Chamber Annual Dinner 2002

01/03/02

We squeezed 24 hungry souls into Dave and Jo Currie’s dining room at Highland Cottage for our annual dinner, which was held on Friday 1^st March.

Chamber members came from all over Mull, and even from as far away as Oban, to enjoy good company, fine food and interesting debate.

Our speaker this year was none other that Dr Jim Hunter, acclaimed Scottish writer and Chairman of HIE.  After dinner, he talked about his days in journalism and went on to explain how he sees the future of the highlands and the islands.  As reported on the front page of the Press and Journal the next day, he clearly believes more should be done to spread civil service jobs from the centres of population out to the more remote areas including islands.  In this day and age, with telecommunications being what it is, much can be done from home, wherever that may be.

A very lively question and answer session followed, and some of the topics covered were – road equivalent tariff, ferries, tourism, fuel, council tax on second homes, population decline, housing etc.  We arranged a short but very intense series of visits to different worthwhile projects and businesses prior to the dinner, and the Chamber board members had a very worthwhile breakfast meeting with Dr Hunter, where we went over some more formal issues.

Although we are a relatively small Chamber, we are very active in lobbying politicians, officials and the like.  It is always encouraging when the work that we do is recognised by someone with the stature and influence such as Jim Hunter, and helps to show that the effort is worthwhile.