Saturday, June 07, 2008

Criticism of this week's Inverness Courier leader ' Did councillors think of planning consequences?'

The Gurn had a wee gurn about the Courier leader below in the previous post but we have decided to post two comments the post received in their own right. We believe that these two comments will reflect much thinking in Nairn at the moment. Read the Inverness Courier Leader first and then the comments. 

First up is another blogger from Nairn Bill.

'I just posted a comment in the Courier website on its editorial about the Sainsbury's planning decision (also the similar decision a while back for Asda). The whole tone of the editorial seemed to be that Councilors should ignore their electorate's views and instead always defer to the recommendations of unelected officials. I'm not sure if the Courier understands what democratic accountability is all about.'

And then our veteran correspondent and co-conspirator: Iright

'Damned if you do, damned if you…
Invercentric is a strong word and one that should not be used lightly, but the leader in this week’s Inverness Courier seems to demand that this word be applied once again to our near neighbour’s broadsheet. Throughout the Highlands Inverness is seen by many as the town (Sorry City) that always gets the money, the jobs, the housing, and the say etc.
Here in Nairn we have waited years to get a half descent supermarket and if we all stick with the Local Plan that could just happen in 2020 (Maybe?).
The IC leader speaks of the Plan protecting ‘the attractive town centre and preventing it becoming a graveyard of boarded up premises and charity shops’. Maybe Inverness folk don’t get through to Nairn too often but our attractive high street already has the blight of empty shops, this is the reality of many towns throughout the UK in 2008 not just Nairn. Our Plan has for many years stopped an out of town supermarket but patently it has not saved our shops, so is it a good plan?
A plan is just that – a plan. If the world changes then you need a new plan and our councillors this week did just that, heard that the great majority of Nairn wanted the Sainsbury’s store here and voted for it. Common sense for once prevailed and the representatives we voted for listened to us, how democratic is that!
We are talking in the main here about a store to give us our basic need that of good food, not a DIY store, burger chain, hotel etc. Hopefully it will mean a fleet of supermarket lorries driving through the Local Plan to get to Nairn, and on the flip side should also mean thousand upon thousand of car trips are not made by Nairn folk each week to neighbouring towns in order to get their weekly shop and give them our money.
Maybe the editor of the Inverness Courier will not find it necessary to jump up and down waving the Local Plan at Nairnites for too long before he finds something else out with Inverness to pass judgement upon!
Many thanks to all those who were brave enough to support what I dub our new Local Plan, long may you make such fine decisions'

Have you got any opinions on that Courier leader or the Sainsbury application in general? You can tell the Courier on that leader link or us or both.

Spelding where are you, where's your report? Hurry up or your P45 will be in the post!

1 comment:

jayteescot1 said...

I had to laugh when the Inverness Courier talked about the "attractive Nairn town centre".
The Gurn is correct in pointing out that they dont appear to get through to Nairn much these days!
Maybe we should just forget about a supermarket and get the umpteen Nairn charity shops to hand out food parcels instead? (;o)