Any port in a storm.

The much anticipated first public meeting has been and gone and already there are worrying signs creeping in that this may not be quite the council of action some people expect. Case in point being the port development: Dick Sawle said he'd like to speed things up, whilst at the same time revealing there would be a new advisory committee. He might as well have said he’d like to build the new port single handed….out of cheese.
Many a good idea has been slowly strangled to death by the treacle-effect brought about from forming a working group, an advisory committee or, dare I say it, a stakeholders’ group (incidentally, if you see Andrea Clausen – ask her how the smoking ban working group got on). We might as well give up now and accept that the inevitable outcome will be that keeping FIPASS going a bit longer will be relatively cheap and that will be that.

Whilst there are people out there with plenty of knowledge of all things maritime and equally good intentions, I can’t help but feel that when some people say that stakeholders are not being fully consulted, they really mean that in the small pond that is the Falklands, they, the big fish, weren’t personally asked for an opinion or their thoughts weren’t treated with the respect they felt they deserved. Get over your self importance and get on with it.