The letter circulated yesterday on which For Argyll published earlier today, purporting to be ‘The Voice of Oban’, is now, we understand, with Police Scotland in Oban.
This multipaged and obsessive rant repeatedly and viciously worked to smear Independent Oban Councillor, Roddy McCuish, formerly – twice – SNP Leader of coalition administrations at Argyll and Bute Council; and unarguably one of the most hard working, respected, open and trusted councillors in the chamber.
The letter came in hard copy, by post, posted on 8th August 2014 and postmarked ‘Glasgow’ – which, with the current anonymising postal system, could physically have been posted in Glasgow. or anywhere else with a PA [Paisley, for God's sake] postcode.
However although the envelopes were typed, they were certainly stamped – which may reveal fingerprints – as may the pages in any of the copies sent out; and if the envelopes were licked to close them, they will have DNA.
The letter made scurrilous accusations about Councllor McCuish’s integrity. To our own certain knowledge this is unimpeachable. During the ‘schools’ wars’ in 2010-11, he was offered by a senior opposition councillor whose identity we know, a £4,000 pa top up post of senior responsibility in the then administration if he changed sides and left the SNP, who at that stage were opposing the massive rural schools’ closures programme proposed.
The letter also made highly damaging allegations about the conduct of the CEO of the Argyll Community Housing Association, Alastair MacGregor, of the major Argyll business, M&K MacLeod and of Argyll and Bute Council, its councillors and one of its Executive Directors, Douglas Hendry.
It is improbable that all of these injured parties will have turned the other cheek to such flagrantly damaging charges.
The focus of the piece – and the excuse for this blizzard of reputationally damaging allegations – was the campaign to prevent the councjl from selling the derelict Victorian Rockfield School, in the town centre, to the housing association, ACHA, for £1 – to enable the development of badly needed housing in the town.
A former SNP councillor, Louise Glen-Lee, who resigned her seat and returned to her former job as a reporter at The Oban Times, has been a vocal campaigner against the sale of Rockfield, with access to the column of the paper to pursue the matter.
Feelings have been running high, as they do in small places.
There is the ‘Nimby’ element who would prefer real people – and the elderly – not to get to live in the centre of the town and are fighting what is being presented as a conservation issue to save a building whose ruination in the careless hands of the council they have peacefully tolerated for years.
There are the conspiracy theorists who see plots and scams in everything Argyll and Bute Council does. While there is good reason for the level of ritual suspicion, statistically, it is, statistically, not always going to be the case and. in this instance, the beneficiaries are those in need of housing – and a town that needs as much economic activity in its centre as it can get.
There is also the bitter and divided local SNP battalion. As well as eating themselves in the aftermath of the catastrophic fragmentation of their party in Argyll and Bute – under the aegis of the SNP National Executive Committee itself, these people are wont to pay particular cannibalistic attention to Councillor McCuish. With the in-house destruction of both of his attempts honourably to lead an SNP coalition at Argyll and Bute, Mr McCuish resigned from the party and sits as an ordinary member of the current mixumgatherum administration.
We contacted to him today to ask for his response to the allegations against himself and against the council.
Councillor McCuish says that he will be more than happy to respond to any member or members of ‘The Voice of Oban’ – in public; in front of anyone and everyone; on any issues they care to raise with him about his own conduct; and about that of the council in respect of the proposed disposition of Rockfield School – if they make themselves known to him.
Councillor McCuish can be contacted:
- by email: roderick.mccuish@argyll-bute.gov.uk
- by post: 20B Dalintart Drive, Oban, PA34 4EE.
- by phone:01631 567142 or 01631 567854.
The sonorous phrase, ‘The Voice of Oban’ bothered us as soonas we first saw it on this scurrilous communication. We had a memory of having heard it or seen it before – and possibly recently.
Scouring the pages of The Oban Times, as a likely place it might have cropped up, we actually came across it quite quickly.
A recent quote from Councillor McCuish, no less, was described on a front page as ‘the voice of Oban’.
This is a curious coincidence. However, lest the conspiracy-hunters start imagining that Councillor McCuish has developed the habit of making scurrillous allegations about himself others in anonymous letters to fellow councillors, the media and senior Cabinet members of the SNP government, that would be a highly improbable proposition.
Roddy McCuish is an approachable and modest man from whom the pomposity of calling himself ‘The Voice of Oban’, could not be more distant, even to slag off himself in some unhinged monomania.
It may well be that the phrase, ‘The Voice of Oban’, is currency in the town and used by everyone to identify known majority positions amongst townsfolk – in which case the police and the forensic laboratories will be very busy for some time.
In a civilised society, issuing anonymous smears against honest people in some personal or collective act of retribution, is diseased. All those who received a copy of this communication should turn that copy and the envelope in which it arrived over to Police Scotland, with a direct suggestion that fingerprints and DNA on the pages and envelopes should be checked for serial occurrences.
For the record, Councillor McCuish is an ordinary councillor, paid the [unacceptably low] minimum of exactly £15,341 per annum. For hardworking councillors like himself, on call literally 24/7 – but assuming that he works a notional 60 hour week – as do other councillors in the two Oban wards who are also on the minimum salary – this, at £4.91 per hour, amounts to significantly less than the minimum wage.
