Published: 07 July, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
THE end of term, whether at school or in parliament, is hectic. Since we try to be a family-friendly establishment, schoolchildren and MSP parents can spend some holiday time together.
At the end of term there have been record numbers of lobby groups holding “must have your attendance” events. I had to bring my Wick-based assistant, Niall, to Edinburgh to help us cover them.
From timber merchants to railway lobbyists and receptions for the president of Slovenia, then to attend the Scottish political journalists’ annual dinner where I joined the Scottish Water table. As the SNP water spokesperson, it was a chance to meet the interim chairman Ronnie Mercer, who was hurriedly recruited when Professor Alan Alexander was forced to resign by Ross Finnie in February when crisis overtook the publicly-owned water company over the delivery of the next four-year plan and meeting the swelling chorus demanding removal of development constraints.
George Gunn, in his column “From the Deck of the Pictish Navy” in last week’s Groat, noted the public dissatisfaction with the public water company alongside record water leaks, while the headlines have been dominated by news of directors’ performance bonuses and persistent rumours that the Treasury in London wants rid of our key public utility.
No issue in Holyrood better highlights the divide between the ambitions of the SNP and the half-baked approach of the Liberal Democrat and Labour government. In 2004 the Finance Committee could not agree over the way Scottish Water is funded. In a minority report my colleagues Jim Mather and Fergus Ewing, along with pensioners’ party MSP John Swinburne, exposed the facts.
Scottish Water is paying for its capital investments such as the Loch Calder plant by taking eighty-six per cent of the cost from current domestic and business customers’ bills. Since capital investments span thirty years, that is an unacceptable burden exacerbated by a restricted right to borrow. If they had consent to borrow in the market for longer-term payback, greater things could be achieved for far less pain.
It is a complete fallacy that private water companies are the answer. Their leaks and charges are no better and uncaring shareholders farm the customers. We must resist the idea of worldwide shareholders ever being allowed to soak Scottish Water customers. So what’s the answer? An SNP Scottish government wants fiscal autonomy, i.e. controlling our taxes in Scotland. Then we could set up a fund for public investment and borrow at far better rates in the market. Another way to do this is like Glas Cymru, the new version of Welsh Water that is a mutual or not-for-profit company. It’s a way to recycle the profits into the business.
Such a change of structure or borrowing consent would allow us to catch up with EU standards for water quality and sewage treatment. That would stop the biggest pain – lack of sufficient funds to make sites available for development. It would speed up house-building and end delays in site development for new business.
* HIGHLAND archives are assured of a safe home thanks to last week’s announcement of a £4.3 million Lottery grant. Although this will be sited near the Floral Hall at the Bught Park, Inverness, there are satellite offices including the one in Wick. The Highland Council is rightly pleased that the new-build facility will commence in 2007, the Scottish Year of Highland Culture, for completion in the Highland Year of Homecoming two years later.
With so many more overseas visitors tracing their roots, genealogy is big business. I am always intrigued to see how much use is made of archive materials. As a historian I should declare an interest but can only concur with the education, culture and sport chairman, Councillor Andy Anderson, that our archives are of world significance. He is no slouch himself as an avid collector of information on the Caithness Anderson families.
* A CHANCE news item from South Dakota last week whetted my appetite for family links across the ocean. It told of a nine-storey-high carving in the South Dakota hills that is nearing completion. It has taken decades to carve the face of Crazy Horse, the Oglala Sioux leader who masterminded the rout of the US 7th Cavalry led by Colonel Custer at the Little Big Horn on June 25 one hundred and thirty years ago. Eighty-year-old Ruth Ziolkowski is the proprietor of this giant sculpture on behalf of her late husband, but intriguingly her maiden name was Ruth Ross.
Two links came to mind. Crazy Horse’s sister was married to Scotty Philip, a gold-miner and eventually a successful rancher in South Dakota who bought the last pure-bred buffalo and saved the species. Philip came from Dallas in Moray. I wonder where Ruth Ross’s forebears left to live in Connecticut, USA?
Another link to the Wild West jumped out of the pages of the Caithness Book which tells of the Lockie family from John O’Groats who emigrated to Montana around 1900. A fine picture shows six sons dressed in cowboy gear on horseback
driving a herd of cattle to the railhead in 1940. Montana only became safe for settlement and homesteaders like the Lockies thanks to the murders of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, the massacre at Wounded Knee in December 1890 and the confining of Indians to the dreaded reservations. In fact the Lockie ranch at Sheffield on the Yellowstone River was under a hundred miles from the Little Bighorn battlefield.
Genealogy and archives mine a great treasure chest, so a little praise for the Highland Council is due on this occasion for a good investment to make a future from our past.
Friday, 7 July 2006
Friday, 23 June 2006
Loophole that means students lose out
Published: 23 June, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
A GREAT deal of heat was produced 10 days ago in the Holyrood chamber by a short debate on the Student Fees (Specification) (Scotland) Order.
Why so? By a slim majority the Lib Dem and Labour parties whipped through a variable tuition fee charge of £2700 for medical students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is £1000 more than the variable fee to be paid by other students from these areas coming to Scottish universities. The rowdy barracking from government benches tells us an election is in the offing.
The Scottish government previously vetoed top-up fees but has now introduced anomalies based on where you come from. Paradoxically, students from the Irish Republic or any other EU state don't pay, while English, Welsh and Northern Irish students will have to pay more to study in Scotland.
As the independent MSP Dennis Canavan pointed out, such discrimination is illegal between EU states, but a loophole is being used to restrict non-Scottish UK applicants.
The Deputy First Minister, Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen, built his educational Hadrian's Wall but the bricks are made without straw. An influx of English candidates fleeing the fees hike to Scottish courses was assured, he told us. In 2005, "before the costs were announced, the number of applicants for medical places from England increased by 17.8 per cent…
"That is the reason for this move… It is a practical, sensible policy from an Executive that has abolished tuition fees, opposes top-up fees, opposes variable fees and is absolutely determined to protect university places for Scottish students."
But is this the real issue? Of course Scotland needs more doctors, we need more of those trained here to stay and work here, but is it not sensible to open up courses to greater numbers and especially to those from working-class backgrounds, no matter where they come from?
The SNP was vilified by the First Minister for keeping courses open and opposing these "top-up" fees as "the most anti-Scottish thing that it has ever done".
Surely the imposition of a graduate tax on students was far more damaging. Isn't the Scottish way to open education to as many as possible, as I and Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen and Jamie Stone all experienced?
Yet in Jamie's speech he set aside his manufactured rage at the First Minister, as reported in the Groat a few weeks ago, and grabbed hold of the little Scotland line. "We must ensure that students choose to study in Scotland because it is the best place for their education, not because it is the best place for their pocket," was his rallying cry. "I have said before, and I will say again, that I will not tolerate students from my constituency or any other part of Scotland losing out. It is our job to stand up for our students."
In the old Scots tradition of free education there would not have been the need to "stand up for our students". They would have had rights, and can do again. SNP researchers have proved that student grants are cheaper than student loans and that is admitted now by others. So the mix of students shouldn't need quotas.
The humbug of protecting students from the Far North "losing out" should be exposed for what it is - a guilty cover-up by a Lib Dem to hide the introduction of the graduate tax.
We are a rich country - why not invest in education and be honest about the real costs? Then we can have a proper debate about controlling the revenue and taxes which are reserved to London at present and are denied under devolution.
Jamie and his friends are remarkably silent when it comes to the hundreds of graduates already "losing out" who have had to make a start paying the Lib Dem/ Labour graduate tax. The coming election could indeed be made to change all that.
NEWS that "rich" NHS areas will have to subsidise "poor" regions is the latest wheeze of the Scottish Health Minister, Andy Kerr. That begs another monetary question: how do you measure riches and poverty?
I've been campaigning about care of the elderly, better public transport, support for rural services like the post offices and, yes, health services in smaller communities, such as the resuscitated Wick maternity unit. All these and many more rely for funds on the way we measure need.
Academics agree that urban needs and rural needs require different measurements. Alas this government sees its Labour heartlands as those in most need.
That's because they refuse to adopt a rural deprivation index, the fair way to determine remoter areas' needs too.
Comparisons with our Scandinavian neighbours are the subject of studies in the EU Northern Peripheries Programmes to which I have contributed my tuppenceworth this week. In an interview with Dr Jane Farmer, of the Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, I argued that you can add up affordable housing, support for older people or small schools, the unchanging nature of our scattered geography… all have to be coped with.
If you leave it to the current measures we are too often short-changed. As a national-minded Scot I can't see why any part of the country should be forced to accept disadvantage through lack of honest measurement of our needs.
That's ufinished business that an SNP-led government must tackle.
BRIEFINGS on all the crises of the day rain in thick and fast. The middle of June seems a particularly fertile time for non-governmental organisation staff to bombard harassed MSPs.
So it was with a little relief that I looked over the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds document on avian Flu. Happily it was sent to me by their advocacy coordinator Juliet Swann…
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
A GREAT deal of heat was produced 10 days ago in the Holyrood chamber by a short debate on the Student Fees (Specification) (Scotland) Order.
Why so? By a slim majority the Lib Dem and Labour parties whipped through a variable tuition fee charge of £2700 for medical students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is £1000 more than the variable fee to be paid by other students from these areas coming to Scottish universities. The rowdy barracking from government benches tells us an election is in the offing.
The Scottish government previously vetoed top-up fees but has now introduced anomalies based on where you come from. Paradoxically, students from the Irish Republic or any other EU state don't pay, while English, Welsh and Northern Irish students will have to pay more to study in Scotland.
As the independent MSP Dennis Canavan pointed out, such discrimination is illegal between EU states, but a loophole is being used to restrict non-Scottish UK applicants.
The Deputy First Minister, Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen, built his educational Hadrian's Wall but the bricks are made without straw. An influx of English candidates fleeing the fees hike to Scottish courses was assured, he told us. In 2005, "before the costs were announced, the number of applicants for medical places from England increased by 17.8 per cent…
"That is the reason for this move… It is a practical, sensible policy from an Executive that has abolished tuition fees, opposes top-up fees, opposes variable fees and is absolutely determined to protect university places for Scottish students."
But is this the real issue? Of course Scotland needs more doctors, we need more of those trained here to stay and work here, but is it not sensible to open up courses to greater numbers and especially to those from working-class backgrounds, no matter where they come from?
The SNP was vilified by the First Minister for keeping courses open and opposing these "top-up" fees as "the most anti-Scottish thing that it has ever done".
Surely the imposition of a graduate tax on students was far more damaging. Isn't the Scottish way to open education to as many as possible, as I and Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen and Jamie Stone all experienced?
Yet in Jamie's speech he set aside his manufactured rage at the First Minister, as reported in the Groat a few weeks ago, and grabbed hold of the little Scotland line. "We must ensure that students choose to study in Scotland because it is the best place for their education, not because it is the best place for their pocket," was his rallying cry. "I have said before, and I will say again, that I will not tolerate students from my constituency or any other part of Scotland losing out. It is our job to stand up for our students."
In the old Scots tradition of free education there would not have been the need to "stand up for our students". They would have had rights, and can do again. SNP researchers have proved that student grants are cheaper than student loans and that is admitted now by others. So the mix of students shouldn't need quotas.
The humbug of protecting students from the Far North "losing out" should be exposed for what it is - a guilty cover-up by a Lib Dem to hide the introduction of the graduate tax.
We are a rich country - why not invest in education and be honest about the real costs? Then we can have a proper debate about controlling the revenue and taxes which are reserved to London at present and are denied under devolution.
Jamie and his friends are remarkably silent when it comes to the hundreds of graduates already "losing out" who have had to make a start paying the Lib Dem/ Labour graduate tax. The coming election could indeed be made to change all that.
NEWS that "rich" NHS areas will have to subsidise "poor" regions is the latest wheeze of the Scottish Health Minister, Andy Kerr. That begs another monetary question: how do you measure riches and poverty?
I've been campaigning about care of the elderly, better public transport, support for rural services like the post offices and, yes, health services in smaller communities, such as the resuscitated Wick maternity unit. All these and many more rely for funds on the way we measure need.
Academics agree that urban needs and rural needs require different measurements. Alas this government sees its Labour heartlands as those in most need.
That's because they refuse to adopt a rural deprivation index, the fair way to determine remoter areas' needs too.
Comparisons with our Scandinavian neighbours are the subject of studies in the EU Northern Peripheries Programmes to which I have contributed my tuppenceworth this week. In an interview with Dr Jane Farmer, of the Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, I argued that you can add up affordable housing, support for older people or small schools, the unchanging nature of our scattered geography… all have to be coped with.
If you leave it to the current measures we are too often short-changed. As a national-minded Scot I can't see why any part of the country should be forced to accept disadvantage through lack of honest measurement of our needs.
That's ufinished business that an SNP-led government must tackle.
BRIEFINGS on all the crises of the day rain in thick and fast. The middle of June seems a particularly fertile time for non-governmental organisation staff to bombard harassed MSPs.
So it was with a little relief that I looked over the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds document on avian Flu. Happily it was sent to me by their advocacy coordinator Juliet Swann…
Loophole that means students lose out
Published: 23 June, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
A GREAT deal of heat was produced 10 days ago in the Holyrood chamber by a short debate on the Student Fees (Specification) (Scotland) Order.
Why so? By a slim majority the Lib Dem and Labour parties whipped through a variable tuition fee charge of £2700 for medical students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is £1000 more than the variable fee to be paid by other students from these areas coming to Scottish universities. The rowdy barracking from government benches tells us an election is in the offing.
The Scottish government previously vetoed top-up fees but has now introduced anomalies based on where you come from. Paradoxically, students from the Irish Republic or any other EU state don't pay, while English, Welsh and Northern Irish students will have to pay more to study in Scotland.
As the independent MSP Dennis Canavan pointed out, such discrimination is illegal between EU states, but a loophole is being used to restrict non-Scottish UK applicants.
The Deputy First Minister, Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen, built his educational Hadrian's Wall but the bricks are made without straw. An influx of English candidates fleeing the fees hike to Scottish courses was assured, he told us. In 2005, "before the costs were announced, the number of applicants for medical places from England increased by 17.8 per cent…
"That is the reason for this move… It is a practical, sensible policy from an Executive that has abolished tuition fees, opposes top-up fees, opposes variable fees and is absolutely determined to protect university places for Scottish students."
But is this the real issue? Of course Scotland needs more doctors, we need more of those trained here to stay and work here, but is it not sensible to open up courses to greater numbers and especially to those from working-class backgrounds, no matter where they come from?
The SNP was vilified by the First Minister for keeping courses open and opposing these "top-up" fees as "the most anti-Scottish thing that it has ever done".
Surely the imposition of a graduate tax on students was far more damaging. Isn't the Scottish way to open education to as many as possible, as I and Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen and Jamie Stone all experienced?
Yet in Jamie's speech he set aside his manufactured rage at the First Minister, as reported in the Groat a few weeks ago, and grabbed hold of the little Scotland line. "We must ensure that students choose to study in Scotland because it is the best place for their education, not because it is the best place for their pocket," was his rallying cry. "I have said before, and I will say again, that I will not tolerate students from my constituency or any other part of Scotland losing out. It is our job to stand up for our students."
In the old Scots tradition of free education there would not have been the need to "stand up for our students". They would have had rights, and can do again. SNP researchers have proved that student grants are cheaper than student loans and that is admitted now by others. So the mix of students shouldn't need quotas.
The humbug of protecting students from the Far North "losing out" should be exposed for what it is - a guilty cover-up by a Lib Dem to hide the introduction of the graduate tax.
We are a rich country - why not invest in education and be honest about the real costs? Then we can have a proper debate about controlling the revenue and taxes which are reserved to London at present and are denied under devolution.
Jamie and his friends are remarkably silent when it comes to the hundreds of graduates already "losing out" who have had to make a start paying the Lib Dem/ Labour graduate tax. The coming election could indeed be made to change all that.
NEWS that "rich" NHS areas will have to subsidise "poor" regions is the latest wheeze of the Scottish Health Minister, Andy Kerr. That begs another monetary question: how do you measure riches and poverty?
I've been campaigning about care of the elderly, better public transport, support for rural services like the post offices and, yes, health services in smaller communities, such as the resuscitated Wick maternity unit. All these and many more rely for funds on the way we measure need.
Academics agree that urban needs and rural needs require different measurements. Alas this government sees its Labour heartlands as those in most need.
That's because they refuse to adopt a rural deprivation index, the fair way to determine remoter areas' needs too.
Comparisons with our Scandinavian neighbours are the subject of studies in the EU Northern Peripheries Programmes to which I have contributed my tuppenceworth this week. In an interview with Dr Jane Farmer, of the Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, I argued that you can add up affordable housing, support for older people or small schools, the unchanging nature of our scattered geography… all have to be coped with.
If you leave it to the current measures we are too often short-changed. As a national-minded Scot I can't see why any part of the country should be forced to accept disadvantage through lack of honest measurement of our needs.
That's ufinished business that an SNP-led government must tackle.
BRIEFINGS on all the crises of the day rain in thick and fast. The middle of June seems a particularly fertile time for non-governmental organisation staff to bombard harassed MSPs.
So it was with a little relief that I looked over the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds document on avian Flu. Happily it was sent to me by their advocacy coordinator Juliet Swann…
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
A GREAT deal of heat was produced 10 days ago in the Holyrood chamber by a short debate on the Student Fees (Specification) (Scotland) Order.
Why so? By a slim majority the Lib Dem and Labour parties whipped through a variable tuition fee charge of £2700 for medical students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is £1000 more than the variable fee to be paid by other students from these areas coming to Scottish universities. The rowdy barracking from government benches tells us an election is in the offing.
The Scottish government previously vetoed top-up fees but has now introduced anomalies based on where you come from. Paradoxically, students from the Irish Republic or any other EU state don't pay, while English, Welsh and Northern Irish students will have to pay more to study in Scotland.
As the independent MSP Dennis Canavan pointed out, such discrimination is illegal between EU states, but a loophole is being used to restrict non-Scottish UK applicants.
The Deputy First Minister, Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen, built his educational Hadrian's Wall but the bricks are made without straw. An influx of English candidates fleeing the fees hike to Scottish courses was assured, he told us. In 2005, "before the costs were announced, the number of applicants for medical places from England increased by 17.8 per cent…
"That is the reason for this move… It is a practical, sensible policy from an Executive that has abolished tuition fees, opposes top-up fees, opposes variable fees and is absolutely determined to protect university places for Scottish students."
But is this the real issue? Of course Scotland needs more doctors, we need more of those trained here to stay and work here, but is it not sensible to open up courses to greater numbers and especially to those from working-class backgrounds, no matter where they come from?
The SNP was vilified by the First Minister for keeping courses open and opposing these "top-up" fees as "the most anti-Scottish thing that it has ever done".
Surely the imposition of a graduate tax on students was far more damaging. Isn't the Scottish way to open education to as many as possible, as I and Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen and Jamie Stone all experienced?
Yet in Jamie's speech he set aside his manufactured rage at the First Minister, as reported in the Groat a few weeks ago, and grabbed hold of the little Scotland line. "We must ensure that students choose to study in Scotland because it is the best place for their education, not because it is the best place for their pocket," was his rallying cry. "I have said before, and I will say again, that I will not tolerate students from my constituency or any other part of Scotland losing out. It is our job to stand up for our students."
In the old Scots tradition of free education there would not have been the need to "stand up for our students". They would have had rights, and can do again. SNP researchers have proved that student grants are cheaper than student loans and that is admitted now by others. So the mix of students shouldn't need quotas.
The humbug of protecting students from the Far North "losing out" should be exposed for what it is - a guilty cover-up by a Lib Dem to hide the introduction of the graduate tax.
We are a rich country - why not invest in education and be honest about the real costs? Then we can have a proper debate about controlling the revenue and taxes which are reserved to London at present and are denied under devolution.
Jamie and his friends are remarkably silent when it comes to the hundreds of graduates already "losing out" who have had to make a start paying the Lib Dem/ Labour graduate tax. The coming election could indeed be made to change all that.
NEWS that "rich" NHS areas will have to subsidise "poor" regions is the latest wheeze of the Scottish Health Minister, Andy Kerr. That begs another monetary question: how do you measure riches and poverty?
I've been campaigning about care of the elderly, better public transport, support for rural services like the post offices and, yes, health services in smaller communities, such as the resuscitated Wick maternity unit. All these and many more rely for funds on the way we measure need.
Academics agree that urban needs and rural needs require different measurements. Alas this government sees its Labour heartlands as those in most need.
That's because they refuse to adopt a rural deprivation index, the fair way to determine remoter areas' needs too.
Comparisons with our Scandinavian neighbours are the subject of studies in the EU Northern Peripheries Programmes to which I have contributed my tuppenceworth this week. In an interview with Dr Jane Farmer, of the Highlands and Islands Health Research Institute, I argued that you can add up affordable housing, support for older people or small schools, the unchanging nature of our scattered geography… all have to be coped with.
If you leave it to the current measures we are too often short-changed. As a national-minded Scot I can't see why any part of the country should be forced to accept disadvantage through lack of honest measurement of our needs.
That's ufinished business that an SNP-led government must tackle.
BRIEFINGS on all the crises of the day rain in thick and fast. The middle of June seems a particularly fertile time for non-governmental organisation staff to bombard harassed MSPs.
So it was with a little relief that I looked over the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds document on avian Flu. Happily it was sent to me by their advocacy coordinator Juliet Swann…
Friday, 9 June 2006
Speaking up for a rich diversity of language
Published: 09 June, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
ON my travels I sense a growing mood of confidence about our diverse culture and languages in the Highlands and Islands. That's a sure sign of a wider optimism for our economic and social prospects.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise has recently acknowledged the key part played by our traditional arts and music as well as contemporary artistic expression in underpinning lively communities. This has been confirmed by widespread research over several years. Would that Scottish Enterprise had a similar remit for the rest of Scotland.
Happenstance last week led me to meet a most enthusiastic local proponent of that confident cultural diversity. She is Dr Donna Heddle, of Orkney College, who mentors the UHI's BA honours degree in Cultural Studies of the Highlands and Islands and their MA in Highlands and Islands Literature. These are naturally open to distance-learning opportunities but based in Orkney. Donna, a Caithness native from Castletown, has drawn together an exciting prospectus of all the strands of identity that make up our complex region around the Pentland Firth and the North Atlantic rim.
The courses are attracting students from abroad; several are signed up from the USA and Canada. Revenue from their fees boosts the chances of more local candidates being able to develop their knowledge of our Scots, Gaelic and Norse cultures that coalesce - or, as some would have it, collide - in the Caithness, Sutherland and Orkney triangle. I was pleased to see that Dr Heddle has engaged Carl MacDougall, host of the excellent four-part series Scots: The Language of the People screened recently on BBC TV.
Talking of confidence-building, we need a big push for the Thurso-based nuclear decommissioning studies just in case people believe newspaper stories that the University of Central Lancashire beat us to it.
The cross-party group for Scots language decided last week that Dr Heddle should make us a presentation in the autumn. She's a Caithnessian who has learned Gaelic along with her robust native speech in the Castletown version of the Caithness dialect. There's a lot we can learn from Donna so Caithness schools can enjoy the legacy of Caithness Scots and Gaelic that provides a new sense of well-being for the Far North. In contrast I am aware of certain councillors who object to Gaelic language appearing on bilingual road signs here and even voting in the Highland Council to stop people in other distant parts of the Highlands from opening a Gaelic-medium school.
With a local culture which has huge dollops of English regional accents, through the all-UK recruitment to Dounreay, diversity could stand a bit of celebration by including local strands of culture too. Frankly it would be racist if anyone proposed that all English people should conform by dropping their local tongue when they reside in the county. Who knows, some locals might soon be telling all Polish arrivals that they have to speak English, or else.
Hopefully not if a confident and informed mood is adopted by those in positions of power towards our own native tongues and the new tongues on the block.
CAITHNESS is indeed a unique place but it has yet to fix that idea in the wider public mind - that despite having more prehistoric sites in the county than Orkney, boasting the last clan battle in Scotland fought at Altimarlach, and, of course, sporting some of the best surf in Europe.
Last week I visited an important part of that unique Caithness fabric, Pulteney Distillery. Set up in 1826, it managed to continue to produce its water of life throughout the prohibition years and now has gone global. It is one of the biggest and most successful concerns in Caithness.
The only problem is that its single malt whisky is proving so popular that demand is threatening to outstrip current stocks - but then that is a problem worth having!
Prompted by a more than passing interest in its amber product, I wanted to explore the prospects for the local heating system fuelled by previously waste steam and hot water that should provide green credentials for the distillery and constant hot-water supplies for local homes. The Environment and Rural Development Committee's review of statutory instruments that regulate private water supplies and license abstraction from rivers and burns affects distilleries in particular.
So is Pulteney facing the challenges of tight regulation? Top marks are deserved.
Thanks to manager Fred Sinclair, whose enthusiasm and knowledge highlights yet another branch of Scottish cultural diversity, the worldwide success story of selling one of Scotland's treasured malt whiskies is in safe hands.
Fred originally comes from Sanday in Orkney and started work in the Scapa distillery near Kirkwall, after which he has served at Inver House outlets in Speyside and Wick.
With modern marketing and developing palates, sales of malt whiskies generally have soared and the huge Chinese market is only just opening up. So the prospects for well-marketed products like Old Pulteney depend on being able to make enough to meet market demands.
With a big surge in Scottish confidence we could raise a glass after the Holyrood elections next May and start to recycle the whisky revenues from Scottish stills for more tangible local needs. Add this to Scottish oil, an asset worth £170,000 for every man, woman and child in Scotland. This week the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, launched proposals in the House of Commons to repatriate oil and gas, and the revenues from the Scottish sector of the North Sea, to the Scottish Parliament. Now that would be worth much more than a second dram.
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
ON my travels I sense a growing mood of confidence about our diverse culture and languages in the Highlands and Islands. That's a sure sign of a wider optimism for our economic and social prospects.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise has recently acknowledged the key part played by our traditional arts and music as well as contemporary artistic expression in underpinning lively communities. This has been confirmed by widespread research over several years. Would that Scottish Enterprise had a similar remit for the rest of Scotland.
Happenstance last week led me to meet a most enthusiastic local proponent of that confident cultural diversity. She is Dr Donna Heddle, of Orkney College, who mentors the UHI's BA honours degree in Cultural Studies of the Highlands and Islands and their MA in Highlands and Islands Literature. These are naturally open to distance-learning opportunities but based in Orkney. Donna, a Caithness native from Castletown, has drawn together an exciting prospectus of all the strands of identity that make up our complex region around the Pentland Firth and the North Atlantic rim.
The courses are attracting students from abroad; several are signed up from the USA and Canada. Revenue from their fees boosts the chances of more local candidates being able to develop their knowledge of our Scots, Gaelic and Norse cultures that coalesce - or, as some would have it, collide - in the Caithness, Sutherland and Orkney triangle. I was pleased to see that Dr Heddle has engaged Carl MacDougall, host of the excellent four-part series Scots: The Language of the People screened recently on BBC TV.
Talking of confidence-building, we need a big push for the Thurso-based nuclear decommissioning studies just in case people believe newspaper stories that the University of Central Lancashire beat us to it.
The cross-party group for Scots language decided last week that Dr Heddle should make us a presentation in the autumn. She's a Caithnessian who has learned Gaelic along with her robust native speech in the Castletown version of the Caithness dialect. There's a lot we can learn from Donna so Caithness schools can enjoy the legacy of Caithness Scots and Gaelic that provides a new sense of well-being for the Far North. In contrast I am aware of certain councillors who object to Gaelic language appearing on bilingual road signs here and even voting in the Highland Council to stop people in other distant parts of the Highlands from opening a Gaelic-medium school.
With a local culture which has huge dollops of English regional accents, through the all-UK recruitment to Dounreay, diversity could stand a bit of celebration by including local strands of culture too. Frankly it would be racist if anyone proposed that all English people should conform by dropping their local tongue when they reside in the county. Who knows, some locals might soon be telling all Polish arrivals that they have to speak English, or else.
Hopefully not if a confident and informed mood is adopted by those in positions of power towards our own native tongues and the new tongues on the block.
CAITHNESS is indeed a unique place but it has yet to fix that idea in the wider public mind - that despite having more prehistoric sites in the county than Orkney, boasting the last clan battle in Scotland fought at Altimarlach, and, of course, sporting some of the best surf in Europe.
Last week I visited an important part of that unique Caithness fabric, Pulteney Distillery. Set up in 1826, it managed to continue to produce its water of life throughout the prohibition years and now has gone global. It is one of the biggest and most successful concerns in Caithness.
The only problem is that its single malt whisky is proving so popular that demand is threatening to outstrip current stocks - but then that is a problem worth having!
Prompted by a more than passing interest in its amber product, I wanted to explore the prospects for the local heating system fuelled by previously waste steam and hot water that should provide green credentials for the distillery and constant hot-water supplies for local homes. The Environment and Rural Development Committee's review of statutory instruments that regulate private water supplies and license abstraction from rivers and burns affects distilleries in particular.
So is Pulteney facing the challenges of tight regulation? Top marks are deserved.
Thanks to manager Fred Sinclair, whose enthusiasm and knowledge highlights yet another branch of Scottish cultural diversity, the worldwide success story of selling one of Scotland's treasured malt whiskies is in safe hands.
Fred originally comes from Sanday in Orkney and started work in the Scapa distillery near Kirkwall, after which he has served at Inver House outlets in Speyside and Wick.
With modern marketing and developing palates, sales of malt whiskies generally have soared and the huge Chinese market is only just opening up. So the prospects for well-marketed products like Old Pulteney depend on being able to make enough to meet market demands.
With a big surge in Scottish confidence we could raise a glass after the Holyrood elections next May and start to recycle the whisky revenues from Scottish stills for more tangible local needs. Add this to Scottish oil, an asset worth £170,000 for every man, woman and child in Scotland. This week the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, launched proposals in the House of Commons to repatriate oil and gas, and the revenues from the Scottish sector of the North Sea, to the Scottish Parliament. Now that would be worth much more than a second dram.
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