I can’t say I’ve ever had much faith in this battery farm from the very start. Certainly the “£3.4 million” seemed to be a huge carrot but, given what’s emerged over the last few months about the club’s governance, I do wonder if that should have been taken with as big a pinch of salt and dose of scepticism as a lot else that’s happened.
I think that ever since that figure of £3.4 million - and I suppose I’d have to take the “credit” ?? for winkling it out of Morrison at that meeting back in the spring - emerged, its sheer enormity has possibly eclipsed a lot of rational thinking. In particular, I think there’s been the delusion that “this is such a massive panacea for the club that there can’t possibly be anything wrong with it”. And now that the Scottish Government, notwithstanding its enthusiasm for green projects, has rejected the appeal, I think we need to accept the initial 2-1 vote in favour of it as something of an unrepresentative anomaly, which tends to fly in the face of the combined verdicts of the full council and the Scottish Government who must probably be accepted as having made the “right” decision in planning terms. I do accept that HC’s second vote happened on the strength of a “technicality”, but equally it seems that the original three councillors made a wrong planning decision.
I think we must therefore consign the battery farm to the list of other catastrophic money making wheezes that sent the club off on a wild goose chase for several years that ended with the current administration problem.
This is probably also further justification of Alan Savage’s view that we need to return focus to football-related activities.