Cromarty Rising

Here’s another extract from the CFPA’s recent 16 page pull out. Worth a read just to highlight how much they are happy to distort the truth.

“This has mean investing in infrastructure that will meet their needs, most recently the £25 million Berth five”.

This makes it sounds like the CFPA paid for for this beth (formerly known as phase 3 expansion) – on the contrary most of it came from an EU grant with another £4million form HIE. While the port has now secured a contract from Beatrice to bring in £1 million or so in revenue from Phase 3 it will take a long long time to repay that public investment and hardly “repaying  port’s Authority’s foresight”. Investment that was supposed to create 600 new jobs. What happened to them?

Them “The virtually non-existent management of a prime natural resource was no longer an option so the drive for a Trust Port gathered pace”. No they are not talking about present day – this is back in 1973 when the Port Authority was created – but lets just get one thing clear – the concept of the trust port is a 21st century idea so how could “the drive for a trust port gather pace”???? AT least when the CFPA was formed, half its board were made up from representative of the county council. The was actually democratic accountability built in – that go jettisoned when it became a trust port.

“Like all Trust Ports, is government by stakeholders rather than shareholders” – GOVERNED? REALLY? Who write this? It is RESPONSIBLE to stakeholders, although recent event show that is clearly not the case. It is governed by its self-appointed board.

“It reinvests all its surplus income into the Cromarty Firth, the local community and the Port’s sustainable development.” Complete spin – it reinvests approx 3-4% of its turnover in local projects – we are talking a thousand pounds here and there. Not quite the same as the £25 million spent on phase 3 expansion and the same again being proposed for the next phase. Let’s be clear – as residents around the firth, stakeholders, we get all of the downside and damn little in return – that includes STS?

“…ship to shore and ship to ship transfers have been commonplace within the firth for the past 30 years putting some recent controversy in perspective.”  Interesting, it say 25 years over the page, but how many times do we need to hear this? No-one denies STS has gone on, at a jetty, and not in the middle of the dolphin breeding and feeding grounds undertaken by an organisation that has NEVER undertaken this process. Does that put the recent controversy in perspective? It really does seem to be a constant war of spin and deceit – a question of trust indeed.