Baldernock: another win for a threatened rural school
This time it’s East Dunbartonshire Council on the run. The redoubtable parent from Baldernock School, Niall Campbell, has secured a public statement from his local authority – in today’s (7th August...
View ArticleScottish Government publishes 2012-13 local government settlement
In an allocation of over £34 billion, Finance Secretary John Swinney today published funding allocations for Scotland’s 32 local authorities for the next financial year.In making this announcement, the...
View ArticleContinuing inability to grasp the GAE funding formula for small rural schools
This is bizarre, given that it was a focal point for the successful dispatch of the first set of closure proposals, with the evidenced challenge from ARSN, through Sandy Longmuir of SSN, upheld by...
View ArticleArgyll and Bute Council has £12.832 million of additional revenue for 3 years...
The surplus of £4.454 that Argyll and Bute Council has declared disguises the existence of an unflagged but substantial £12,832 million of additional revenue funding over three years from 2012-13 to...
View ArticlePolitical divorce in Angus and revelations in East Dunbartonshire signal...
We are hearing stories of moves afoot to close schools in Argyll and Bute – and we have already published on Education Director, Cleland Sneddon’s, core strategy for defence in 2013.He and his...
View ArticleSNP boxed in corner over Northern and Western Isles independence move
The emerging exploration of independence from the UK and Scotland by the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland, now joined in a trinity by the Western Isles, leaves the SNP in a serious bind.A movement...
View ArticleStruan Lodge closure proposal and costs confusion – have we not seen this...
So much about the mechanistic philosophy of the proposal to close Struan Lodge is familiar. So is the costing defended by a series of different stories, often contradictory:It was gross costing.No...
View ArticleFunding appendix pubished in advance of Rural Education Commission report
The unveiling of the report of the Rural Education Commission is in progress in Inverness just now – so the report is not yet available.When we get it, we will make it available and then take our time...
View ArticleScottish Rural Schools Network’s response to Rural Education Commission report
The Scottish Rural Schools Network was centrally engaged in the successful campaign to expose and defeat the fundamental flaws in Argyll and Bute Council’s series of two major primary school closure...
View ArticleProactive North Bute Parent Council propose collaborative regeneration model...
Yesterday, Tuesday 4th June, three members of North Bute School’s Parent Council, led by Chair, Liz Ferguson, made a presentation to Bute & Cowal Local Area Planning Committee.The objective of the...
View ArticleArgyll and Bute Council Chamber and the gender problem
During the upheavals of the past year at Argyll and Bute Council, there have been passing references to male councillors whose treatment of women councillors would be familiar to Fred Flintstone.In the...
View ArticleSalmond: ‘The bedroom tax is becoming a symbol of why independence is necessary’
‘The bedroom tax is becoming a symbol of why independence is necessary’.This statement of the First Minister’s in his keynote address yesterday, 19th October, was the explicit signal of the poverty of...
View ArticleArgyll and Bute Council seriously misleads Holyrood Education Committee
And they’ve done it in writing.On 3rd December 2013, Argyll and Bute Council made a written submission of evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Culture Committee, which is considering...
View ArticleSneddon at it again
[Updated below 9th January] He just can’t help it.Argyll and Bute’s Education Director, Cleland Sneddon, seems unable to play a straight bat.Just after midnight on Monday 8th December – at 00.49 on 9th...
View ArticleAudit Scotland ‘Action Plan’ for Argyll and Bute Council a flawed document
[Updated below with list of actions proposed.] Below is the Action Plan for Audit Scotland, laid out to guide progress towards the light at Argyll and Bute Council.While some of what it says is...
View ArticleKey battle for rural schools is on
Tuesday 21st January’s session of the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee was fascinating as much for what was below the surface as for what was said.The event was the committee stage of the...
View ArticleLocal authorities on manoeuvres
Everyday folk see COSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, as a well connected Labour fiefdom consistently subverting the attempts of the Scottish government to offer appropriate reasonable...
View ArticleWill Argyll and Bute Council change its name?
Yesterday, 13th March, the agenda for the next administration meeting, scheduled for Tuesday 18th March, was circulated to councillors.A stand-out item is the proposal that the council should change...
View ArticleCOSLA now facing endgame
It started as a power game to preserve the Labour party’s domination of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities [COSLA], representing all 32 Scottish local authorities in collective negotiations...
View ArticleScotland’s poor roads – is ring fencing on GAE now an issue?
Highlands & Islands Conservative MSP, Jamie McGrigor, has today highlighted constituents’ concerns about the poor condition of many local roads in the Highlands & Islands.The MSP questioned...
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