SIR, – I read in your issue of October 29 the words of Fiona Mandeville which seem to support my view that the SCF does not have any detail of the circumstances behind the decisions of the Crofting Commission to invoke the legislation provided for in the Crofters Scotland Act 1993 when dealing with three grazing committees.
Indeed, I now question if Fiona Mandeville actually understands who the federation is taking subscriptions from and what the role of the federation amounts to.
I certainly gave up my membership some years ago due to receiving nothing in return for my subscription as a crofter. However, I am now intrigued to realise, through the pages of The Scottish Farmer, that it is grazing committees the federation support which they claim to have been treated despicably by Commission actions, and not the crofters who have been treated in a worse than despicable manner by grazing committees which are depriving crofters of the statutory rights provided for in legislation dating back to 1886, while running businesses which have accrued many hundreds of thousands of pounds without any formal accounting or payments to crofters.
It could be argued that were the federation ensuring grazing committees were equitably distributing monies to crofters, as the Commission tried to do, rather than berating Colin Kennedy then more crofters would see potential benefit from federation membership and may actually have spare funds to take out membership.
Quite why the federation is so concerned about grazing committees which are not federation members, while crofters who are members go without fair treatment from those grazing committees, only Fiona Mandeville can explain and as previously explained, it is evident the real issue is being overlooked in an effort to facilitate an agenda against Colin Kennedy.
A question which I am repeatedly asked is: “Do you know how many members with a croft the SCF has?” My answer is no, but, I have heard the question asked of Patrick Krause who also claimed not to know.
For the record, I now call on the federation to declare the number of members with crofts it currently has on the books and represent; the number of non crofter members on the books, and looking for a croft currently on the list together with the number of grazing committees they currently have on the books paying membership.
Colin N Kennedy
Isle Of Coll
Argyll
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