Different bonanzas (Malachy Tallack)

I think it a regretable reflection on the state of public life when someone like Malachy does not think that council or Charitable Trus ownership is community ownership. There is no other form of ownership which is more purely of the community, given that the body which controls the assets through both the SIC and the SCT is completely replaceable, all members, through direct election, by direct suffrage, on a four or five year cycle. There is obviously a need to get this across.

“Charitable Trus”……a Freudian slip Drew?

I have no problem with the statement that assets of the SCT are in public ownership. The problem arises, and is many fold when the nature of that ownership, and how the public controls it are examined.

Councillors are elected first and foremost, as councillors. By definition public representatives entrusted with providing public services competently and at reasonable cost, and to protect the interests of Shetland, and Shetlanders therein.

Predecessors of our current councillors self-appointed themselves as trustees of a public fund, and all councillors ever since have by default become trustees. The public, whose funds they are entrusted with, and who they are are supposed to represent, have tolerated that situation so far, for reason(s) best known to themselves. However I would speculate that among those reasons is the opinion that “it’s working okay, so leave it be”.

The root of the problem arises in the fact that the public have never been asked to elect trustees to the SCT, not only that they’ve barely been told either, in fact there’s quite a section of the Shetland public out there who’ve merrily voted away for councillors for decades who do not know they are also electing a SCT trustee with the same vote. Don’t believe me? When did you last receive a candidate’s flyers or speil at election time that they mentioned their stance re SCT activities, never mind the fact that your vote, for which they were canvassing, would, if they were elected, place them among the trustees of the SCT?

I would venture, that things were left to be for so long, as “normal” SCT activities were generally seen as being relatively “low risk” and “safe” with regard to investments, and “adequate” with regard to disbursements. However, when VE entered stage left and plonked itself squarely in SCT’s lap, that perception suddenly changed. Insofar as the SCT were deviating away from their tried and tested investment philosophy of spreading relatively modest sums across a number of market investments with advisory input from brokers, to planning to invest a preceived dangerously large sum in a green field business venture. This, probably predictably, made some members of the public decidedly uneasy (being as it is “their” money, after all, who wouldn’t be….), and motivated some to attempt to access more information and/or exert their opinion of this apparent change (IMHO, very understandable when you’ve effectively given a blank signed cheque over to someone else, who suddenly appears to have thrown caution to the wind, and won’t justify their reasoning beyond glossy Ad. men blurb and pretty pictures in leaflets….).

In doing so, it has quickly become apparent, that while “community ownership” of SCT funds is relatively easily proven. It has also become worrying apparent that the public has only nominal influence over who the trustees of their funds are, and even less influence over what those trustees decide to do with the funds they are entrusted with.

From a personal POV, the most suitable person to ensure adequate and cost effective public service delivery, and the best interests of Shetland and Shetlanders are best protected (ie. a councillor), is extremely unlikely to be the same person who is capable of making informed, astute and hardnosed investment/business decisions (ie. a SCT Trustee), therefore the roles are mutually incompatible. In having them combined, the public has the unenviable choice of voting for either a potentially good councillor, who unfortunately can only be a very mediocre SCT trustee, or vice versa.

Past operational arrangements of the SCT may well have worked well enough in their day, but the years march on. Either the SCT needs to drop VE like a hot coal and revert back to their former behaviours of spread “safe” investments, or the time has come for direct elections of trustees by the public, with no connection to being a councillors or not whatsoever, and a real and meaninful involvement and input from any and all members of the public in to SCT business at all times.