The Herald’s groundbreaking series on the Highland and Islands, The New Highland Clearances, has received widespread acclaim from commentators, politicians and readers alike.
Yesterday, senior reporter Caroline Wilson published an extensive interview with Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch MSP Kate Forbes, in which the former Finance Secretary said that Highland Council was “far too big” and that local authority control should be devolved to smaller areas.
That prompted a scornful response from one of our readers today.
Bill Eadie of Giffnock writes:
"Kate Forbes said Highlanders need decent roads, decent hospitals, decent schools and ferries that can run. These are all areas that are devolved matters to the Scottish Government and have declined as a result of SNP Government spending decisions and are not attributable to Westminster.
To suggest Highland Council is too big at a time when more centralisation to Holyrood has been the SNP policy, along with a continuing squeeze on local government budgets, is hypocritical. The current arrangement with the Greens will see a continuing decline in roads infrastructure with no end in sight for the ferries fiasco.
The Highlands will only survive when the SNP is removed from government and the Scottish people's priorities are the focus of policy development and delivery, not the interminable focus on independence and the politically correct policies of the Greens."
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