The new, badly programmed, Robotic Grazings Cop introduced by the Crofting Commission unfortunately did not prove to be a gamechanger!
This week’s front page headline in The Scottish Farmer is Grazings ‘gamechanger’.
The news item by Gordon Davidson states that:-
New evidence has been revealed that appears to justify the Crofting Commission’s unpopular intervention in the financial affairs of a common grazings committee.
Colin Souter, the constable controversially appointed to replace the grazings committee at Upper Coll, on the Isle of Lewis, this week wrote to all its shareholders itemising examples of that committee’s “arbitrary decision making” on how shareholders money was spent.
Quite the contrary is in fact the case.
A proper analysis of the ‘findings’ of Colin Souter demonstrates his complete lack of understanding of (a) what the role of a legally appointed grazings constable is (he, of course, being illegally appointed); (b) crofting law; and (c) duties and responsibilities that a grazings constable has towards shareholders in the common grazings.
It also, alarmingly, exposes the true relationship between Colin Souter and the Crofting Commission. More significantly it also exposes a new scandal to hit the Crofting Commission, namely (assuming that Colin Souter is not solely behind it) their attempt to deprive common grazings of finance by seeking to prevent them being VAT registered.
This follows hot on the heels of revelations that the Convener of the Crofting Commission, Colin Kennedy, was seeking to prevent common grazings from receiving SRDP funding!
This attempt by the Crofting Commission and/or their Convener to meddle once more in matters that have nothing to do with their role as a regulator and seek, in so doing, to deprive crofters of finance is the real story here. That is the story that should have made front page news in The Scottish Farmer had Gordon Davidson been tuned into the actual facts involved or had contacted myself or former committee members at Upper Coll for a truer picture. Instead he appeared to rely only on the word of Ivor Matheson (the aggrieved crofter who originally complained to the Crofting Commission) and the misguided ‘findings’ of an illegally appointed grazings ‘constable’.
In subsequent posts on this blog I will consider some of the more salient ‘findings’ by Colin Souter and expose them for what they really are. I will also look at the cosy relationship that Colin Souter appears to enjoy with the Crofting Commission and the real significance of what could easily be referred to as Crofting VATgate.
Image Credit: Robocop © Orion Pictures
Update – 4 September 2016: Crofters and Lawyers + The Wrong Grazings Committee!