Winter’s Woes

As I write, I alternate between sniffles, sneezes and a cough. My local pharmacist’s profits must be soaring as I had to queue for advice. But as this very personal indication of winter will pass – my father used to say, “If you treat a cold it lasts a week and if you don’t it will be seven days” – the news just reaching my desk is a much longer term concern.

After two years of deliberation, New Labour’s First Minister has decided not to publish the document which would have told of the future for Peterhead Prison. Or at least not to publish it yet. A delay of a ‘few months’ is envisaged while a further review is undertaken.

But it may not all be bad news. The word is that the criteria are three – public safety, deterrence and the rehabilitation of offenders. No longer at the top of the list is money. It’s long been thought that the Head of the Scottish Prison Service had an anti-Peterhead Prison agenda and that cost would be his excuse.

The staff at the prison reduced costs and took away that excuse. And their achievements in one of the new key areas – rehabilitation of offenders – must now give us hope.

But as the argument has been won, there is no excuse for further delay.

Inverness

A visit to Inverness on Parliamentary business was much more welcome than the usual trek to Edinburgh. And not just because it’s closer.

If the Scottish Parliament is to mean anything, it has to be a Parliament for all of Scotland. So a visit of our Justice Committee to take evidence in the north was very welcome indeed.

With the subject being the Land Reform Bill it was particularly appropriate to be in a rural area.

The Bill is likely to receive widespread support for its principles. But attempts to exclude guides and others who are paid to help people access our country from the Bill’s new access rights is proving pretty contentious.

If the evidence given in Inverness is anything to go by, we’ll get that changed.

Road and Rail

There may be no railways in Banff and Buchan, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t matter to us.

For me they are a more comfortable journey to Edinburgh, although I have to get to Huntly first. And for many others they are a vital link for long distance journies.
The chaos on the railways has mirrored what we’ve experienced in the North-East with BEAR’s failures on our roads.

We hear that the Aberdeen bypass may at last be on the agenda. But it seems that it’s only to take traffic from the South round to the Inverness road. The needs of Buchan appear overlooked.

Is this short-sightedness or is it that transport investment is now being diverted to some high-profile projects such as connecting Glasgow and Edinburgh airports to the rail network?

I think once again quick political fixes are being put in place before much needed, long delayed infrastructure projects that will help the country north of Aberdeen.
Rural Affairs

One of the delights and one of the dangers in the Scots Parliament is that every word one utters is recorded and published for all the world to read. Thankfully the writers of the Official Record seem to understand grammar and puncuation better than most MSPs and hence it’s more readable than the speakers notes would have been.

So I receive letters about my comments in Parliament.

A recent one was on the Rural Stewardship Scheme. Frankly I can only describe the introduction of this worthy attempt to reward farmers for looking after nature in ways other than simply planting crops as appaling.

When I spoke about it was in Committee. We discussing its introduction. And being invited to approve the new scheme – four days after it came into operation.

Could we vote against it and deny hundreds of small farmers their grants in a year when food and mouth has devastated rural businesses throughout Scotland? Of course not.

And it’s not as if the scheme is structured to spread the benefit evenly. Unlike its predecessor, there’s no upper limit on an individual grant and it could be that a few estates may get most of the limited pot of money.

How would that help people in rural Scotland? Not much!

Another case for the New Labour-Liberal Democrat government to get its act together.