TEN YEARS AGO
Friday April 11, 2014
Lochgilphead on a knife edge as more shops shut
Argyll Council is failing in what could be its last attempt at saving many fragile communities in the region, according to an Argyll councillor.
John Semple says the local authority’s economic development plans ‘lack ambition’ as Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) confirms Lochgilphead is ‘economically fragile’.
HIE, which is tasked with encouraging businesses to set up shop in the region, dubbed Lochgilphead ‘economically fragile’ because of its falling population, residents’ low incomes, limited job opportunities and remoteness.
Evidence of this fragility was compounded this week when the owner of Cockles confirmed the shop could shut within two months; Mrs Macs coffee shop remains closed and plans to open a kebab shop on Argyll Street were shelved.
Now Mr Semple, who previously headed up economic development at the council, says the local authority is not doing enough to turn things around.
‘The trouble with the plans from the new administration I have seen to date is that they lack ambition and look much like previous plans, which failed to retain our young people or attract significant numbers of economically active people to live here,’ Mr Semple said.
‘These 10-year plans in development maybe the last opportunity to save many of our fragile communities.’
Mr Semple said, based on previous census figures, the council should be looking to create at least 500 jobs in the Mid Argyll, Kintyre and islands area over the next 10 years.
He identified the forestry, agriculture and food industries as areas for further development and job creation.
‘I want to project an image to the Scottish Government that this is a council that is ambitious for its future. They won’t invest in an area that’s not making these kinds of noises’, he added.
Council leader Dick Walsh said: ‘We are ambitious for our people and our area.
‘This ambition must be founded on realistic actions and the recognition that the task of growing our population cannot be achieved by the council alone.
‘This is being tackled through our Single Outcome Agreement which is a 10-year plan, developed with our partners, to grow our economy.’
Abandoned collie becomes a search and rescue dog
A Border collie who was abandoned in Lochgilphead by being left tied to the bumper of car has gone on to become an award-winning search and rescue dog.
Heartless owners left Cranna attached to a car in the town’s Co-op car park last year and it was not until the driver was pulling away that a passer-by spotted her.
Handed into Achnabrech Kennels, it was there that she was then rescued by Ken Weatherstone, who trains collies for Search and Rescue Dog Association Scotland (SARDA).
Since taking her to his home in Lochgoilhead last June, Ken and his wife Moira, who also volunteers for SARDA, have trained her to become fully-qualified rescue dog.
Last week she passed a vigorous test in Glencoe and was awarded the Madras College Trophy for best novice dog.
Cranna will now help search for missing people on mountains all over Scotland.
‘She is a great dog, very soft natured. It is great that a rescue dog has become a rescuer,’ Ken said.
TWENTY YEARS AGO
Friday April 9, 2004
Raising cash for Africa
The fourth-year geography class at Lochgilphead High School has raised £641.15 to help people in the poorest areas of Africa.
The students were supporting a project operated by Farm Africa, an organisation that provides African families with goats.
The goats provide nutrition and any surplus products can be sold for money, helping families to become self-sufficient. Just £17 can provide a family with one goat.
The fourth year pupils raised the money by holding a coffee morning and non-uniform day before the Easter break began.
Black Maria for Inveraray
Inveraray Jail has taken ownership of a wonderful prison-related artefact that is now being exhibited at the Loch Fyne side tourist attraction.
The process of getting the 19th century, horse-drawn Black Maria prison transport vehicle to Argyll began when Inveraray Governor Jim Linley received a call from the Governor of Aberdeen Prison.
The Aberdeen man thought it might make a good exhibit, even if its wheels had not turned in many a year and Governor Linley agreed.
‘Wonderful,’ he said, ‘that sounds exciting!’
The Black Maria was built in 1891 for use at Craiginches Prison, Aberdeen.
For some time she was not in good condition, having served as a chicken coup and garden shed at a local farm for 60 years, before being rescued by Aberdeen Prison, at a cost of £10, where she remained in the prison yard until now.
Having been carefully restored back to her former glory - and probably now the last of her kind in the United Kingdom - the Black Maria was ready to enter the historic yard of Inveraray Jail.
The two ton, 16-foot wagon was hoisted to its new home by a crane.
But why is she called a Black Maria?
It all started in the 1840s at Maria Lee’s lodging house in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Maria, the black land-lady, let the police know whenever she thought one of her lodgers was up to no good.
The police were there so often that their horse and cart came to be known as the Black Maria. Soon all vehicles for moving prisoners, in both the US and Britain, were known as Black Marias.
FORTY YEARS AGO
Friday April 13 1984
Miners’ strike begins to bite
The miners’ strike, which is currently halting coal production throughout the country, is also affecting seemingly unrelated industries, even in Mid Argyll, with the sawmill at Kilmichael-Glassary now completely closed, with no chance of it reopening before the strike is settled.
The strike is already severely affecting coal supplies to the area, with the local coal merchant only having a small amount of coal for old age pensioners, but the major direct sufferers are the 12-strong workforce of the sawmill, who have been laid off indefinitely.
The mill is devoted entirely to providing pit props for National Coal Board pits and with their major customers, the Scottish and Yorkshire pits, completely strikebound there has been no work for some time and the staff have been laid off.
A spokesman for the mill said this week that there was no hope of any of the 12 workers at the sawmill returning to work before the end of the strike as they were unable to deliver any pit props because of the miners’ picket lines.
He said that some pit props had been successfully delivered to the Nottingham area, where the miners are not on strike, but that this was only a one-off delivery and that until the Scottish and Yorkshire miners stopped closing the pits with picket lines there would be no work for his staff.
The various self-employed sub-contractors who fell the trees which provide the mill with its timber are still working normally, but a prolonged miners’ strike would also be likely to cast doubts over their work in the future.
Meanwhile, the local coal merchant in Lochgilphead, the Lochgilphead Coal Company, are severely hit by the strike.
A spokesman said this week that although a delivery of coal for priority customers (pensioners, etc) had been delivered, the company were otherwise completely out of coal.
They did have some supplies of smokeless coal and had also dealt with sales of firewood and peat, but the coal situation was described as being ‘very serious’.
The only coal merchant in the area with any house coal - as opposed to smokeless fuel - is D. McNair and Son, of Campbeltown, but a spokesman for that firm said this week that their own customers - and among those, old age pensioners - were being given first priority.
School shinty
The shinty season has started in earnest for Lochgilphead Primary School.
They are involved in the Schools Competition for the MacKay Cup. For this competition the schools taking part are divided into four groups, Badenoch, Lochaber and Argyll.
There are six teams in the Argyll section and the winner of this section will win the Archie MacCallum Memorial Trophy.
The teams play in two groups - Appin, Rockfield (Oban) in one group and Colglen (Kilmodan School), Tighnabruaich and Lochgilphead in the other.
Lochgilphead’s first match was against Colglen and it was played in the most atrocious weather conditions with Lochgilphead emerging the winners by seven goals to one.
In the return match in Lochgilphead on a perfect evening Lochgilphead proved they were again the better team by winning by eight goals to one. The boys look forward now to taking on the team from Tighnabruaich.
SIXTY YEARS AGO
Tuesday April 14 1964
Separate tax for the Highlands
A policy of regionally differentiated taxation, which takes account of the inequality of conditions in the Highlands, is suggested in a resolution framed by the Federation of Crofters Unions.
The resolution, which has been sent to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties, asserts that revolutionary policies are necessary for the solution of the chronic Highland problem.
Repeating its demand that the development of the Crofting Counties must be by a development authority, adequately endowed with finance, the federation warns the Government not to put all its eggs into the tourist basket.
The resolution expresses the ‘gravest concern’ that tourism, which will be only mildly palliative against unemployment and depopulation, might from the major proposal for the crofting islands in the promised White Paper on Highland development.
In another resolution union representatives deplore ‘the detrimental effects of the stop-go economic cycles on the less prosperous areas of the country, particularly the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
‘Expansion comes belatedly to this area, if at all, and the usually succeeding economic squeezes, involving a brake on public investment programmes, make the Highland area a straggler in the wake of the more prosperous, and therefore more insulated, south.’
The federation also gives its support to the proposal for a new university at Inverness, and endorses a plan submitted by the Lochaber Crofters’ Union for afforestation of crofters’ common grazings.
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