Sunday Supplement
The editor voices his views on Moray’s most topical events of the past week …..
Allan Wright – resigned and then promoted
And so it would appear then that Allan Wright is to be handed the chain of office and with that will be representing the wishes, hopes and aspirations of the people of Moray.
The call on this page last week for a diplomatic solution clearly went down well – instead what we got was a firm two-fingered salute as the ruling administration decided on their soft-shoe shuffle.
Ringing loud in my ears since the announcement that our outgoing Council Leader was in fact to take up the most senior role at the local authority, rather than step away from the bright lights, has been a song that was much favoured in my Father’s day – “The Self Preservation Society”.
Quincy Jones’ song has become an anthem for the people’s view of British politics since it first aired in the ‘Italian Job’ – and is now so apt in our community that it should be adopted as a hymn to be sung at the opening of every Moray Council meeting.
On Tuesday it would appear that Councillor Wright is to become Convener in a job-swap with Councillor Stewart Cree, who will give over the chain of office to become Leader of the Council.
For me this begs just one question. Who is Councillor Wright representing?
His colleagues on the Moray Tory Party? Hardly, given that there are only two of them and both demonstrated their loyalty by voting again this week in opposition to their leader and rejecting plans for a West Approach Road into Elgin.
The 11 administration councillors then? Surely not – after all is he not just finished calling several of them “cowards” for turning against him on the vote to decimate Moray’s rural schools?
Has to be the people then, right? Urm, wrong again – well certainly not the thousands who he derided for rising up with their action groups to fight against him at every available juncture (and, thank goodness, actually defeated him on several).
So having stuck two fingers up at the people of Moray we will now see Councillor Wright holding the casting vote at future meetings of the full council.
This is the Self Preservation Society…….
Away from politics
It was a real eye-opener to chat with pupils from three of Moray’s schools this week over their hopes of perhaps carving a career from journalism.
insideMoray was the only local media group to turn out at the Careers Fair in Buckie High School where over 500 pupils from Buckie, Keith and Milne’s attended.
It was reassuring to see so many companies present to encourage young people to show an interest in careers with them – and equally so to listen in on the testing questions being asked by the young people themselves.
As for careers in Media though, the vast majority have hopes of making their way in life through photography – and I took no pleasure in pointing out to them just how challenging that would be in this digital age.
I tried to steer them into considering a much broader future in the media world – and invited them to use community journalism as a means of gaining experience.
Hopefully several will take us up on that offer and enhance the variety of reporting on our own community effort.