The email below was written by the late Councilor John MacGregor – elected in 2014 to represent Oban North and Lorn [Ward 5] at Argyll and Bute Council and who died before his first council meeting.
A fiercely intelligent man with the intuition and business nous of the natural entrepreneur, John MacGregor always saw straight to the heart of the matter. He was a founding member of the markedly able Oban Bay Marine team which proposed and spent eight years of their lives fighting for the transit marina for the sheltered ‘between the piers’ waterfront location in the town.
He was the formidable Chair of Oban Bay Marine from its inception to the moment of his own shock departure.
He would have been an unrelenting scourge of Argyll and Bute Council in its final dismissal of the project it had worked so long to undermine and obstruct. It has to be a moot point that his death freed the council to take the action they had patently wanted to take for years.
He sent this email to an Oban local Councillor, newly elected in May 2012 and who did not stay the course but chose later to resign – in the constituency in which, ironically, John MacGregor triumphantly replaced her.
The immediately recognisable ‘certain officer’ to whom Mr MacGregor refers in this email is Robert Pollock, Head of Department in Economic Development who has since left the council.
It is unutterably sad to hear a man who stood up to everything plead with local councillors to find the spine to stand up for what they constantly claimed to support.
That, as history now records, was a lost cause.
The MacGregor email
From: John MacGregor [mailto:john@ganavansands.com]
Sent: 24 January 2013 09:29
To: louiseglenlee
Cc: mary.jeandevon@argyll-bute.gov.uk; Hall, Fred; MacIntyre, Duncan; Robertson, Elaine (Councillor); McCuish, Roderick; MacDonald, Iain Angus; alastair.macdougall@argyll-bute.gov.uk
Subject: Area Committee
Chair,
I am Chair of Oban Bay Marine and we have just met with consultants in relation to the proposal of a short-stay pontoon facility.
This is the 5th consultancy process we have contributed to in relating to this project and at the end of this latest meeting Julian, of Ironside –Farrar indicate he may recommend a further consultation process to the ‘client’ [ABC and HIE] As stated we have already gone through the democratic process of 3 planning applications, all unanimously approved, 5 consultancies and 2 open meetings.
All the elected members of the Area Committee have public stated that they are for the proposal.
At least 5 of the democratically elected members of the Area Committee pledge their support publically at the Election in May 2012.
It is my understanding of how a democratic council operates is that THE ELECTED MEMBERS MAKE THE POLICY AND IT IS UP TO THE OFFICIALS TO IMPLEMENT THE POLICY. In this case there is little or no evidence of this happening. Surely you have enough confidence in your own ability to instruct the officials that this is what you want- this is what the vast majority of the electorate want so let’s get on with it.
I have heard murmurings that a certain council official has suggest that there are weakness in OBM’s business case. At a meeting with him he along with HIE expressed this view. We, at that meeting requested further clarification of this global statement. [After] 3 e-mails requesting this we eventual received a reply from HIE out lining 3 small points. Jean Ainsley, a Chartered Accountant and a member of our board answered these points where clearly HIE had mis-read the points. A simple mistake. From HIE no further points were made, issue for HIE on the business case closed. The ABC official despite many reminders eventually came back and stated “I will give you some top shelf comments” on your business case next week. This was middle -December 2012. He then came back ,after another reminder, that rather than give me “top shelf” comments he suggests that we re-read the AECOM reports and he felt that now is not the time to go into detail.
You know and I know and the whole of Argyll knows this officer can talk, but it is all bluff and smoking mirrors. He puts global phrase out there and when cornered cannot back them up.
Please be aware that, we the electorate elected you, and not council officials.
Alternatively we all do nothing and take the easy way out as ABC have done for 40+ years in Oban and we do nothing and watch the decline of our community continue.
You and you alone can change the future of Oban and make a massive difference to people’s lives for many years to come. Please, I know many of you have this courage so please stand up and be counted.
John MacGregor
Ps I am happy to make the e-mail correspondence between ABC, HIE and OBM available on request.
