The new new chief ex

[paulb]

Good luck and we all hope you do a great job.

 

however in these times of cuts this seems expensive.

It is understood Mr Buchan will earn £135,000 a year, 25 per cent more than the going rate for chief executives of small island authorities. He will also be supplied with a house and car by Shetland Islands Council.

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[JustMe]

It may sound expensive but if the man is capable of sorting out whatever problems lie within the SIC then it could be money well spent. May we hope that he will act as a new broom sweeping out any dead wood within the council's employees while maintaining a firm hand over the councillors....while at the same time remembering that they are his political masters.

[paulb]

i agree. are we paying orkney to have him. there was talk of a 100k a year.

[ISOT]

Hows he going to be able to sweep out the dead wood at the SIC without stamping on the same coat-tails as DC did? Thats what Clark tried to do from the start and thats where it all ended up in the midden we have in front of us now!

 

Good luck to the new man I hope he gets left to get on with the job that Clark never got the chance to do!

 

Cheers

[JustMe]

Well I was just wondering what would happen if the same sort of problems arise with the new man as arose with Dave Clark. Direct rule from Edinburgh?.

[MuckleJoannie]

Hows he going to be able to sweep out the dead wood at the SIC without stamping on the same coat-tails as DC did? Thats what Clark tried to do from the start and thats where it all ended up in the midden we have in front of us now!

 

Good luck to the new man I hope he gets left to get on with the job that Clark never got the chance to do!

 

Cheers

 

Dave Clark tripped up because he failed to follow proper SIC procedure. Mr Buchan is the longest serving council chief executive in Scotland so I presume he is familiar with council procedures. I just hope he is adept at handling councillors as he has no powers to get rid of them!

[JustMe]

One naughty little thought floated into my head just now. Will Mr. Buchan have an informal meeting with Mr. Clark........perhaps out of hours but in the presence of an open bottle. Might be a good place to start.

[lerwick]

Will he look after Shetlands economy above that of Orkney i wonder?

[voxreasonable]

We can only hope that the present enquiry will expose the trouble makers on the council enough to knock some hubris out of them. If not, we're just going on the merry-go-round yet again, this time with a different tune playing.

 

As far as I can see from the last two days, it seems there are three real problems. 1) the Convenor is far too weak to control his councilors, 2) Jonathan Wills is exercising his own brand of anarchy in that power vacuum and 3) the councilors dont seem to understand their own job roles or the legal limits of their authority.

 

One obvious improvement would be to get a much tougher convenor in place. One who cant be bullied by his Up Helly A squad for a start.

[voxreasonable]

I just hope he is adept at handling councillors as he has no powers to get rid of them!

 

No he doesnt have any power to get rid of them, but we do. Just a shame we have to wait two years...

[Ghostrider]

If somebody who's been adept at handling rowdy Orkneymen for almost 13 year, and been praised from outwith the Orkney Council for the tight house he was keeping, can't play the bunch we have right now like a tight strung fiddle, there really is no hope for the upper echelons of the SIC as it stands.

[Spinner72]

The problem is that no matter how well he can restructure and manage the officials, the root of the problems, from way back before Clark, are still there and he will be equally powerless to speak out against them.

[JustMe]

The problem is that no matter how well he can restructure and manage the officials, the root of the problems, from way back before Clark, are still there and he will be equally powerless to speak out against them.

Surely not. He has his job in Orkney to go back to so he can speak out against any council officials that are not doing a good job.

[Spinner72]

^^ The problem is not, and never has been, with the officals, but with the elected members who have disrupted all manner of business.

 

They are still here, and the new CE is equally as powerless to respond to them if/when they continue to use the media to conduct their campaigns as Clark, or for that matter, Goodlad, was.

[Ghostrider]

The problem is that no matter how well he can restructure and manage the officials, the root of the problems, from way back before Clark, are still there and he will be equally powerless to speak out against them.

 

The elected side is, and has been for a long time, such a rudderless ship that any CE who knows his stuff, as this guy would appear to, should be quite able to collectively gather them up by the scruff of the neck and eryse idda breeks and maneuvere them in to so semblance of coherent functionality before they know whats happened to them.

 

He maybe can't speak out openly against anyone, but he can certainly diplomatically and covertly run rings around them, or make them paint themselves in to corners where they can't continue to do any real harm, if he has the ability.

 

Quite apart for the pigs ear he constructed for himself that would have been his downfall regardless, Clark without local authority experience was easy meat. Its only as events have unfolded that you begin to realise that Morgan for all his faults deserves more credit than may have at first appeared, although he could have, but obviously didn't, take the bull by the horns when he was there, he did manage to gloss over many cracks and hide holes so that at least on the surface things seemed semi-functional and almost coherent. With hindsight it reminds me a bit of what folk used to do with old cars to get them through one last MOT, stuff the rust holes with pages of The Times and hide it under a layer of cataloy and paint. It looked fine at the moment it was done, but a week later it had probably already broken adrift. Da shair wis harly cauld fae Morgan's eryse afore this lot were already adrift.

 

Makes you wonder whether he got tired of trying to fix what was too broken to be fixed, got tired of continually filling in holes and cracks that never stopped reappearing, or if he was smart enough to see there was likely a big showdown brewing and got out before the brown stuff started flying.

 

At the end of the day Morgan comes off as having been a "sweep it under the carpet" style of CE, keep it quiet and hush hush, and gloss over it behind the scenes as much as possible. Clark's style was "bull in a china shop", take it at full speed and hope the bow wave was big enough to wash away and cover up the problems. It wasn't. What this bunch needs is someone with drive and organisational skills, who can quote the rule book chapter and verse from end to end, and has an advanced degree in kidology and B/S to put the brakes on any troublemakers and make them work for a living.

 

Every organisation needs people who ask the awkward questions, without it the organisation becomes rotten. Wills is a master of the art, but he can get carried away if left wholly unattended. You don't ignore folk like that, you don't attempt to freeze them out, you don't throw threats, legal or otherwise at them from afar, all of that only encourages them to up the ante a notch or three. Unfortunately those seem to have been the only ways the council hierachy has known to deal with him so far, and its just made the mire all the deeper. You need to engage folk like him in discussion, negotiate with them, and cut the best deal you can with them.