We have had reports from several people present at the recent Connel Community Council of an announcement made to the meeting by senior councillor in the current ruling coalition at Argyll and Bute Council.
Councillor Duncan Macintyre is reliably said to have informed the meeting that Connel is to get ‘a big new school’.
Since Achaleven in Connel was one of the schools on the council’s successive lists of those proposed for closure, this comes as something of a surprise.
Ten years or so ago, Achalevel had a roll of around 63 children and the village today retains plenty of children to fill a healthy school. Parents withdrew their children from the school because of what they saw as management problems they had been unable to have addressed.
So why, now, would Connel get a new school, especially since, as we understand it, there has been no change to the circumstances which led to the parents’ abandonment of the school. This means that there is no guarantee that the same circumstances would not obtain in any new school.
Up the road from Connel, at Dunbeg, fifty new houses are being built – with no room in the local school there for all of the children they would house.
Dunbeg would be a much more realistic location for any ‘big new school’. Connel folk are realistic enough to feel the same and would be happy to see circumstances come about that would make it possible for their existing school to be taken out of mothballs.
Puzzled by the logic of this proposed new build – and by the launch of such a project in the current financial circumstances, we made enquiries in quarters we would expect to be fully aware of any plans for a new school in Connel.
No one we approached has heard of it.
This curiosity raises three possibilities.
- Are those we talked to seriously out of the loop? Given that two are members of the administration, that would seem unlikely but not impossible, If this is the case, the question is less about the announcement than about the logic of the educational provision envisaged – and the failure first to resolve the primary issue in Connel.
- Is a new school for Connel no more than an ambitious notion of Councillor Macintyre’s that has not yet progressed beyond an idea? If this is so, announcing it in this way is profoundly misleading.
- Worse, is this the crackle of pork in the pan with the May 2012 council elections in the offing? If this is so, such an announcement might be thought more than misleading.
Councillor Macintyre’s colleague, Councillor Ellen Morton, who is Depute Leader of the Council as well as Education Spokesperson, might care to offer Connel Community Council her authoritative version of what lies ahead in educational provision for the village.
You have to laugh!
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Just fired in a F.O.I. to see what story we get.
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Have you asked Duncan MacIntyre ?
sounds like hes looking for votes as he realises hes finished come May
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Newsroom – as you obviously didn’t turn up to the community council meeting, why didn’t you ring Duncan MacIntyre and ask him? Then he could have told you what he said and saved you the bother running yet another flier.
From now on, I’m not going to bother reading anything that starts ‘We have heard’ ‘We understand’ ‘have had reports’ etc etc – it simply means you haven’t checked it out.
Facts, not rumour, are the basis of good reporting.
Dare one mention the Dunoon Observer?
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Interested bystander makes a good point: why not give Cllr McIntyre a ring and ask him for clarification. If it is true then this is a good story but if it is just hearsay then it isn’t worth commenting on.
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For Interested Bystander and Dr Douglas Mackenzie:
This is not hearsay. we have confirmed that this is what Councillor Macintyre said at the meeting.
When we use the formula: ‘We understand…’ it means we have authoritative sources who do not wish to be quoted.
This relates centrally to the culture of retribution this council administration has bred. It is profoundly unhealthy and it is very powerful.
It is pointless to enquire of Councillor Macintyre since, as was shown during the school closures saga, he has a pragmatic relationship with the facts.
In that case, in attempting to persuade his colleague, Councillor Devon, to vote FOR the closure proposals, he offered her ‘information;’ he knew to be false, namely that the schools in her area had asked to go to consultation. This could not have been further from the truth.Fortunately he was overheard by the representative of one of the schools in question, who immediately put Councillor Devon straight.
Councillor Macintyre’s conduct in the ‘consideration of the Oban Bay Transit Marina proposal bears equally little scrutiny.
However, as with anyone, Councillor Macintyre, if he wishes to claim he did not give this information to the Connel meeting, is welcome to do so here.
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In the past couple of days the ‘Newsieums’ ie the monotonous “‘We have heard’ ‘We understand’ ‘have had reports’ etc etc” have been out in force both in this article and in the ‘Campobeltown Ring and Ride Service article. Unattributable sources (wink, wink). In addition, Newsie has made a real dog’s breakfast with blatant errors, lies and muddled reporting in the £200 million for Health Service in Scotland article.
Hardly surprising that we now begin to see calls for more balance and accuracy in the FA articles.
The poor excuse “We use the formula: ‘We understand…’ it means we have authoritative sources who do not wish to be quoted.” – sounds good but as Interested Bystander points out in the case of the Dunoon Observer your “we understand” article attracted loads of posts – and ultimately a lawyers letter. How good was your “authoritative source” then? As good as the sources for the Connel article? Better? Worse?
Merely repeating innuendo, rumour and hearsay is never going to be good journalism no matter how often you try it.
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Newsroom is correct to say that Cllr McIntyre has shown himself to be a stranger to the truth and duplicitous in character. Given that I would agree that asking him for confirmation is largely pointless as his response would suit the audience rather than the reality.
However maybe it would be worth e-mailing this article to him directly and asking if we would like to offer comment on it as if is aware of it and remains silent then it would suggest the article is not far off the mark.
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The article is hearsay:
hear·say (hîrs)
n.
1. Unverified information heard or received from another; rumor.
2. Law Evidence based on the reports of others rather than the personal knowledge of a witness and therefore generally not admissible as testimony.
The article may truly represent what people at the meeting thought that Cllr MacIntyre said (and I have no reason to doubt that) and what they thought he said may in fact be what he said (though I think we are all well aware of cases where this is not the case). To make it more than hearsay requires either a direct quote from someone at the meeting or confirmation from the man himself.
Without that we are left with just the probability that Mr MacIntyre said something about a new school at Connel but with no insight as to why he said it. If you ask Mr MacIntyre to confirm what he said and why then this at least takes us forward regardless of how much credence we give to his words.
I’m intrigued by the story but need a bit more substantiation and insight before I am going to pay much attention to it.
On a wider note, most of us here like For Argyll (and we forgive the typos). We like the commentary, we also like gossip and insight but most of all we like accuracy. FA’s credibility depends on getting the facts right. After all, you don’t want to end up with the same degree of credibility that the Council’s school closure proposals managed!
Sometimes it is worth digging just a bit deeper so as to get a great story rather than just an interesting one.
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I realise FA is a blog, not a news website, and that comment is your stock in trade, but if you are going to pass something off as a news story and not merely tittle-tattle, you must surely do the basics – and that means checking facts and getting all sides of a story before you publish. Merely saying someone can comment if they wish after a story has gone live is just not good enough.
You seem to have a pragmatic approach to the principles of journalism.
I, and perhaps others who enjoy the debate, would feel better about joining in if best journalistic practice was adhered to.
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For Simon: The facts in the report on the £200 million for health projects across Scotland came direct from the government information service.
This does not necessarily say they are correct – but it is reasonable to assume, for the time being anyway, that they are reliable.
When we use the ‘We understand…’ formula, we know exactly who are sources are. They have disclosed themselves to us or they are people whom we have approached directly.
In each of these cases,for reasons we understand, they wish not to be attributed. In each case we are satisfied that the sources are authoritative.
In the bullying culture many work and live in, the release of important information in strict confidence is the only way the public are ever going to learn a lot of what they need to know. And there are no circumstances in which we would betray a source.
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Newsie – quite frankly I find your ‘explanation’ preposterous!
Are you seriously asking readers on here to believe that “the bullying culture” you ascribe to the Council is so “very powerful” that not one indivudual member of Connel Community Council or the Community Council collectively and as a statutory body is prepared to put its head above the parapet and say that ‘Cllr McIntyre said this’?
Rubbish.
And as far as your belated and inadequate ‘explanations’ of your £200 million for Health Service article are comncerned – even you can copy press releases – but try reading the comments and you will see several posters ‘correcting’ more of your errors/lies/mistakes/muddled reporting…..
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“In each case we are satisfied that the sources are authoritative.” – Yeah???
What happened to your authoritative source on the Dunoon Observer story?
Let me guess – you just adopted the ‘publish and be dammned’ approach. Only to retract when you eventually found the email from their lawyers….
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I see from today’s Oban Times that Achaleven school is to re-open!! And not a word from ‘For Argyll’ about this!
Finger on the pulse?? Ahem, recent events would suggest not….
But just to save Newsie, “doc”, Crazy, Robert et al the bother I’ll tell you shall I who made the announcement that Achaleven was re-opening? (Just a year after it was mothballed and some six months since Newsie (above)poured scorn on the very idea of it re-opening) It was none other than the Prince of Darkness himself – the hater of all of all things rural – especially rural schools – it was none other than Cleland Sneddon….
If you want to read more about it – then you best buy the Oban Times – ’cause you will find nary a mention of it on here…
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As you seem to have read the Oban Times I take it you read that council staff were afraid for their jobs or does that not bother you.
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Going back a bit now “Simon”!
I’m not sure where you discern Newsroom scorning Achaleven ever re-opening. Are you confusing this with her scepticism about a “big new school”?
Since we are on revisionism, events have shown that Newsrooms rendition of the meeting detailed above turned out to be entirely accurate despite your scepticism on the issue.
Mr Sneddon did indeed announce Achaleven would re-open for business and if you read the story carefully you will see why: the parents in Connel have a statutory right to send their children to Achaleven as the school was never closed. Neery a thing Mr Sneddon could do except grin and bear it.
My congratulations to the parents and community in Connel for getting their act together to save Achaleven. I look forward very much to seeing the school’s roll and reputation built once more. And who knows: maybe we will see a new school in Connel some day so as to accommodate the increasing pupil population in the area that will follow the new housing planned for the Dunbeg corridor.
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Achaleven School has not reopened by the agency of the present council administration and its officers.
Cleland Sneddon did not even claim this to be the case.
He made it clear that the school has reopened only because the parents of Connell asked for this – a request which procedurally must be granted provided they could deliver a viable minimum starter pack of pupils – which they have done and with more in the pipeline.
Achaleven was only closed because of the utter failure of the council even to attempt to address a serious failure in relations between its head teacher and the local community. The result of this was that all of the parents chose to send their substantial total number of children elsewhere.
This administration was very happy to let Achaleven School die, a school which needs relatively little to bring it back up to decent operational standards.
This article is headed ‘Porkwatch’. The relevance of that heading remains the central issue. It can be no coincidence that this decision has been processed at this stage, within days of the election – which will be the reason why Cleland Sneddon was so uncharacteristically careful to claim no credit for himself and his bosses.
Councillor Macintyre attempted to deceive the local community on the issue of their school, as this article records.
He is now fighting for fourth preference votes in this very constituency, in an attempt to survive the election on 3rd May.
‘Porkwatch’ is the name of the game, keeping an eye open for ‘pork barrel politics’ – the game of favours, promises and treats that traditionally keeps poor council administrations in power.
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Intersting post Newsie – dedicated it seems to making points that no one raised and answering questions that no one asked. A bit like a record stuck in a groove.
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We’d have thought it obvious that a part of any decent news service’s primary job is to make points no one else raises and to ask and answer questions no one else asked.
And there are some tracks that have to be replayed so that no one forgets the rap.
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