Charles Bannerman

Not as such we don't. A distributor road has been built from Inshes to Holm Mains and we have been waiting for years to get the final but vital link from Holm Mains to Torvean. In fact part of the agreement whereby Tesco got their Holm Mains site was that Tesco would pay Highland Council £340,000 - provided the link road was completed by 2011. Three odd years later they still seem to be wrangling about the route and the project, in effect, hasn't even started. .

It isn't meant to be about the SNP/SG. If you take a closer look, what I am doing is highlighting an important issue local to Inverness which seriously compounds the problem of the A9/A96. The state of these trunk roads is an issue on its own but, in the case of Inverness, it needs to be looked on as part of the wider picture of the general road traffic disaster which residents of that city have to suffer on a daily basis. You will note that I did still return my argument fully to topic when I highlighted the role of the two Cafe Culture Councillors who - in the best traditions of the SNP - are so preoccupied with their own parochial obsessions that they have no conception whatsoever of the big picture.

I just can't think of a major community as poorly served by road transport as Inverness. Getting in and out: * A9 - dangerous and very slow in heavy traffic both north and south. * A96 - worse than the A9 * A82 - a lot worse than either the A9 or the A96. In fact the road to Ullapool is arguably the least problematic. Getting round and about the city: * The apparently eternal construction of the flood system has closed Bank Street for months on end, with massive knock on effects. * The regional disgrace which is the Kessock Bridge roundabout traffic lights causes further chaos. * Just about the only thing that is an even bigger disgrace is the amount of time it is taking to get the Holm Mains - A82 link built across the river and canal. * Utility companies seem to dig up the streets where and when they feel like it and then abandon holes in the road for lengthy periods of time. * The same goes for stretches of cones, such as in Millburn Road. * Traffic light sequences are all over the place and causing untold chaos. * The traffic lights at the exit from Farraline Park on Academy street and at the Eastgate Centre/Morrisons are such that you can sit forever at a red light looking at an empty junction. * Who was the clown who decreed that there should be THREE pedestrian crossings within about 100 yards near the Town House? * The same clown may well be in charge of locating bus stops since far too many are placed at bends in the road or beside traffic islands. * Then you get two complete roasters of councillors (Laird and Gowans) who want to stop left turns off Huntly Street which will create even more mayhem on Kenneth Street. Why? Because they want a "cafe culture" in the area Given their party allegiance, this possibly returns us to the original topic of "What has the SNP done for the Highlands?" (Sorry... couldn't resist that one! ) Traffic within Inverness would, of course, be a rather less problematic if more people used buses. However, apart from the fact that very few bus stops have bus times attached to them, am I the only person who finds the timetables for Inverness buses completely unreadable and totally incomprehensible? Having fairly recently acquired a bus pass, the only reason I don't use it is that I find it impossible to establish where and when the damned things are going!

Does that surprise anyone?

I hope they paid for their own tickets!

Is he still an angry young man?

That's a bit like asking on a matchday thread if it's OK to criticise the ref. Part and parcel! But not even the ref is allowed to dictate the rules of the game, when it kicks off and which players are eligible for it I now see he has come seriously unstuck with Baseless Assertion #2374 - "The NHS (which is devolved to Scotland) is in danger of privatisation with a NO vote." It now emerges that the NHS is in far more danger from actually being devolved since it now has now been revealed that over the period 2009-16 NHS spending in England will have increased by 4.4% while in Scotland it will have decreased by 1.2%. If Alex and chums feel they are not up to running the NHS in a competent manner, maybe they should stand aside in favour of other people who can do a much better job.

What is it about the expression "Y-O-U L-O-S-T" that you find difficult to understand about that referendum? By 400,000 votes, by 10.6% of the votes cast, by a ratio of 5:4 - whichever way you want to look at it - despite holding the referendum under your terms....you lost. If you didn't want to lose you should never have imposed the referendum and its accompanying tedium upon us in the first place. It's strange how Nationalist thinking (excuse the oxymoron) tends to repeat itself. Back in the 1979 General Election the SNP expected a major breakthrough in seats and vote which bombed spectacularly. They just couldn't understand that the Scottish people had said NO to them and reverted to type by coming up with one conspiracy theory after another. It's responses like that over the last many years which made me completely unsurprised at a great deal of what I saw from the Yes side during the recent referendum and its aftermath.

Agreed. PS - I take it that it's still OK to criticise Salmond? (Or was your warning in part prompted by the visit you may just have had from large, tattooed, skinheaded men in grey kilts?)

No Laurence. Don't give up to bullying and intimidation. It was refusal to be submerged by such behaviour that played such a large part in the significant NO victory of two weeks ago.

I thought Johann Lamont already was in drag? But what a wonderful piece of hypocrisy there from someone inextricably linked with a movement which, like nationalists everywhere, has critically depended on demonisation (of Tories, "Westminster", Whitehall, big business, NO voters, even The English when they think they can get away with it etc etc) as a fundamental political strategy. My intense dislike of the SNP and Nationalism goes back a very long way and, apart from political considerations, is firmly founded on the nature of many of the individuals these kinds of pressure groups tend to attract and the manner in which they go about their business. So I haven't been repeatedly remarking on here for nothing about Salmond incessantly bellowing aggressively at Holyrood or anyone else he can get in range. As a result, a lot of what we saw in the referendum campaign from the Cybernat phase through to much of the later behaviour on the streets and after the result became known didn't surprise me in the least. Then of course we had the icing on the cake with the four albeit harmless roasters who got sacked as Highland count officials for high fiving each other at Yes votes and booing at NO votes. On walking down Castle Street on the Saturday evening after the vote I did notice a large bag of NO THANKS posters hanging on the door handle of the Better Together office. I later learned that local Yessers had volunteered to take these down as they went through the area removing their own copious insignia. I managed to boil this decision down to one or more of three possible reasons: * A gesture of genuine reconciliation. * A reluctance to remove their Yes placards, leaving NO in possession of the battlefield OR * A recognition that Yes campaigners were actually best placed to remove NO placards, given the considerable practice they already had during the campaign itself

This whole thing has tipped you over the edge. A coherently argued response to the proposition that Salmond is pandering to a certain section of society which tends to contribute little whilst withdrawing much might have been more welcome.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29461008 So Alex Salmond takes Scotland a further step closer to becoming a paradise for tax dodgers and scroungers whilst at the same time actively preventing Councils from recovering money which was actually due to them. As a result, next time you see a local library close its doors, just remember that the reason is this "thank you" from Salmond to some of the "missing million" who went on to the voters' roll so they could vote Yes to the further public subsidy which, we were told, "only and independent Scotland" could throw at them. Salmond is really inserting himself so far up the proletariat's backside that neither Marx nor Lenin can even see his feet any more! I have no doubt that there will be a few from the Citizen Smith brigade who will want to follow this post up with a some now rather dated Sheridanesque cliches about the evils of the poll tax. But the reality is that those people who did not pay took that course of action at the expense of those of us who do meet our legal public obligations. Having come on to the voters' roll to deliver unto Salmond that which they imagined was Salmond's, these people will now be completely bricking it at the sudden realisation that society now knows who they are so some of other areas of the Black Economy may well become difficult for them as well. Doubtless there will be lots of cheers tonight for Salmond in The Scheme and similar locations, but we will also perhaps soon be seeing quite a lot of moonlighters as many of these people move on in order to reacquire their tax dodging anonymity. I wonder, therefore, how many of them will still be at the SNP's beck and call on the voters' roll come the next Holyrood election - at which point a significant slice of the decent, taxpaying majority will also have become totally disgusted with the SNP's votecatching cynicism?

How many do you need to claim did so, in order to use this as the Nationalists' latest focus for whipping up discontent, division, grievance and resentment among the people of Scotland?

As well as to have you asking why on earth about a third of the population are afforded the responsibility of having a vote when they won't have the blindest scooby about the issues relating to what they are voting for? Steady on there Charles, I know quite a few people over seventy who have made a point of keeping abreast of current affairs. You can't just generalise and dismiss them all in that fashion. I wasn't actually talking about the teachers!

Indeed they may well be , and the four clowns at the Highland count just go to emphasise the juvenile level at which the SNP traditionally goes about its business, such as plastering the place with an unseemly plethora of posters every time there's an election and giving out badges to canvassers for getting five converts to Yes - upgraded (whoopee!) to a pen if you get ten. What were they giving for 20? Early Learning vouchers? I hope Inverness recipients cashed theirs in before the shop closed for the last time yesterday! In fact, I wonder if the fathers of the four said clowns were among the morons I saw chanting and shouting on the steps of Inverness Town Hall when Russell Johnston gave the SNP candidate a right electoral roasting four decades ago.

The list which has reached NZ is actually incomplete. You are clearly not aware of the thick wad of 400,000 false papers marked "NO" that Lord Lucan smuggled in, hidden up Shergar's backside. It turns out you are correct Charles. Reports coming through now confirm your additions. Also it seems the whole conspiracy was orchestrated by the Elders Of Zion who have been hiding Lord Lucan and Shergar in the Bermuda Triangle for the last few decades in preparation for just such an event as the Referendum. Seemingly the Chemtrails that were spotted across Scotland the day before the referendum are a "No Gas" that approximately 55 percent of the population would be sensitive to. What devious people they are. And four counting staff at the Highland referendum count in Dingwall were sacked on the night for giving thumbs up and high fiving each other when they opened Yes votes whilst booing when they opened NO votes. Meanwhile EVERY SINGLE OTHER count official in Scotland was signed up personally by Elvis for the Elders of Zion or by the Most Worshipful Master The Lord Lucan for the Winston Churchill Westminster Grand Lodge Loyal No. 1707. PS - ONE of these statements is actually TRUE!

Is this the SNP drumming up discontent over food banks AGAIN?

As well as to have you asking why on earth about a third of the population are afforded the responsibility of having a vote when they won't have the blindest scooby about the issues relating to what they are voting for?

The Daily Star probably did even better still since during the campaign it managed seldom to depart from its standard front page agenda of who is copulating with whom on Big Brother, the latest spat among X Factor judges or which female participant in Strictly Come Dancing was wearing the least clothes. The Sun is a pretty cynical publication since it knows exactly how to wind up and manipulate its not terribly cerebral readership. And, as Yngwie says, is adept at jumping on to the side of whoever it thinks will win. That reminds me of Churchill's description of Italy joining World War 2 as Hitler was on the point of defeating France in 1940 as "rushing to the aid of the victor". Many of us will remember the "It's The Sun Wot Won It" headline after the 1992 election.

And the stature of Charles is what, exactly? From my own observations He is a prominent member of the community He is the author of Against all odds a book unrivalled when it comes to football histories He is a top journalist and is employed by the BBC I am told by many people he is a very good lecturer and teacher He has the guts to put his name to his posts more than I can say for most of you who continually run him down ( Alex excluded) Laurence.... I await with anticipation and potential amusement the response of certain usual suspects to your kind words

The list which has reached NZ is actually incomplete. You are clearly not aware of the thick wad of 400,000 false papers marked "NO" that Lord Lucan smuggled in, hidden up Shergar's backside.

The party which spotted a political vacuum and cynically decided to start to "believe" in the things that would fill it by becoming crowd pleasers and exploiting the politically unastute. Are you dismissing all of us, SNP supporters or not, who think the SNP have done a thoroughly competent job of governing the country for the last seven years as unastute ? I would simply suggest, that for reasons ranging from the inept implementation for the Curriculum for Excellence in Education through the financial hamstringing of local authorities by way of a Council Tax freeze to a National Police Force which is rapidly losing public confidence, the SNP has not been doing a particularly good job of dealing with those matters which have been devolved to Holyrood. However that is not entirely unexpected, given that for the last 3 odd years the only thing they have given a toss about has been their Referendum.

I think we are looking here at the quite common phenomenon of an outcome created by several factors operating in the same direction. I also think that reasons for any club suffering low attendances fall into two broad categories - factors relating to the club and external factors. Yes, it may well be the case that ticket prices are a deterrent but on the other hand how do clubs react to this? It has all to do with an economic principle called "elasticity of demand" (how much your sales figures change in response to a price change) and also the need to maximise income. If you reduce ticket prices by 20% but your gate only increases by 10% you are actually going to lose money. There are various other factors which could be discussed, but the question which I have been asking of late is simply whether watching football live in a stadium (or possibly football which is not quite at the very highest levels) is drifting away from being flavour of the month again. Back, for instance, in the 1950s, you would get huge crowds at Scottish games but by the time it came to around the early 80s this had seriously fallen away. Then into the 90s (round about the time ICT and County entered the SFL) there was an upswing again and now I wonder if that is returning to full circle once more because it's not just the TCS that is feeling the draught (excuse the unintended pun!!!) This may well be a natural cycle of period several years and I suspect that on this occasion it may be driven by the plethora of televised football now on offer. If people can get their football fix by watching the Champions' League or the English Premier League on TV, the incentive is all the less to pay 20 odd quid to sit outside in a chilly stadium watching technically less gifted, albeit perfectly worthy, football. That is a prime example of factors external to any club and I do wonder if another is also TV related. The continuity of going to watch football on a Saturday afternoon has been so seriously dislocated by games rearranged for the necessary reason of TV revenues that I also wonder whether the habit of fans going along is also being broken? Also on that general subject, whilst strongly supporting Saturday afternoon football, I do wonder if 3pm kick offs are now just a bit late. I would imagine that they are an historical legacy of the days when men worked on Saturday mornings so needed time to get to games. Nowadays maybe people would prefer to get home a bit earlier, especially when traffic problems and car park exit delay that process even more. I am sure that there are other factors directly relating to individual clubs - including ICT - but I am now rather concerned that actual attendance at matches other than of the very highest calibre is becoming the flavour of last month.

The party which spotted a political vacuum and cynically decided to start to "believe" in the things that would fill it by becoming crowd pleasers and exploiting the politically unastute.