Good news for Morvern has come in the news Continue reading
Tag Archives: Lochaline
Today: commemorative service from St Kilda to mark 80th anniversary of evacuation
Today, Sunday 29th August 2010 at 3.00pm, Radio na Gaidheal is broadcasting Continue reading
Homecoming Scotland 2009 gets a return of an unexpected kind – the stolen Glenfinnan Stone
The historic Glenfinnan Stone is a foot across and has a hole cut into it allegedly to support the standard of Bonnie Prince Charlie when he raised it at Glenfinnan on Monday 19 August 1745, launching the second Jacobite rebellion.
In 1989 the stone vanished from where it had always lain, on a mound near the monument at Glenfinnan at the head of Loch Shiel.
The stone and its disappearance was mentioned to presenter Ben Fogle in a episode of the BBC’s Countryfile programe by Iain Thornber, a local historian from Lochaline in Morvern, across from Argyll’s Isle of Mull and in the same land mass as Glenfinnan.
Two weeks after the transmission of the programme the BBC received a letter which they passed on to Iain Thorber. It was from a woman who had seen the show while on holiday in Skye but was herself from Hartlepool. She had the stone in her rockery there but had not known what it was or where it had come from.
It has emerged that the stone was taken from Glenfinnan and domesticated in a rockery somewhere in Scotland, from where it was passed on to the Hartlepool lady for her own rockery. After making contact with Iain Thornber when she found out about the stone on Countryfile, she has voluntarily returned it.
The West Highland Museum in Fort William, custodian of several Jacobite relics, will house the Glenfinnan Stone until, according to Iain Thornber, arrangements for its secure display in its own place can be made with the Roman Catholic Church which owns the Glenfinnan site.
The photograph of Genfinnan above is by Flaxton and is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.
CalMac subsidiary CMAL revises Argyll pier and harbour charges
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.
As Rum community votes in ownership, Morvern looks to community buy out
Islanders on the biggest of the Small Isles, Rum- all 17 adults – voted yesterday by 15-2 to take £15million of buildings and land into community ownership. This includes the community hall, village shop, tea room, campsite and land in Kinloch Village and Glen on the island’s west coast.
Government conservation agencies have owned the island since 1957. The Nature Conservancy Council transferred it to Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) in 1992.
The land transferred to the community is intended to enable the creation of the first crofts on Rum – up to five of them – helping to build a sustainable community and extending its size.
Alongside this development, the 300 residents of the Morvern peninsula, part of historical Argyll, are themselves considering a community buy out of land to enable them to secure the future of thier fragile community.
The end of 2008 saw 11 jobs lost as Tarmac shut down the 63 year-old Lochaline silica sand mine. These jobs represent 20% of the commmunity’s working population – a very serious economic blow.
The area’s new Community Council is setting about radical approaches to creating greater stability for the vulnerable community, looking at crofting, small business creation and affordable housing as a triple-pronged way forwards.
Making sense of this may involve a community buy out of land, not necessarily a single large land area but perhaps several smaller packets.
At the moment the community is in the research phase, studying the Land Reform Act, the Crofting Reform Act and the Forest Land Scheme to help them clarify their options and the thresholds they need to cross.
With The Herald yesterday (14th January) leading a campaign to prune Scotland’s 32 local authorities to 10 – a move championed by Tom McCabe and known, in some form, to be under consideration by the Scottish Government, community buy outs are increasingly relevant.
Changes will not happen overnight and, as in the turkeys not voting for Christmas cliche, we can expect any proposals to be fiercely resisted by every local authority in the country.
But we may well be on the edge of a progressive movement towards a smaller and much more cost-efficient local government system, backed up by far greater community self-government. The acceptance of responsibility and the growth of skills and authority coming from community buy-outs are a part of that new picture.
It may well be that the proposed re-structuring of Argyll’s community council’s into larger area councils is part of this developing scenario. If it is, its ends may be achieved by a less flawed notion than the current one.
The top photograph is of A’ Bhrìdeanach Point on Rum looking east to Bloodstone Hill, by Tony Page. The lower picture is of Lochaline by Martin Southwood. Both are reproduced here under the Creative Commons license.