Yngwie

You are right with that, and in some respects the club certainly hasn't helped itself there.

Something that has been said many times over the years though and which sprung to mind again yesterday, is that the city doesn’t deserve the team.

Surprised we have had no statement but on the other hand I suspect any statement issued on the day of the decision would have been written with fury. They have probably been in discussions about an appeal. Hopefully we get a measured response very soon.

9 hours ago, old caley girl said:

Will a list of who voted each way be published? 

Anyone know if this is publicly available yet?

Why would the council be pursuing their own BESS projects whilst at the same time citing safety concerns about them as a reason to refuse our one? Surely there isn’t one rule for them….

2 hours ago, old caley girl said:

 The standard of debate was awful. 

Not particularly surprising.

There was a debacle in Edinburgh recently where their Council decided to toss a coin to determine whether the applicant for a housing development should pay £1m or £3m to the Council.

It’s a dark day for us, annd  all the more galling because the application had been approved through the normal process.

We will likely appeal but that costs a lot of money (a KC was mentioned by the club, they cost thousands of pounds per day). And it takes time. And it’s probably 50/50 whether it succeeds.

The time issue means:

1. We need a source of funds to keep us going until the appeal is determined.

2. It will not be resolved before the extended deadline for the annual accounts and going concern statement therein.

3. The appeal will not be determined before the summer, so in terms of setting a wage budget for next season we will likely have to cut our cloth accordingly and assume the worst, which will mean some very difficult and unpleasant decisions having to be made - unless someone comes in to bankroll us, but the indications are that we’ve squeezed what we can from the current directors.

Dog walking and sledging are more important than net zero, it’s official!

41 minutes ago, lightlamp2 said:

it's just a patch of overgrown grass that people walk through.

Indeed. But local residents do like to walk their dogs there and so on and don’t want to lose that - given as a reason in the petition I saw. I wouldn’t want to lose it either if I walked there, but it is perhaps a bit ‘entitled’ to expect ongoing access to someone else’s private land.

If the club has a lease on the site, maybe we could sell a new type of ‘season ticket’ to residents who want to use our land!

The Highland region has no shortage of green space! It's an issue simply because that’s how it was designated by the council in the local plan and those who are against it can use that, arguing that this plan is the bible and must not be questioned. If, however, the plan had allocated 2% of this site to a net-zero project it would still have been approved at the time, without doubt.

10 hours ago, Satan said:

'On behalf of over 13700 residents who we represent '

By way of comparison, the community council’s petition has reached 172 votes in the 3 weeks it has been online, 10 of whom allowed their names to appear publicly.

It’s a polite and very technical way of saying “get tae ****!”

Appropriate procedures and controls need to be in place for anything like this and it would make complete sense for any planning consent to have appropriate conditions applied. But as far as I can see it is all about risk management rather than fire services having a right to say no on principle to this or to any other application that has a fire risk.

The NFCC’s BESS guidance says there should be a minimum of 25m between the BESS and other buildings/dwellings. ICT’s proposal offers 8 times that. The Community Councils must’ve just missed that part.

7 minutes ago, STFU said:

I'd maybe have a little more respect for the club if they just came out and told us that without the cash, we're fecked

Where’ve you been, they’ve been making that clear for months!

2 hours ago, STFU said:

The same SNP and Greens whose policies also support the retention and improvement of Green Spaces?

Well their last Scottish Parliament manifesto had a huge section on net zero and not a single mention of green spaces.

I’m no nimby. There’s one of these being built within view of my bedroom window, about 200 metres away, and I didn’t object. The nearest house is actually about 80m away I would guess, yet  it sailed through planning with no controversy and no objection from the community council.

I’d probably rather it wasn’t going there, but it doesn’t bother me at all, and these things have to go somewhere, and if it wasn’t this then something else would be built there instead at some point that might be worse.

37 minutes ago, lightlamp2 said:

According to the courier article a few days ago. The councillors that voted to recall the decision belonged mainly to the SNP and Greens. Believe it was something like 14 SNP councillors and 3 out of 4 Green councillors.

Disappointing but not surprising. Hypocritical NIMBYs, as I feared. The bigger concern is that when it gets appealed to the Scottish Government, they will be very reluctant to overturn the decision and thereby discredit and humiliate their own politicians. We are in worse trouble than I previously thought.

To what extent are councillors likely to vote as political blocks, as they normally do, or do they get a free vote on matters like this? 

It would be nice to think that the SNP and Greens, who form the government whose policy encourages approval of these schemes and is committed to net zero etc, will stick to their principles and not suddenly become NIMBY hypocrites. Likewise the other main parties are always falling over themselves to stress their green credentials.So it’ll be a walk in the park, right? If only…

If anyone can bring themselves to feel at all positive, we are now unbeaten in 5 and have 3 consecutive clean sheets. 

FT 0-0, meh. I feel so sorry for our home fans this season, so little to cheer.

3 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

the Council have decided that all councillors with planning training and no disqualifying interest should make the decision

That’s interesting, I had initially thought that this vote was amongst all councillors.

What constitutes a disqualifying interest - having attended ICT matches? What about councillors who might have an affiliation with a rival club who would be beneficiaries from our demise, going part time or having to shut the youth set up?

Of course, but I was referring to the quotes in the article rather than the slide the community councils had produced.

1 hour ago, dougal said:

The article in the courier gives an eye watering account what certain communities in Inverness think of ICT.

No, it gives the views of one person, an anonymous spokesperson.

2 hours ago, wilsywilsy said:

Deary me . That is quite a wild leap you are making here Mr Morrison. 

If you are not 100% with us, you are against us. Or something like that. 

Add Wilsy to the Councillor Oldham and Jeff Bezos ICT vendetta conspiracy. 

I note that you still haven’t denied involvement in it.

Exactly, how many people do they really represent. And what’s it got to do with 3 of those community councils, only one of them has relevance for this application. If they want to involve others then we can point out that community councils representing 60,000 local residents did NOT sign up to it!

There is only one valid point which is the one the planning committee used in its recommendation to reject, the rest of it is irrelevance and misdirection. Sorry Wilsy, I know you and your pals put a lot of effort into it but it’s pretty feeble and does not stand up to scrutiny.

2 hours ago, RednBlackComeback said:

https://www.inverness-courier.co.uk/news/4-community-councils-representing-13-700-residents-unite-to-344556/

 

Shall we have a game of spot the difference?

Read these extracts from the presentation against the project, then read Wilsywilsy’s posts on this thread. Uncanny!

“Contrary to multiple statements made… the land is not owned by Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club.

“In addition, the applicant emphasises that the ICT Community Trust is a main beneficiary, but fails to explain how ‘the financial benefits accrued from the development will be managed through the ICTFC Community Development Trust’.

“Moreover, public statements from the applicant suggest that their primary concern is addressing the football club's debts.”