and Marie, were taken by surprise by the quality and look of what they had just seen and were impressed.
  • Ben, who does the editing, has discovered he now looks a the world around him in terms of what might make a good shot or a good transition.
  • Sam, who did the opening animations sequence for the show, now scans the television shows and films he watches to check out interesting techniques.
  • Sean, the cameraman, sees people around him in a new way after seeing them framed in his lens.
  • A technical team of around ten strong is doing the organisation, the stage management, the set ups and making decisions – the start of team work and management skills that will stand them in great stead later on.
  • Jordan – the legend – seems to be adopting the role of all-round fixer

DGS Paul Gallanagh The initiative began with the arrival at Dunoon Grammar of Paul Gallanagh to the school’s Business and IT faculty. He came from St Patrick’s in Dumbarton where he had been involved in setting up the UK’s first pupil-led school television station.

In collaboration with the History faculty, a cross curricular documentary video was produced – Blasts from the Past. This saw students research major figures from Scotland’s wars of independence like Braveheart and Robert the Bruce. Then, using the time machine (these education budgets are amazingly flexible), the historical characters the students had fleshed out were beamed into a television studio to answer for themselves.

This project demonstrated to the entire school just what a powerful cross-curricular tool in-house television could be – and so DGS TV came into being today.

The station is setting out as it intends to go on – with some big scores. It got permission from Snow Patrol – yes, Snow Patrol – to use the band’s worldwide hit, Open Your Eyes, as the show’s theme music. And Dougie MacLean, the singer songwriter responsible for Caledonia, allowed the students to make their own version of the Homecoming Scotland 2009 video, using his music and setting it to images of Dunoon.

The history of the school offers some mouthwatering potential interviewees and contributors.

Former students include Sylvester McCoy (so that’s how they got the time achine for Blasts from the Past); former UK Labour Party Leader, the late John Smith from Ardrishaig; Lord George Robertson, an Ileach and former Secretary General of NATO.

DGS Presenter Kirsty with Councillor Isobel Strong DGS Stewart Shaw Headteacher

Councillor Isobel Strong would love to see these opportunities spread throughout schools in Argyll and Bute but is realistic enough to know that in today’s economic circumstances this may have to wait a while.

Headteacher Stewart Shaw says: ‘Already I have witnessed pupils’ confidence grown as they have learned new skills outwith the traditional school curriculum’.

Asked if he expected to find the corridors of the school increasingly peopled by dudes in shades announcing ‘in my next show….’, Mr Shaw looked momentarily alarmed at the prospect and quickly took refuge in safety: ‘This type of learning experience reflects our commitment to embrace curriculum for excellence.’

And so say all of us.

Photographs by Rebecca Martin:

  • Top shows the first DGS TV show projected onto the Dining Hall wall with its attention grabbing CGI set.
  • Below left: Presenters Steven and Kirsty
  • Below right: Spectators, Gavin, Dianna and Marie
  • Next down left: Singer songwriter Leanne Campbell
  • Next down right: Lynda Henderson from ForArgyll.com with Ben (editor) and Sam (animations)
  • Down single portrait: Paul Gallanagh, DGS Business and IT Faculty
  • Bottom left: Presenter Kirsty with Councillor Isobel Strong
  • Bottom right: Headteacher Stewart Shaw