A quick flashback to last Wednesday night
and the meeting of the Nairnshire Community Councils. Making a big contribution
to the debate was Alistair Noble. He talked about returning power to Nairn, the
town centre and the role that NICE will play in redevelopment of the old social
work buildings. Here's a couple of short extracts from what he had to say:
“If we don’t try we’ll not get anywhere.
There’s so much that’s so good about Nairn. There’s so many good people in
Nairn. It should be possible to pull this together. I think we’ve got to be
quite explicit about this whole thing about power. Either we get control of
decision making and we make the best decisions we can, and we know that might
not be right, and we might make mistakes, or let other people make that decision
for us and sit there and moan about it.”
“If we are going to go down this road it
has to be with the support of the four councillors, the eight community
councils and the community. I haven’t heard anybody, so far nobody has,
disagreed with the idea that we’d like a nice town centre. We want really, free
parking. We want a good High Street. I know these are all really easy things to
say. NICE has actually got to show that it can do something so we are starting
with the social work buildings and hopefully get money coming for a feasibility
of the town centre and these things stack together.”
This observer is a great admirer of
Alistair’s vision and wishes his efforts well. If things go the right way the
old social work buildings will be developed by the community for the benefit of
the community and if genuine control of that process stays in Nairn then that
will be a breakthrough that could lead to other things. The role of our four
Highland Councillors will be crucial and might, at times, be testing of their
loyalties. Events in the past have clearly demonstrated that the interests of
Highland Council do not always dovetail with the best interests of Nairn. The
new administration promises a new beginning but just how much are the ruling
rainbow group capable of turning round the (up to now) centralist juggernaut that is
Glenurquhart Road?
2 comments:
I wish there were so many good people in Nairn, we might not have to wade through the dog s••• then
whatever happened to the proposed digital clock and enhanced lighting on high street that was paid for by sainsburys as part of the monetary package supplied to nairn by sainsburys,has it been allocated?or squandered away by the councillors on trivial things,and they hoped we would forget about it.
narook.
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