Well done Alness!

“Fantastic!”, “Great response!”, “Really interesting!”. These were some of the comments made by committee members after its meeting in Alness Academy yesterday. The meeting went well from the moment we arrived and were piped into the school by pupil Martin Wunder (what a brilliant welcome!) to when we left. The committee MSPs were very enthusiastic about the meeting and appreciative of all the arrangements and hard work made by the Academy. They were also very grateful to those who came along and took part.

Can we thank everyone who contributed yesterday. All the primary and secondary school pupils who came along, the staff at Alness Academy, and members of the public who turned up.
The committee has asked us to have a wee think about what worked well (and not so well yesterday from our side) and see what we can do better next time round. We really want to build on this and see how we can encourage higher turnouts at future meetings (wherever these may be) and other ideas to get folk involved. We had a look at the comment sheets that were handed in. Some good points made which I will follow up (apologies to those of you distracted by the photographer – we will make sure that doesn’t happen again). Remember, if you were at yesterday’s meeting and would like to let us know what you thought (good or bad) then please post a comment up on to the blog.
The committee is committed to getting out and about round Scotland and will shortly consider its work programme for 2010. This will include ideas for dates and venues for further external meetings.
We have posted a few photos on to our blog photo page. Click here to view. There is also a link below to the piece on STV news last night. There was also coverage of the meeting on Moray Firth Radio and BBC Radio Scotland, Inverness and Aberdeen.
Again, our thanks to everyone for yesterday.

Fergus, Clerk to the PPC