Published: 30 September, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
THE UK party conference season has been in full swing, though I detect fewer and fewer MSPs attending their UK counterparts’ events. We in the SNP has decided to move our annual conference to an October recess spot from the 11th to the 14th in Perth.
Thus SNP MSPs should not have to take time out of term and have the annual juggle of speaking slots in Parliament for those left to hold the line. But it also interferes with the cherished October holiday breaks in the sun and with events like the National Mod. So you can’t please everyone.
It seems that UK party conferences can badly misjudge policy decisions that affect Scotland and particularly the North. Take the Lib Dems’ proposals for a huge hike in road tax. They may have been targeting 4x4s in the leafy suburbs, but any increase in road tax hits hardest the rural-dwellers with no alternative transport.
Already their Orkney and Shetland MP is pledging to seek a Highlands and Islands opt-out. Hardly a reassuring pledge when you realise that countries like Norway, with full control of their own energy policy, make sure fuel is no cheaper in the north than in their capital city Oslo, and that moves away from the carbon economy are set to account for the needs of small communities as well as urban centres.
Last Thursday the Tories led a debate on the environment. It was a bit like a truth and reconciliation commission. Nonetheless I pointed out that the Environment Minister should not gloat. He had previously told me in the Parliament that we cannot produce more than 40 per cent of our energy from renewables in Scotland but now his party’s policy is a far higher target, which the SNP welcomes.
Ross Finnie retorted, “That is absolute nonsense!”
In January 2005 I pointed out that their target is to produce 40 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2020, so the bulk of our electricity – the other 60 per cent – also has to be produced. If the Government was serious, it would have said that it wanted most of our power to be produced by renewables. That could be the centrepiece of its policy, but it has not made it so.
Ross Finnie confirmed at that time why their target was 40 per cent: “It was set after extensive consultation with all sectors—not just energy producers, but communities, energy groups and environmentalists.”
Maybe Mr Finnie actually agrees with Jack McConnell, who told a fringe meeting at Labour’s UK conference in Manchester that Labour had not done enough to combat climate change. The First Minister said, “I have always had concerns that the Labour Party as a whole does not yet see environmental issues and environmental justice in particular, but also climate change, as a central issue for democratic socialism.”
We should be very concerned too. Climate change is the defining issue that governs our future. It’s up to us to meet the challenge if there’s to be any habitable Scotland a century from now.
* CAN you believe that over 60 per cent of families no longer buy lamb? So MSPs were informed during a presentation by Quality Meat Scotland during the recent Scottish Food Fortnight. Around a third of Scots farms and many more crofts draw some revenue from sheep. But we export 25 per cent of our high-class product to discerning Europeans and another 45 per cent to equally discerning eaters of lamb in England and Wales. So why don’t Scots, especially those under 45 years, eat this delicious home product?
Scots consumed only around one-third as much as their English counterparts during 2004/05.
Old scare stories about it being too fatty have run too long. Perhaps it is the reluctance of families to cook ingredients from scratch that’s at fault. Anyway, it would interesting to know what happens locally.
Meanwhile, breeding sheep numbers have reduced once again, although Scottish abattoirs have handled 8.5 per cent more lambs since the start of the current lamb season, which began in earnest in May. The samples we tasted in Parliament were taken from Shetland to Galloway. Surely such a treat is not beyond the average household food budget today.
* RECRUITING more GPs and hospital doctors to serve our scattered rural and remote communities relies on giving recruits the support they need to build a career. That’s one of the lessons of the Caithness maternity struggle which is now delivering a common-sense support for the full unit in Wick at consultant and midwife team levels. So it was with dismay that I listened to the Health Minister Andy Kerr reiterate that the health service has to be built around patient needs alone.
Mr Kerr doesn’t seem to grasp that you need to woo workers to get out of the big teaching hospital environment. Why did he set up a Remote and Rural Medicine unit based in the Western Isles if not to do that?
He parried another query from Green MSP Eleanor Scott thus: “I find it odd that, according to the argument in the member’s question, somehow our job is to provide speciality training for anybody who wants it in a particular area, which should be in line not with the needs of patients but with people’s career choices. I also find odd the suggestion that we should allow people to work wherever they want. The health service is a national service and our job is to ensure that opportunities are available nationally.”
His bluster shows that this Minister does not get the point. What good are unhappy staff in places they don’t want to work? What about giving recruits a happy apprenticeship and build confidence in the whole health service? We await developments on the NHS recruiting front as a repeat advert for the third consultant post at Wick’s maternity goes out.
Saturday, 30 September 2006
Friday, 15 September 2006
Independence wouldn't turn us into foreigners
Published: 15 September, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
WHAT would the modern image of Ireland be like without the annual bash on St Patrick’s Day that is held around the world? It’s a day to celebrate an ancient nation with a distinctive language and culture that today is recognised as the Celtic Tiger. Against the odds, Ireland has clawed its way up to boast a higher gross domestic product than the UK, from which it fully seceded in 1937.
It was the UK Wyndham Act of 1904 that turned Irish tenants into farm owners. This further fuelled their step-by-step demands for full self-government. That said, poverty still drove many Irish people overseas, till today Irish people are returning in droves and they are even importing labourers from England like we are doing from Eastern Europe.
Today 25 per cent of people in the UK claim Irish ancestry; in London it is as high as 77 per cent. But citizens of the Irish Republic are part of a Common Travel Area set up many years ago that allows free passage all around the UK, Ireland and the Channel Islands, and now the EU has extended these bounds enormously.
So isn’t it strange that the candidate to be next Labour leader in London and his supporters argue that, because Scots have family in England and vice versa, that must mean we should be in one state and have decisions about Scottish taxes and the direction of the Scottish economy forever decided in London? It hardly makes foreigners of any of our relatives inside Europe, or even worldwide, so why would independence make foreigners of Scots in England?
Even more grudging is Labour’s man in Scotland, First Minister Jack McConnell, who has finally conceded a holiday for St Andrew’s Day just so long as we forgo another public day off. We Scots are entitled to eight public holidays annually. That’s two fewer than the Irish and four fewer than the EU average. Isn’t it about time that the gloom spread by business representatives about the loss to their tills was countered with indignation about being denied a day to celebrate Scotland, our ancient and modern nation, that wasn’t created merely by the tally of pounds and pence? We should also be demanding that the next Holyrood government actually supports the small businesses that suffer so badly from half-baked government under devolution.
TALKING about promoting successful businesses, I was heartened to meet a party from Kentucky who visited us in Parliament en route for 10 days in the Highlands and Orkney to see how we support and nurture small businesses hereabouts. These Kentuckians are volunteers from their own rural entrepreneurial institute which works to promote more self-employment and rural sustainability.
One thing each US state can do is to decide the level of taxes to be levied for state services from citizens and businesses. Indeed, some states have extremely low business taxes to attract new start-ups and firms from other states. Nebraska is a good example. The idea is simply to increase business activity, and tax revenues flow from success. Would that Scotland can make our taxes attractive so that vulnerable areas like our own can get an advantage.
That could help small businesses here in the North grow into larger ones. To promote this debate, the SNP is consulting on a Small Business Bonus Scheme in which 120,000 small businesses across Scotland could have their rates abolished and a further 30,000 businesses could benefit through higher rates relief. Put that into Highland Council terms under SNP proposals: 8900 firms would pay no business rates and 2200 would have reduced rates. That’s a big proportion of the 15,000 businesses in total across the North.
As part of our wider economic strategy, the SNP is determined to support the small business sector which has been let down under the administration of Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen. Small businesses have traditionally been important to the economy of small towns and rural areas like Caithness for a variety of reasons: as a source of entrepreneurship and innovation, as a driver of competition and local economic vibrancy, as a mechanism for job creation and as the backbone of our rural economy.
Next year there is a straight choice between the failing Labour Party, with their Lib Dem allies, and the SNP. In preparation for government the SNP can deliver a real boost to small businesses and help Scotland reach its economic potential. At an initial £150 million cost to the Scottish budget, this should diminish as more small businesses benefit from the economic boost at the very time Scotland can also take charge of our tax system and economy. Who knows, it could tempt thousands of Scots driven south to find jobs over the years to make the same homecoming as the Irish. We can have more and more to celebrate each St Andrew’s Day when we follow the Irish success story.
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
WHAT would the modern image of Ireland be like without the annual bash on St Patrick’s Day that is held around the world? It’s a day to celebrate an ancient nation with a distinctive language and culture that today is recognised as the Celtic Tiger. Against the odds, Ireland has clawed its way up to boast a higher gross domestic product than the UK, from which it fully seceded in 1937.
It was the UK Wyndham Act of 1904 that turned Irish tenants into farm owners. This further fuelled their step-by-step demands for full self-government. That said, poverty still drove many Irish people overseas, till today Irish people are returning in droves and they are even importing labourers from England like we are doing from Eastern Europe.
Today 25 per cent of people in the UK claim Irish ancestry; in London it is as high as 77 per cent. But citizens of the Irish Republic are part of a Common Travel Area set up many years ago that allows free passage all around the UK, Ireland and the Channel Islands, and now the EU has extended these bounds enormously.
So isn’t it strange that the candidate to be next Labour leader in London and his supporters argue that, because Scots have family in England and vice versa, that must mean we should be in one state and have decisions about Scottish taxes and the direction of the Scottish economy forever decided in London? It hardly makes foreigners of any of our relatives inside Europe, or even worldwide, so why would independence make foreigners of Scots in England?
Even more grudging is Labour’s man in Scotland, First Minister Jack McConnell, who has finally conceded a holiday for St Andrew’s Day just so long as we forgo another public day off. We Scots are entitled to eight public holidays annually. That’s two fewer than the Irish and four fewer than the EU average. Isn’t it about time that the gloom spread by business representatives about the loss to their tills was countered with indignation about being denied a day to celebrate Scotland, our ancient and modern nation, that wasn’t created merely by the tally of pounds and pence? We should also be demanding that the next Holyrood government actually supports the small businesses that suffer so badly from half-baked government under devolution.
TALKING about promoting successful businesses, I was heartened to meet a party from Kentucky who visited us in Parliament en route for 10 days in the Highlands and Orkney to see how we support and nurture small businesses hereabouts. These Kentuckians are volunteers from their own rural entrepreneurial institute which works to promote more self-employment and rural sustainability.
One thing each US state can do is to decide the level of taxes to be levied for state services from citizens and businesses. Indeed, some states have extremely low business taxes to attract new start-ups and firms from other states. Nebraska is a good example. The idea is simply to increase business activity, and tax revenues flow from success. Would that Scotland can make our taxes attractive so that vulnerable areas like our own can get an advantage.
That could help small businesses here in the North grow into larger ones. To promote this debate, the SNP is consulting on a Small Business Bonus Scheme in which 120,000 small businesses across Scotland could have their rates abolished and a further 30,000 businesses could benefit through higher rates relief. Put that into Highland Council terms under SNP proposals: 8900 firms would pay no business rates and 2200 would have reduced rates. That’s a big proportion of the 15,000 businesses in total across the North.
As part of our wider economic strategy, the SNP is determined to support the small business sector which has been let down under the administration of Jack McConnell and Nicol Stephen. Small businesses have traditionally been important to the economy of small towns and rural areas like Caithness for a variety of reasons: as a source of entrepreneurship and innovation, as a driver of competition and local economic vibrancy, as a mechanism for job creation and as the backbone of our rural economy.
Next year there is a straight choice between the failing Labour Party, with their Lib Dem allies, and the SNP. In preparation for government the SNP can deliver a real boost to small businesses and help Scotland reach its economic potential. At an initial £150 million cost to the Scottish budget, this should diminish as more small businesses benefit from the economic boost at the very time Scotland can also take charge of our tax system and economy. Who knows, it could tempt thousands of Scots driven south to find jobs over the years to make the same homecoming as the Irish. We can have more and more to celebrate each St Andrew’s Day when we follow the Irish success story.
Friday, 1 September 2006
Is the water quango meeting our needs?
Published: 01 September, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
SHOULD North of Scotland customers of Scottish Water agree with the Scottish government that the public utility is delivering for our needs? That’s what Highland MSPs have been asking for years, and were able to ask Scottish Water’s top brass in a cross-party meeting held in Inverness on Wednesday.
I have to recall the SNP-led debate last March on the work of the troubled quango after its chairman, Alan Alexander, fell on his sword following months of wrangling about the budget for the next four years’ programme that was halted by the minister in a calculated political face-saving move that ordered the appointment of a new chairman days before Mr Alexander was sacked. Alas, the little matter of a loose beam in the Parliamentary Chamber distracted attention from the vote which was delayed as a result of our urgent decant into temporary quarters.
Labour and Lib Dems agreed that Ross Finnie had displayed “good stewardship” of the quango and won by 65 votes to 47, with six abstentions. In May 2007 voters can decide whether they agree with the words of that winning amendment – “these actions by the Executive represent good stewardship of Scottish Water in the public and customer interest”.
But the question has added point this month as the Highland Council flagged up the fact that 1600 homes with planning permission cannot proceed due to lack of water investment. This is down to Scottish Water being only recently geared up to meeting the extra costs of small developments in remoter areas.
An answer to another Parliamentary Question sheds further doubt on the likelihood of a speedy solution. My colleague Stewart Stevenson, SNP MSP for Banff and Buchan, asked the Communities Minister how many new houses have been built in each constituency since 1999. In Highland the completion figures have steadily dropped from 1366 in 1999 to 847 in 2005. The Western Isles have doubled, as has Moray; Orkney has trebled and Shetland dropped to two-thirds. Most of these are much smaller councils but the problem of 1600 awaiting water schemes could take years to sort out.
It is all the more perplexing that government whips ordered rejection of the SNP motion in Parliament last March as it expressed concern over the impact of delays in investment in water and sewerage infrastructure on economic, environmental and social development in Scotland.
Dark rumours have surfaced that it is much easier for the government and Scottish Water to gain credit for large schemes completed in central Scotland rather than scattered small ones in the North, which take far greater time and costs to deliver. For example, costs for the Milngavie water treatment works sounds enormous; the Katrine Water Project is the largest single water treatment scheme in Scottish Water’s current £2.15 billion investment programme and is intended to provide Greater Glasgow with a state-of-the-art water supply. Estimated project costs stand at £120 million, with other elements having added a further £7.9 million to the original estimates. So no expenses spared to sort out Glasgow’s water issues. Can we expect the same determination to invest in our priorities up here?
I hope to get agreement across the parties for a rural priority list to fund water connections in North. Simple questions need answered. Does every house with planning permission have the same urgency? If it is to house essential workers and young or homeless people, should they not get a higher ranking? And what about new business premises? These things have to be thrashed out.
I look forward to a more sophisticated debate that delivers equitable results.
THE advantages of choosing to generate electricity from sources such as coal, gas, oil and nuclear are hard to define. Each of these sources is finite. But all fail to capture the heat produced in the power production process as practised in the UK today. That reduces their efficiency enormously and makes little or no economic or scientific sense.
Combined heat and power meets both energy efficiency and CO2 reduction targets. That’s why Sweden, Denmark and Holland, our near neighbours, have placed energy generation plants closer to the users and are now able to contemplate changing the power source from fossil and finite to infinitely renewable fuel sources. They are also replacing fossil fuels with biomass in local plants and at the national level, for example in Sweden, they aim to make their total energy economy a non-carbon one, with no nuclear element, by 2020.
This week I found out more about working Dutch technology that heats or cools huge road flyovers and airport runways and uses the heat produced to heat or cool housing blocks, industrial and commercial buildings, as required. It is being developed by a company that has been based in Ullapool for the past 10 years. Invisible Heating Systems is taking the principle of combined heat and power first of all installed in its underfloor heating systems by using the surprising capacity for tarmacadam to convert roads and driveways into giant solar panels along with a heat-exchange system that stores energy in the form of warm or cold water in the ground that can be tapped into when required.
A square metre of tarmac can absorb and deliver about half of energy of a similar-sized solar panel for under a tenth of the price. So as long as the road or bridge is near a housing scheme or swimming pool, etc., this can be applied.
It has been estimated that if a tenth of Holland’s motorways were so built they could generate as much power as the electricity companies today.
Of course it is only one of the renewable options that can be produced locally and delivered anywhere in the world. Why should we be interested? Because every time oil prices rise, more and more people are looking to invest in cash-saving and energy-saving alternatives. The trick for the North of Scotland is to get a mix of systems going to transform our comfort and energy efficiency.
If we follow ideas like those that Henc Verweijmeren and Liz Stewart and their team of 16 employees are growing in Ullapool, they could even lead to future steps to create buildings that need zero heat input. But why not get wise now to the uses of the heat source of the Earth to help solve our heat and electricity problems?
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
SHOULD North of Scotland customers of Scottish Water agree with the Scottish government that the public utility is delivering for our needs? That’s what Highland MSPs have been asking for years, and were able to ask Scottish Water’s top brass in a cross-party meeting held in Inverness on Wednesday.
I have to recall the SNP-led debate last March on the work of the troubled quango after its chairman, Alan Alexander, fell on his sword following months of wrangling about the budget for the next four years’ programme that was halted by the minister in a calculated political face-saving move that ordered the appointment of a new chairman days before Mr Alexander was sacked. Alas, the little matter of a loose beam in the Parliamentary Chamber distracted attention from the vote which was delayed as a result of our urgent decant into temporary quarters.
Labour and Lib Dems agreed that Ross Finnie had displayed “good stewardship” of the quango and won by 65 votes to 47, with six abstentions. In May 2007 voters can decide whether they agree with the words of that winning amendment – “these actions by the Executive represent good stewardship of Scottish Water in the public and customer interest”.
But the question has added point this month as the Highland Council flagged up the fact that 1600 homes with planning permission cannot proceed due to lack of water investment. This is down to Scottish Water being only recently geared up to meeting the extra costs of small developments in remoter areas.
An answer to another Parliamentary Question sheds further doubt on the likelihood of a speedy solution. My colleague Stewart Stevenson, SNP MSP for Banff and Buchan, asked the Communities Minister how many new houses have been built in each constituency since 1999. In Highland the completion figures have steadily dropped from 1366 in 1999 to 847 in 2005. The Western Isles have doubled, as has Moray; Orkney has trebled and Shetland dropped to two-thirds. Most of these are much smaller councils but the problem of 1600 awaiting water schemes could take years to sort out.
It is all the more perplexing that government whips ordered rejection of the SNP motion in Parliament last March as it expressed concern over the impact of delays in investment in water and sewerage infrastructure on economic, environmental and social development in Scotland.
Dark rumours have surfaced that it is much easier for the government and Scottish Water to gain credit for large schemes completed in central Scotland rather than scattered small ones in the North, which take far greater time and costs to deliver. For example, costs for the Milngavie water treatment works sounds enormous; the Katrine Water Project is the largest single water treatment scheme in Scottish Water’s current £2.15 billion investment programme and is intended to provide Greater Glasgow with a state-of-the-art water supply. Estimated project costs stand at £120 million, with other elements having added a further £7.9 million to the original estimates. So no expenses spared to sort out Glasgow’s water issues. Can we expect the same determination to invest in our priorities up here?
I hope to get agreement across the parties for a rural priority list to fund water connections in North. Simple questions need answered. Does every house with planning permission have the same urgency? If it is to house essential workers and young or homeless people, should they not get a higher ranking? And what about new business premises? These things have to be thrashed out.
I look forward to a more sophisticated debate that delivers equitable results.
THE advantages of choosing to generate electricity from sources such as coal, gas, oil and nuclear are hard to define. Each of these sources is finite. But all fail to capture the heat produced in the power production process as practised in the UK today. That reduces their efficiency enormously and makes little or no economic or scientific sense.
Combined heat and power meets both energy efficiency and CO2 reduction targets. That’s why Sweden, Denmark and Holland, our near neighbours, have placed energy generation plants closer to the users and are now able to contemplate changing the power source from fossil and finite to infinitely renewable fuel sources. They are also replacing fossil fuels with biomass in local plants and at the national level, for example in Sweden, they aim to make their total energy economy a non-carbon one, with no nuclear element, by 2020.
This week I found out more about working Dutch technology that heats or cools huge road flyovers and airport runways and uses the heat produced to heat or cool housing blocks, industrial and commercial buildings, as required. It is being developed by a company that has been based in Ullapool for the past 10 years. Invisible Heating Systems is taking the principle of combined heat and power first of all installed in its underfloor heating systems by using the surprising capacity for tarmacadam to convert roads and driveways into giant solar panels along with a heat-exchange system that stores energy in the form of warm or cold water in the ground that can be tapped into when required.
A square metre of tarmac can absorb and deliver about half of energy of a similar-sized solar panel for under a tenth of the price. So as long as the road or bridge is near a housing scheme or swimming pool, etc., this can be applied.
It has been estimated that if a tenth of Holland’s motorways were so built they could generate as much power as the electricity companies today.
Of course it is only one of the renewable options that can be produced locally and delivered anywhere in the world. Why should we be interested? Because every time oil prices rise, more and more people are looking to invest in cash-saving and energy-saving alternatives. The trick for the North of Scotland is to get a mix of systems going to transform our comfort and energy efficiency.
If we follow ideas like those that Henc Verweijmeren and Liz Stewart and their team of 16 employees are growing in Ullapool, they could even lead to future steps to create buildings that need zero heat input. But why not get wise now to the uses of the heat source of the Earth to help solve our heat and electricity problems?
Friday, 18 August 2006
Giving ourselves a fighting chance for the future
Published: 18 August, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
AT the very time the Caithness Socio-Economic Strategy Group has been consulting on the way ahead for the county’s economy, my party has been consulting on its proposals called Let Scotland Flourish. Both are sustainable growth strategies – one for the Dounreay travel-to-work area and the SNP ideas for every part of Scotland.
Comparing the goals I also find similarities. The SNP highlights three key words: solidarity, cohesion and sustainability. Firstly, we need to raise the overall national wealth but in particular to increase the wealth of the lowest-paid quarter of our people. Secondly, the SNP aims to increase the wealth of every region of Scotland, reducing the disparity from richest to poorest by 10 per cent in five years. Thirdly, we would commit to continue cutting CO2 emissions far beyond 2012 at an equivalent two per cent annual reduction. In summary, the SNP suggests getting more people into work, making sure there’s a home for every family, and meeting our environmental duties. These go hand in hand to give every part of Scotland a fighting chance to share in future prosperity.
The Caithness proposals centre on developing existing businesses, attracting new ones, and adding government decentralisation to create new administrative jobs in the Far North. Secondly, they seek enhanced public services that will attract new workers and businesses as well as meet existing local needs. Thirdly, it intends to make sure the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority conducts the Dounreay transformation in a way that transfers staff into new work of similar status and quality and helps fund new developments.
We can see that ambition and ideas are needed both locally and nationally to make headway. Communications, resources and actions are the identified means to achieve the Caithness transformation.
The SNP national plan is to reduce the burdens on small and medium-sized businesses and focus on our strengths, which include industries well represented in Caithness. Farming, fishing and tourism, but most all the knowledge economy, can be successful wherever there are the skills and broadband links and renewable energy sources.
Big questions require bold answers. Can we really believe that devolution under Labour and the Lib Dems will meet our needs, be they in Caithness or for the nation as a whole? We have the resources like Norway, Ireland and Iceland but are frustrated by not having our hands on them.
Should we allow Gordon Brown’s tax policies to leave us as producers of wealth but with the highest fuel costs and highest loss of young people on the mainland UK to the benefit of others?
I look forward to making a submission to the Strategy for Caithness and North Sutherland. You can find copies at www.hie.co.uk/cns-consultation.pdf and the closing date is August 20.
*
TALKING of ambition, I note the new estimates of a £5 billion surplus for Scots tax contributions to the London Treasury this year. That means, as the world price of oil rises to around £80 a barrel, we contribute £1039 extra per head for every man, woman and child in Scotland this year. Remember the doom-laden prophesies that oil would be running out very soon? Well, the Blair Government’s recent energy review suggests there are still 25 billion barrels of oil recoverable from the Scottish sector of the North Sea. So it will remain a strong revenue earner for decades to come.
That also suggests that a more competitive Scotland can become a reality if we change out of second gear that is devolution and move to the full tax and economy powers that our neighbours have. Long-term sustainability for every part of Scotland is at stake. That makes the Scottish Parliament and local council elections next May the tipping point. People across the land see the possibility of Labour losing power in Scotland for the first time in fifty years.
As MSPs prepare for the last session of this Parliament, the need for a new lead party in the next coalition should put the SNP’s ideas to the test and try them out in the driving seat; after all, a fresh start can bring out the best in every part of Scotland.
*
THROUGHOUT my summer travels through Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire, Lewis and Skye the same theme comes up. When will Parliament cut down the civil service to size? When will red tape be top of the agenda?
Since better communications are cited as key to new prospects and prosperity, I suggest that the civil servants be set to work to free up as many parts of Scottish life as possible. Ministers should be tasked by our parliamentary committees to run a programme to take service after service and cut out reams of paperwork. One person suggested a single transferable form, with standard details of applicants followed by standard questions on reasons for applications, etc.
For my part I’ll be taking the advice of farmers and crofters I met at various agricultural shows. I’ll be seeking simplification of the cattle and sheep movement documents with the help of our Environment and Rural Development Committee. But all applicants for economic support or regulatory returns deserve a break. A few less civil servants checking we cross our t’s and dot our i’s could free up bureaucrats to be more creative. Or is that a contradiction in terms?
I hope not, for if communications are to lead to action for the economic well-being of the Dounreay travel-to-work area then civil servants will have to be relocated here – say, a major division of SEERAD from Pentland House to the shores of the Pentland Firth.
Also proper road and rail communications funded realistically are needed to include us in the mainstream of Scottish life. In addition, Government commitments must offer satellite broadband for every household in this digital age if landlines are too weak and exchanges too distant.
Getting a grudging Government to serve us and not the other way round would be a culture change of monumental proportions. But voting for change is much more straightforward by comparison.
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
AT the very time the Caithness Socio-Economic Strategy Group has been consulting on the way ahead for the county’s economy, my party has been consulting on its proposals called Let Scotland Flourish. Both are sustainable growth strategies – one for the Dounreay travel-to-work area and the SNP ideas for every part of Scotland.
Comparing the goals I also find similarities. The SNP highlights three key words: solidarity, cohesion and sustainability. Firstly, we need to raise the overall national wealth but in particular to increase the wealth of the lowest-paid quarter of our people. Secondly, the SNP aims to increase the wealth of every region of Scotland, reducing the disparity from richest to poorest by 10 per cent in five years. Thirdly, we would commit to continue cutting CO2 emissions far beyond 2012 at an equivalent two per cent annual reduction. In summary, the SNP suggests getting more people into work, making sure there’s a home for every family, and meeting our environmental duties. These go hand in hand to give every part of Scotland a fighting chance to share in future prosperity.
The Caithness proposals centre on developing existing businesses, attracting new ones, and adding government decentralisation to create new administrative jobs in the Far North. Secondly, they seek enhanced public services that will attract new workers and businesses as well as meet existing local needs. Thirdly, it intends to make sure the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority conducts the Dounreay transformation in a way that transfers staff into new work of similar status and quality and helps fund new developments.
We can see that ambition and ideas are needed both locally and nationally to make headway. Communications, resources and actions are the identified means to achieve the Caithness transformation.
The SNP national plan is to reduce the burdens on small and medium-sized businesses and focus on our strengths, which include industries well represented in Caithness. Farming, fishing and tourism, but most all the knowledge economy, can be successful wherever there are the skills and broadband links and renewable energy sources.
Big questions require bold answers. Can we really believe that devolution under Labour and the Lib Dems will meet our needs, be they in Caithness or for the nation as a whole? We have the resources like Norway, Ireland and Iceland but are frustrated by not having our hands on them.
Should we allow Gordon Brown’s tax policies to leave us as producers of wealth but with the highest fuel costs and highest loss of young people on the mainland UK to the benefit of others?
I look forward to making a submission to the Strategy for Caithness and North Sutherland. You can find copies at www.hie.co.uk/cns-consultation.pdf and the closing date is August 20.
*
TALKING of ambition, I note the new estimates of a £5 billion surplus for Scots tax contributions to the London Treasury this year. That means, as the world price of oil rises to around £80 a barrel, we contribute £1039 extra per head for every man, woman and child in Scotland this year. Remember the doom-laden prophesies that oil would be running out very soon? Well, the Blair Government’s recent energy review suggests there are still 25 billion barrels of oil recoverable from the Scottish sector of the North Sea. So it will remain a strong revenue earner for decades to come.
That also suggests that a more competitive Scotland can become a reality if we change out of second gear that is devolution and move to the full tax and economy powers that our neighbours have. Long-term sustainability for every part of Scotland is at stake. That makes the Scottish Parliament and local council elections next May the tipping point. People across the land see the possibility of Labour losing power in Scotland for the first time in fifty years.
As MSPs prepare for the last session of this Parliament, the need for a new lead party in the next coalition should put the SNP’s ideas to the test and try them out in the driving seat; after all, a fresh start can bring out the best in every part of Scotland.
*
THROUGHOUT my summer travels through Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire, Lewis and Skye the same theme comes up. When will Parliament cut down the civil service to size? When will red tape be top of the agenda?
Since better communications are cited as key to new prospects and prosperity, I suggest that the civil servants be set to work to free up as many parts of Scottish life as possible. Ministers should be tasked by our parliamentary committees to run a programme to take service after service and cut out reams of paperwork. One person suggested a single transferable form, with standard details of applicants followed by standard questions on reasons for applications, etc.
For my part I’ll be taking the advice of farmers and crofters I met at various agricultural shows. I’ll be seeking simplification of the cattle and sheep movement documents with the help of our Environment and Rural Development Committee. But all applicants for economic support or regulatory returns deserve a break. A few less civil servants checking we cross our t’s and dot our i’s could free up bureaucrats to be more creative. Or is that a contradiction in terms?
I hope not, for if communications are to lead to action for the economic well-being of the Dounreay travel-to-work area then civil servants will have to be relocated here – say, a major division of SEERAD from Pentland House to the shores of the Pentland Firth.
Also proper road and rail communications funded realistically are needed to include us in the mainstream of Scottish life. In addition, Government commitments must offer satellite broadband for every household in this digital age if landlines are too weak and exchanges too distant.
Getting a grudging Government to serve us and not the other way round would be a culture change of monumental proportions. But voting for change is much more straightforward by comparison.
Friday, 4 August 2006
Will Caithness food fight bring better nutrition?
Published: 04 August, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
A JULY break abroad, in my case in Brittany, returns me reinvigorated, and some holiday reading also added zest.
Zorro by Isabel Allende tracks the “origins” of the foxy swordsman who was, of course, a Spanish Californian fighting for freedom and justice long, long before the USA got its hands on the place or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s great-great-grandfather was conceived in far away Austria.
My other gripping read was our own Joanna Blythman in Bad Food Britain.
It graphically details how a nation ruined its appetite. As a family the Blythmans have contributed much to Scotland since the late Morris Blythman penned radical songs in the 1950s such as “Sky-high Joe”, “Scottish Breakaway”, “Ye’ll no Sit Here”, and “Bonny Wee Prince Chairlie”. His wife, Marion, was a distinguished innovator in the teaching of the deaf who turned down an honour from the Queen in the Thatcher era in protest against nuclear weapons expansion. Now Joanna carries on the family traditions as an investigative journalist, whose exposé of supermarket practices in Shopped won her the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year Award for 2005.
It was a useful reference when our Scottish Parliament committee called for an independent review of supermarket monopoly. I’m glad to say that the Blair government has allowed the Competition Commission to undertake this after huge pressure across the whole UK.
Did you know that one in every four households no longer has a table that everyone can eat around, or that one in every three Britons says they do not eat vegetables because they require too much effort to prepare? Also, only 50 per cent of Britons really enjoy eating and 40 per cent of food bought in the UK is never used! The downfall of the British diet led in 2003 to us consuming more ready meals than the rest of Europe put together. Far too many think almost everything other than food is more important.
Returning home to the great supermarket battles here in Caithness, Tesco hopes to see off the Co-op and Asda wants to dominate the other side of the county. I can understand the popular demands for the range of produce the big four sell under one roof. But I seriously question the groaning shelves full of convenience food that is now standard fare. Microwavability seems to be essential. That’s why I had hoped our councillors would be trying to make conditions on Tesco, such as stocking a wide range of local produce. They could also insist that supermarkets use the railway to carry in goods. But even better they could raise a health warning on the public’s belief that cheap, processed food and nutrition are not the same thing.
Local producers with stalls at Highland gatherings and agricultural shows are offering healthy local food. I also know the Highland Council tries to buy local and organic produce for our schools and old peoples’ homes.
But the vast bulk of us still seem to want cheap, processed food that has little connection with healthy children or sustaining families, whose waistlines spread on the diet of bad food that Joanna Blythman highlights in her chapter “Britain makes you fat”. I welcome John O’Groat Journal headlines on the Mey Selections as a great way to boost high-quality food exports from the county, but what are people eating here and what should we demand of incoming supermarkets?
*
ON holiday, the local Breton newspaper Ouest France, the equivalent of the Press and Journal, led with carnage and devastation in Lebanon, Gaza and Israel. Now back home it seems the USA and UK leaders are in no hurry to restrain the combat and give every impression that Arab lives are cheap. Clearly their morality has been dulled by believing that their destruction and destabilisation of Iraq was a just war. Everyone knows that Israel and the Palestinians will have to live side by side. Eventually the US military and financial backing for Israel has to be turned off and the parties brought to the table.
It’s just as a big concern in this peaceful corner of northern Europe because the use of Prestwick airport for US aircraft to refuel bears no comparison to World War Two when our remarkably fog-free Ayrshire airfield was a key transatlantic staging post. Yes, the Americans eventually came into the war after the Japanese attacked their Pacific bases and Germany declared war on the USA three days later, on December 10, 1941.
On the way home from holidays we stopped off at St Valery en Caux in Normandy where the Highland Division were forced to surrender to Hitler’s forces in June 1940. Today it is a beautiful, small port tucked between huge chalk cliffs, just like those at Dover. Yachts fill the harbour. But the Highland Division monument in the eastern cliff top reminds us how our men were abandoned to years as prisoners of war at the behest of Winston Churchill and the British war cabinet who managed, with great luck, to evacuate so many from Dunkirk while the Scots and French acted as a diversion.
Thankfully the Allies, with the help of Scots servicemen and women, defeated Nazi Germany and fascist Japan in that just war and the United Nations Organisation was founded. But will its founders, the USA and UK, now revitalise the UN as a peacemaker and the sole peace keeper in this turbulent world? When will they stop including Scotland in their unjust wars? Even the Labour Secretary of State for Scotland is worried about Scottish opinion as we do not accept the unasked-for role in arming one side in the Middle East conflict.
Scottish membership of the UN would come with independence. In a much stronger UN we would be a clear voice to help end Anglo-American indifference to the future of so many vulnerable peoples for the sake of dwindling oil and American arrogance.
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier
A JULY break abroad, in my case in Brittany, returns me reinvigorated, and some holiday reading also added zest.
Zorro by Isabel Allende tracks the “origins” of the foxy swordsman who was, of course, a Spanish Californian fighting for freedom and justice long, long before the USA got its hands on the place or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s great-great-grandfather was conceived in far away Austria.
My other gripping read was our own Joanna Blythman in Bad Food Britain.
It graphically details how a nation ruined its appetite. As a family the Blythmans have contributed much to Scotland since the late Morris Blythman penned radical songs in the 1950s such as “Sky-high Joe”, “Scottish Breakaway”, “Ye’ll no Sit Here”, and “Bonny Wee Prince Chairlie”. His wife, Marion, was a distinguished innovator in the teaching of the deaf who turned down an honour from the Queen in the Thatcher era in protest against nuclear weapons expansion. Now Joanna carries on the family traditions as an investigative journalist, whose exposé of supermarket practices in Shopped won her the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year Award for 2005.
It was a useful reference when our Scottish Parliament committee called for an independent review of supermarket monopoly. I’m glad to say that the Blair government has allowed the Competition Commission to undertake this after huge pressure across the whole UK.
Did you know that one in every four households no longer has a table that everyone can eat around, or that one in every three Britons says they do not eat vegetables because they require too much effort to prepare? Also, only 50 per cent of Britons really enjoy eating and 40 per cent of food bought in the UK is never used! The downfall of the British diet led in 2003 to us consuming more ready meals than the rest of Europe put together. Far too many think almost everything other than food is more important.
Returning home to the great supermarket battles here in Caithness, Tesco hopes to see off the Co-op and Asda wants to dominate the other side of the county. I can understand the popular demands for the range of produce the big four sell under one roof. But I seriously question the groaning shelves full of convenience food that is now standard fare. Microwavability seems to be essential. That’s why I had hoped our councillors would be trying to make conditions on Tesco, such as stocking a wide range of local produce. They could also insist that supermarkets use the railway to carry in goods. But even better they could raise a health warning on the public’s belief that cheap, processed food and nutrition are not the same thing.
Local producers with stalls at Highland gatherings and agricultural shows are offering healthy local food. I also know the Highland Council tries to buy local and organic produce for our schools and old peoples’ homes.
But the vast bulk of us still seem to want cheap, processed food that has little connection with healthy children or sustaining families, whose waistlines spread on the diet of bad food that Joanna Blythman highlights in her chapter “Britain makes you fat”. I welcome John O’Groat Journal headlines on the Mey Selections as a great way to boost high-quality food exports from the county, but what are people eating here and what should we demand of incoming supermarkets?
*
ON holiday, the local Breton newspaper Ouest France, the equivalent of the Press and Journal, led with carnage and devastation in Lebanon, Gaza and Israel. Now back home it seems the USA and UK leaders are in no hurry to restrain the combat and give every impression that Arab lives are cheap. Clearly their morality has been dulled by believing that their destruction and destabilisation of Iraq was a just war. Everyone knows that Israel and the Palestinians will have to live side by side. Eventually the US military and financial backing for Israel has to be turned off and the parties brought to the table.
It’s just as a big concern in this peaceful corner of northern Europe because the use of Prestwick airport for US aircraft to refuel bears no comparison to World War Two when our remarkably fog-free Ayrshire airfield was a key transatlantic staging post. Yes, the Americans eventually came into the war after the Japanese attacked their Pacific bases and Germany declared war on the USA three days later, on December 10, 1941.
On the way home from holidays we stopped off at St Valery en Caux in Normandy where the Highland Division were forced to surrender to Hitler’s forces in June 1940. Today it is a beautiful, small port tucked between huge chalk cliffs, just like those at Dover. Yachts fill the harbour. But the Highland Division monument in the eastern cliff top reminds us how our men were abandoned to years as prisoners of war at the behest of Winston Churchill and the British war cabinet who managed, with great luck, to evacuate so many from Dunkirk while the Scots and French acted as a diversion.
Thankfully the Allies, with the help of Scots servicemen and women, defeated Nazi Germany and fascist Japan in that just war and the United Nations Organisation was founded. But will its founders, the USA and UK, now revitalise the UN as a peacemaker and the sole peace keeper in this turbulent world? When will they stop including Scotland in their unjust wars? Even the Labour Secretary of State for Scotland is worried about Scottish opinion as we do not accept the unasked-for role in arming one side in the Middle East conflict.
Scottish membership of the UN would come with independence. In a much stronger UN we would be a clear voice to help end Anglo-American indifference to the future of so many vulnerable peoples for the sake of dwindling oil and American arrogance.
Friday, 7 July 2006
Water improvements on tap... if we had fiscal autonomy
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.
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, 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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