The Scottish Government: Return control of Common Good Assets

We are pleased to publish an email concerning efforts in Forres to have Common Good Asset control returned to Community Councils.

Friends,

Something amazing happened last week!

Our petition asking The Scottish Government to return our local assets to the local people they were gifted to started to stall. It was great that so many of you signed and shared the web-link with your friends.. Thank YOU to those of you who did that…

https://www.change.org/petitions/the-scottish-government-return-control-of-common-good-assets-to-local-community-councils

After a great start, it quickly spread. However it slowed down around 650 people and only one or two people were joining each day. I canvassed and nagged a few of my friends and one by one the numbers grew. However I realised that I had reached the scope of my social network and felt a bit down that I couldn’t do any more. So I went to bed feeling a bit depressed πŸ™

When I woke up the numbers were starting to go up again and by lunchtime the numbers were over 800!. I watched in awe as more and more people signed and shared… 900 and then 1000 (our initial target). Still new folk kept signing – 100 in the next hour and then another 100 in the next 40 minutes. We were gobsmacked!. In one day the numbers had more than doubled and they are still rising steadily (presently 1380 people have now signed πŸ™‚

It became clear that this was not just a local issue and much bigger than our own local Battle for Bogton. Yes, we are still fighting our local authority who seem to be intent on selling off our beautiful park owned by us to a major property developer to build a shopping mall (which we feel will kill our high street and destroy the character of our town).

But this has become Bigger than Bogton… Bigger than Forres. Bigger than Scotland! Read how here…

http://battleforbogton.wordpress.com/

We realise now that we need to keep growing this petition and take it to the UK parliament for those living in England who are equally affected.

So, we don’t intend to stop this campaign and are now aiming for 10,000 people to join us in bringing this important matter to the highest authority. 10,000 of us will not be ignored by the press, the telly and even by our politicians. Its time to bring our power back to local communities everywhere. In trying to stop our wee town becoming Anytown, Anywhere we now hope to help Everytown Everywhere. πŸ™‚

Thank YOU for helping make this happen. You are more powerful than ypu realise! If you haven’t already done so, please share the link above on your social network site and encourage your friends to do the same. Together we are many and we must be heard. Lets see this petition really rocket!

Together we will stop the land grabs. If you too are fighting a similar battle in your town please join our local facebook group and paste a link to it so that we can work together…

https://www.facebook.com/groups/147116508810531/

Thankyou, thankyou, thank YOU

Stewart Noble
for The Battle for Bogton, Forres.