The Howlin Gaels at Fish 'n Hits

Five pages of Fish 'n hits images available here. 

Old Social Work Buildings – feasibility analysis – Video of presentation evening 23rd May 2012

Last night NICE presented the details of their ongoing feasability study of what could be done with the old Social Work buildings. Potential ways forward were outlined in a presentation by Alan Jones. His presentation begins at 3.25 minutes into this video if you want to fast forward.

This observer really liked the idea of a Reptile Rescue centre moving into these presently derelict buildings. There were plenty of other ideas though and the results of the survey were very interesting too. For the latest from NICE on what could happen next why not listen to some or all of the video? If you are in a hurry just now however a copy of the presentation is now available online here. 

Fish 'n Hits Nairn High Street Sunday 19th May - Images

Regular readers will be familiar with the way we have displayed images on the Gurn flickr pages over recent years. There have been some changes on Flickr recently so we have to display them in slightly different ways. 

So for five pages of thumbnails from the amazing event on Sunday click here. 

This is the way that Flickr presents sets now - warning it takes a very long time to load - anway click here to see bigger images. 

Alternatively start at this image here and work through them all by clicking the arrow to the left of each image. 

Murd's idea to get more visitors in Nairn - tell the world we have free parking!

Pictured above you can see an illustration of how Murd would like all the "Welcome To" signs to look at the edge of town. His idea found instant favour at the meeting of the town's three Community Councils last night and endorsement again among the massed ranks of those attending NICE's meeting in the Community Centre tonight. 

It surely would be a goer, often when on holiday in the UK you will be asked to pay for parking and sometimes quite considerable sums if you intend to stay in the one place for the day - a tax on visiting a community and spending some money there really. How refreshing if we could simply point out that we want visitors' money but that they are welcome to park for free before they inject some cash into the local economy? 

Children's "Spring Display" - Keeping Nairnshire Colourful competition results

Annie Stewart told the Gurn: ""Budding Young Gardeners in Nairnshire have been busy since the Autumn planting bulbs and looking after them to put on a colourful show for the Keeping Nairnshire Colourful "Spring Display" competition. The children kept a log & took photograhs of what they did & how things grew. The containers & beds were judged at the end of April & the results are as follows:
Schools:
1st - Auldearn Primary School (pictured below)
2nd - Nairn Academy Special Needs Support Class

Individuals:
 1st - Alasdair Beaton (pictured right)
2nd - Erin Baudins
3rd - Livi Micklethwaite

KNC would like to thank Robert Cunningham for judging and Sainsbury's & Broadley Garden Centre for the prizes. Photographs of all the entries can be seen in Library until the end of the week or on the KNC website: http://www.spanglefish.com/keepingnairnshirecolourful/index.asp?pageid=358046
 Entries for the summer "Edible" competition are available at local nurseries, the Service Point and the Library."

Nairn Tourism “we don’t have the local promotion people” comments - Rosemary Young fights back

Rosemary Young, chairing the joint meeting of the Community Council meeting last night, was out to set the record straight on local tourism and she fired both barrels in the direction of Michael Green who is reported in the Nairnshire Telegraph this week as saying, among other things:

“I don’t want to be too parochial, but we don’t have the local promotion people that we used to have, but we’ve still got some fabulous asssets”

Rosemary read out a prepared statement, she said:

“Before we move on to tourism I would like to respond in public to the extraordinary article on tourism on page three of the Nairnshire this week. 

To say a void had been made by  the absence of tourism hard hitters from yester year is not only inaccurate but once more denigrates the hard work being done right now here in Nairn

I would point out the following:

1. There is a dedicated band of accommodation providers and food providers  – out there 24/7 with pride and passion and real work ethics.  Owners and their staff  who meet visitors on a daily basis and achieve high standards not always seen in other parts of Scotland or England.  They market their own properties and carry on regardless of what VS do or don’t do to help them.  They have earned the respect of the ‘many’ and countless numbers of visitors who return as repeat guests.

2. These nowadays ‘personalities’ are joined by many more who although they may not know it are component parts of the tourism industry.  Golf Clubs, Sports Clubs, Retail shops, Ceilidh evenings, Music Nairn, Cinema Nairn, Pub entertainers, Pipe Band, Highland dancers, NICE, Rotary and the Nairnshire Challenge,  Beer Festivals, Book and Arts Festivals, Sporting event organisers, Keeping Nairn Colourful, Museums, games Day,  farmers show, the churches, the community and arts centre, the swimming pool,  the wonderful and cheerful chap who cleans our streets and last but not least the actual history of Nairn itself with Dr. Grigor being the first real personality for tourism……

I could go on and on  ….. the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker……

These are the core workforce for real tourism and many of them linking tourism to actually raising money for charity.

 Added to them comes the fantastic website for Nairn - VisitNairn.com with on line booking devised and managed by Iain Fairweather who was also the innovator behind the introduction of the new Nairn Guide and for its enlarged distribution.

All these people and more are indeed the personalities we do need in Nairn who work tirelessly in an austere economic climate and still manage to put on a great show.

The ‘old school personalities’ had a bucket of public money and their only problem was how and where to spend it.  How sad VisitScotland seemed to have admitted that they only react to the big swash buckling personalities.

Well I have a message to VS and that is to sit up and react to the personality of a truly wonderful town with the best beach in Scotland  - Nairn

Well done Nairn and the Nairnites of today  – tourism is here to stay.”

Rosemary received considerable applause. 

Michael Green responded and stated that we have to engage with Visit Scotland as  they  are the people that promote Scotland. He went on:
 ”Now we’ve all got opinions. My opinion about Visit Scotland is well known about how effective a job they do but you need to engage with them. Their Chairman Donald Graham, he said, “tourism is all about personalities”. Basically what he said was that they’ve engaged in years gone by with grants or various funds which we know. That seemed to be missing, the point now is how do we reconnect with Visit Scotland?”

He talked about a meeting with Visit Scotland where “We’ll discuss what we want to discuss because they’ve got resources that we want to get.”

Rosemary then said: “Just before I open this up to everyone, even in those days they didn’t actually do anything for us. It might have been all right swashbuckling around and spending money but they didn’t actually do anything – Visit Scotland themselves and as for people saying people went abroad, I bankrolled all that so all the trade shows and stuff like that – a waste of money, never brought anything much.”

There then followed more debate about the merits of Visit Scotland (more of this later if time permits this week).

South Nairn planning decision leaves a bitter taste for the Community Councils to swallow

Members of West, River and Suburban CCs expressed their dismay, despair and even anger at the recent decision of Highland Council to approve the master plan for Narin South.

The regular joint meeting was hosted by Nairn West CC in the Community Centre. Brain Stewart introduced the topic, he said:

We collectively as the three joint CCs and, indeed, as individuals fed in a number of detailed comments reflecting our concerns about the capacity of the Nairn South infrastructure to cope with the scale of the development that was being planned.  I don’t think I’m being too blunt in saying that the Highland Council planners pretty much ignored all the local concerns that were expressed at the joint meeting and then conveyed in writing. The master plan as approved a few days ago is pretty much unchanged from the one which Malcolm MacLeod presented back in January.

Rosemary Young the Chair of Nairn West was not in a very good mood with the town’s elected Highland Councillors, she told the meeting:

I would like to say that I think that it is very poor even though some told us why they weren’t there but none of our elected councillors came to the eight meeting where they would have seen the tremendous strength this town is feeling about not having Nairn South. Now I would like to remind our elected Councillors that they are voted in by the people of this town to be there to do the job for us. So if we have a strong feeling about something they should be there to listen to what we are saying. It would appear on this occasion, even though Michael put up some valid support four not having the houses there that nobody else did. I think it’s very disappointing and I don’t know why I would ever bother to vote for an elected Councillor again. I’m very glad I’m not a paid Councillor so I can say what I want about this sort of thing. But I think it is poor and I think that in a week where universities are trying to make wheat to double the amount of food, as well, so we can feed the world, that we are going to plough up some land out there and houses on which has been no rational thought as to whether we really  need it or not. That’s all I have to say.

Other comment on Nairn South from last night later.

Weather picture Nairn 22nd May

This picture just in from Riverside reporter Murd Dunbar illustrates that the we are not really into a run of good weather yet. The Gods were indeed smiling on the Fish 'n Hits festival in the High Street on Sunday. 

Murd also reports that the town's spraying squad are out tackling the Giant Hogweed up the river today too. 

Rebuilding local democracy in Scotland - a tough job against institutionalised thinking?

Here in Nairn so much of civic life revoles around ensuring Nairn has its fair shout in the world - a difficult job after decades of centralisation where power has slipped away in the direction of the big city along the A96. We are promised a bit of a new deal by the current Highland Council administration with the creation of the Nairn Badenoch and StrathSpey area committee. There are those that don't think that will take us very far but to be fair to Drew Hendry we have to wait and see what comes out of that one. Colin and Liz too are confident that we'll see an improvement and have indicated such on social networks. The meetings coming up tonight of the Community Councils (in the Community Centre 7.30 p.m) and NICE tomorrow (same time and place) will most likely debate this democratic deficit again, not head on but it will be implicit within many presentations and points of view that will be heard from the floor. 

This observer receives regular newsletters from an organisation called the Scottish Community Alliance and they often discuss subjects that have echoes in Nairn. The header on their latest newsletter read "local people leading" and went on to say:

"At last week’s gathering of Scotland’s community controlled housing associations, Local Govt Minister Derek Mackay was dropping hints on the likely content of the forthcoming Community Empowerment Bill - cranking up expectations yet further. The Minister clearly intends this piece of legislation to remove long standing barriers that get in the way of communities taking more control of their own affairs. To hear this kind of ambition from a Government Minister is really encouraging. But as the contributions of subsequent speakers served to illustrate, many of these barriers are the product of institutional mind-sets that instinctively resist any transfer of power to communities – and these may simply be beyond the reach of legislation."

Scottish Communities such as Nairn want change and the present administration in Holyrood seem to want to deliver some democracy back in this direction but willl "institutional mind-sets" be too much of an obstacle in the final analysis.  You can register for the Scottish Community Alliance's newsletter or simply have a read of their archives here. 

Toby Michaels at Fish 'n Hits - Video

Housing and Transport, Access and the A96 Bypass - Suburban CC letter and a response from Fergus

At last joint meeting of Nairnshsire and Ardersier and Croy Community Councils held on the 25th of April it was agreed that the individual Community Councils would write to local representitives to convey the views of the meeting.

Suburban CC have released into the public domain the copy of their letter that was sent to elected representitives and others and a reply received from Fergus Ewing. The subbies' letter concentrated on Housing and A96 issues and was signed by Dick Youngson. You can read a copy here. The letter sent on the 9th was answered by Fergus Ewing MSP on the 14th and you can see a copy of his letter to Dick here. Fergus's letter concentrates on A96 and bypass issues. The many gurnites who are long-time serious students of these issues may find both letters interesting. 

Colin and Crawford at Fish 'n Hits - video

Also a few images from Murray MacRae of Sunday's event can be seen here. 

@ flickr users in Gurnshire

You may have noticed the changes that were made to Flickr last night. Less than 24 hours on and there are around 11,000 refuseniks who have written their messages of complaint on the flickr forum. Outraged flickr users are also tweeting @flickr and leaving messages on the flickr facebook page. Flickr proudly claim: 

"A brighter Flickr is here. A Flickr where everyone gets a free terabyte of space for original images. Where your photos are at the center of a stunning new web design. And where Android users have a seriously beautiful app to take with them, anywhere."

That's wonderful but the new design is totally unsuitable for many long term users who simply have grown used to displaying their work on flickr and found the former layout perfect for their needs. So if you too are finding the new changes horrendous then please add your voice on the forum or via a social network message. 

Sat May 25th Nairn Community Centre - Dying to Know

Billed as a different day out, information on a subject we quite often chose to avoid. More information on this event is available on the Nairn Citizens Advice website here. 

Provost puts herself in the shop window for the County

Provost Liz MacDonald helping County Fans clean up the windows of the High Street premises formerly known as Occasions to make ready for the flitting of the Fans Station Park Ground Improvements Fund display from the Library to the empty shop. 

The shop is the property of Highland Council and Liz and Colin arranged for the premises to be made available to host the display for two weeks starting today (Monday 20th). Just after this image above, Jim Clark arrived with display boards from Nairn Rotary which have also been made available to the fans for the next two weeks. 

More pictures of the finished display here, including former County player Fred Milne admiring the shop makeover. 

Mary’s Meals Concert - Saturday night in the Community Centre – great entertainment but also a very thought provoking event.

The concert was to raise funds for Mary’s meals and specifically for the Baby Sam’s Shelter that is proposed for the Kaphirikwete School in Malawai. The shelter will be in memory of Iain Gordon’s grandchild Sam. Iain organised the event which attracted a capacity crowd to the Community Centre. The evening was a marvellous night’s entertainment and included the Black Isle Jazz Band which was not mentioned on the ticket and came as a bonus. Donnie Munro performed for around two and a half hours and interspersed between his songs were many interesting anecdotes and comment on contemporary and past Highland issues. Fantastic evocative performances by Donnie and his supporting musicians. It was a powerful night in another sense too. This observer had heard before in the press of the work of Mary’s Meals in providing a daily meal for school children in impoverished countries but hadn’t realised what a fundamental difference that could make to a child’s life. Simply if a child doesn’t have to go out and spend the day, begging, working, even perhaps stealing to get money for food then they can go to school. In areas where Mary’s Meals are operating the school role can double. A child can be fed for a whole year for less than eleven pounds. If you have a few moments  then please watch one or two of the videoshere.

Another initiative by Marys Meals is the Back Pack project. Here in a society where most of us possess so much and children too have possessions that many other less fortunate kids can only dream of we might find it hard to imagine what the gift of a back pack containing a few simple school and domestic items might mean to  children that literally have nothing. Another video here shows how this works in Malawai.

Mary’s meals is a Scottish Charity that does so much to change lives. It operates from a Garden shed and 93% of funds raised go directly to where they are needed. Their website is here.

Warning to all Nairn residents! - Pirates now operating in our area! See the video!

Tom Mason and the Blue Buccaneers in Castle Lane Square, Nairn High Street, earlier today. Just one of many acts that performed at the Fish 'n Hits party. Further details in previous article here. More pictures and videos to come during the week. 

Fish 'n Hits - High Street fund raiser led by Dolphin Chipper for Station Park Ground Improvements a massive success

The Gurn understands that the County Fans Ground Improvement Fund benefited to the tune of £1770 today from sales of special bargain fish and other suppers. A collection in Castle Lane, where many talented musicians gave their time and talent free of charge, also raised another £240. That's a total of £2010 and matching funding that will eventually be available from the Scottish Football Partnership will double the spend potential on ground improvements up at Station park to £4020. Well done to Alan and Donna and their "we believers" in the chipper and all those who performed and helped organise the event in Castle Lane.

Nairn had its festival hat on today, the sun shone too and it was a day that will not be forgotten. More pictures and videos from this event on the Gurn during the coming week.
The Dolphin Chipper - Now a County legend!

Update - another local photographer has already posted a few images on his flickr account, click here to see them.

Coming up next week - Weds 22nd and Thurs 23rd - concerned about Nairn affairs? - 2 evening dates for your diary!

First up on Wednesday night is the joing meeting of the town's three Community Councils. They will be discussing Nairn South, the by-pass, planning issues and the recycling initiative. The meeting will be held in the Community centre and will start at 7.30 p.m. 

Next up will be the NICE meeting on Thursday night. Could we soon see action from the 1,000 strong group in renovating Nairn's town centre? Joan Noble told the Gurn:

"The feasibility study for the first phase of town centre redevelopment is proceeding apace, with a good response to the recent survey of businesses, tourist operators and the public asking for suggestions and aspirations for the area.
These have been collated and several draft options will be presented and discussed at a public meeting on Thursday 23rd May 7.30 pm at the Community Centre. Everyone interested is warmly invited to come along and ensure that as wide a spectrum of opinion is represented as possible."

There it is Gurnshire, a couple of chances to contribute to our Community's future. Why not pop down to the Community Centre on Wednesday and Thrusday nights and give a bit of gravitas to the gatherings of the usual suspects and give a helping hand to their ambitions to do the best for Nairn. Alternatively give them a roasting if you feel so inclined - it's all in aid of local democracy. Love them or loathe them, you get the Community Councils and NICE for free and they, once again, want to hear your views. 

A question from the time Donnie Munro used to come to Nairn on his holidays

A fantastic concert tonight at the Community Centre in aid of  the charity Mary’s Meals.  Top of the bill was celtic rocker Donnie Munro. Whilst introducing one of the songs he told of the days when his family would come through to Nairn for the day whilst enjoying their annual holiday to Inverness.

Donnie asked if anyone could remember a restaurant in Nairn with a mosaic floor with what seemed to him to be like a big star in the middle. He would like to be informed if this was the case or if it was simply a figment of his imagination. Nobody in the capacity audience was able to help him, is there anyone in Gurnshire with thoughts on that?

Pishing down in Huntly pictures - Huntly 3 Nairn 2

Pictures from County Photographer Donald Matheson
Individual images here. 

Dreich Disappointment at Christie Park fails to dampen County spirit

Another cheerful outing for the County faithful today, the last of the season, to Huntly. And a luxury bus for the final Roaches Coaches trip this time round, parked next to the team coach it looked distintinctly up market by comparison. So to the game, it was dreich and it didn't go our way: Huntly 3 Nairn 2 but the younger fans just took it all in their stride and the older ones were still cheerful as they made their way home too after a fantastic season. Two goals for Conor Gethins to add to his very impressive score this season. More pictures later. 

Zero tolerance on litter

One of our Highland Councillors recently posted on Facebook:

"We live on a beautiful planet in a beautiful country. And we live in the most beautiful part of our country. Don't spoil it - Bin it!"

Despite the natural beauty surrounding us some people, young and old, still do drop litter though. For some it is perhaps a "cool" thing to do for others maybe they actually consciously get a perverse pleasure out of despoiling their local environment. Will we see fines issued in Nairn or not by Highland Council? The lack of fixed penalites issued in recent years for people who don't bother picking up their dogs' turds is perhaps not an encouraging example. Anyway here's what Drew Hendry, the Convenor of Highland Council says: 

 “As a Council we have to tackle littering head on and treat it as anti-social behaviour. Littering is wrong, it should not be tolerated and it should not happen. Littering also has an impact on our tourism economy – one of the key industries in the Highlands. We market our natural environment as a key attraction for visitors and littering has a direct impression on visitors that can affect the potential for repeat visits through word of mouth recommendations.” Read the full press release here.

Hopefully we will see some action by the Council in Nairn but there is another agency that is determined to take a zero tolerance attitude too. Litter featured at the last meeting of the Suburban Community Council meeting, the Subbies have a problem in their area with empty cans of drink being left in the lay-bys further along Moss-Side Road. Pupils heading too and from the Academy at lunch time feature in complaints too. Subbie members were pleased to hear Sgt Graham Erskine, also present at their meeting, declare his determination to catch litter-bugs and keep Nairn clean. Good luck in their efforts to both the Council and the local members of the Scottish Police Force in their efforts to tackle the litter problem locally and across the Highlands! 

Michael Green on Nairn South: "this is a serious issue and it needs to be resolved to the satisfaction of Nairn’s largest employer."

Up for discussion again at the Planning, Environmental and Development Committee was the thorny subject of Nairn South. The Council planning high heid yins pointed again to an existing traffic assessment that would allow for 320 houses on the site. Michael Green made a plea for a rethink after the first and each subsequent batch of houses are built. His proposal for a new traffic assessments every 100 houses found favour with the committee and he also raised other concerns that many gurnites will have heard before over previous months and now years. 

The town’s three Community Councils don’t want this development until the infrastructure, including a bypass, is in place. Michael Green spoke on the behalf of many people in Nairn on Wednesday in the Council chamber at Glenurquhart Road as he reiterated what the West, River and Suburban CCs and many others feel. Here’s what Michael said:

“In Nairn this is not a popular development – It’s not! Folk are just wondering why it appears to put the cart before the horse when we are having a development on this scale proposed when we don’t have the bypass. The logical thing to have done here would have been to have had the bypass and then you could have looked at a development which with the bypass could cope with the traffic problems. That brings me round to the two main areas of concern which Brian and Malcolm will have heard many, many times from many people. 

The first one is the inability of the local infrastructure to cope with the proposed increase in traffic. Now as was shown in the overhead, there’s currently Balblair Road and Cawdor Road these are two old fashioned B class roads and they have to deal with traffic, and I’ll just Labour this – a few points here: the Queens’s Park housing estate, the hospital, the Nairn County football ground, several old peoples homes, the new Broadleigh housing development, the Council technical department, Gordons Sawmill and a busy garden centre - all back and forth into the town centre. At the narrowest point where Cawdor Road and Balblair Road merge there is a one lane choke point. This is effectively a chicane and even as it stands just now it is a real bone of contention with people because there are tailbacks developing on either side at certain times.

So when I read that the traffic impact assessment states that the infrastructure can cope with the increase in traffic from such a development, myself and many others don’t really agree and feel that this increase in traffic will result in making an already difficult and tricky situation much, much worse and equally importantly: it could start the creation of new rat runs. Rat runs in an urban development could have very serious consequences.

So on the 1^st point and I think it has been well documented and the officials agree it, I would like to propose we have a pause and review after the 1^st hundred have been built, for a new traffic impact assessment plus local consultation.

The second area of major concern lies around the impact the proposed development will have on Gordons. Gordons Sawmill has been established for well over 100 years. They’re the biggest employer in Nairn. There’s over 100 direct employees and probably a similar amount in related jobs. Now they’ve raised concerns that the development could not only hamper their future business expansion but could threaten the viability of their current business. Their concerns are around noise levels and mitigation measures. Now the strategic master plan states that the developer should be responsible for noise mitigation measures. For example bunds and acoustic fences to ensure that noise levels do not exceed 45 decibels during the day and 25 at night.

Now, Environmental Health have now stated and I quote: “In assessing the statutory nuisance the Councils will be required to take into account several considerations including nature and character of noise and not just compliance with an agreed noise.”
 I welcome the agreement that we will work together to find a solution to this. I don’t think that I need to go into much more technical detail other than to agree, as we are well aware that this is a serious issue and it needs to be resolved to the satisfaction of Nairn’s largest employer.”

Jo Muskus in the finals of Oz Best Job competition

More on the BBC site.