Driving the North East forward

Anyone who lives in Banffshire & Buchan Coast will be only too aware of the lengthy delays to people’s journeys that are often faced when travelling to other parts of Scotland. A journey to anywhere south of Aberdeen can often involve spending an inordinate amount of time negotiating your way through the city’s streets, especially during rush hour.

This is inconvenient for motorists, but it is a particular problem for businesses which need to get goods to and from Banffshire & Buchan Coast as swiftly as possible. The longer they are delayed in slow moving traffic, the more the financial costs stack up.

That is why the SNP, and indeed almost everyone in the North East, is so steadfastly in favour of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route. It is a long-needed piece of infrastructure that will ease congestion within Aberdeen and significantly improve journey times for those travelling to the north or south of the city. After many long years of dither and delay under the previous administration, significant progress was made towards building the road during the SNP’s first term in office only for a handful of objectors to hold the project up in the courts.

However, recent days have finally seen the Court of Session pass its judgement on the legal objections that were raised to the project and the protests against the road have been roundly rejected. Work can now proceed to dramatically improve the infrastructure of the region; something I know will be welcomed by people across the North East. Funding the construction of the AWPR was an important part of the SNP’s manifesto and nobody is happier than I am that we have taken a step forward towards delivering the road.

The North East of Scotland has huge potential to be at the heart of Scotland’s growing renewable energy industry and is of course already at the centre of Scotland’s fishing and oil & gas industries. Yet all of these businesses need good infrastructure links to the rest of the country to operate successfully and the AWPR has been a long missing development in the area.

In difficult economic times like those we are currently going through, good infrastructure can be more important than ever to the profitability and successful operation of businesses. The AWPR can be a prime example of that and I am looking forward to more progress being made on the road.

Scotland’s drugs strategy

The scourge of drug abuse is something that still affects far too many communities across Scotland, devastating the lives of both drug users and those around them. Yet in some regards at least, Scotland is making welcome progress with the announcement that the number of drug related deaths has again dropped.

In 2010 there were 485 drug related deaths in Scotland, an 11% fall from 2009 and 16% less than 2008.

Tackling drug problems is by no means an easy or straightforward issue, but the welcome reduction in fatalities does show that the Scottish Government’s drug strategy is delivering tangible improvements. Clearly any drug related death is one too many, but progress is at least consistently being made.

There can be no room for complacency as there are still serious problems to be addressed, but every life that is saved through successful treatment programmes is a small step towards reducing the monstrous toll that drug abuse has inflicted on Scottish society for far too long. With record investment going into front line services, I am confident that we will continue to see improvements in years to come.