A very few years ago, it would be fair to say that Caithness was not exactly on the radar in “the corridors of power”. The county was a place which was a very long way from the centre, and known for nothing more than John O’Groats, the Castle of Mey, and not much else, other than being a handy place to build masses of windfarms, far from the sight of the politicians working in Holyrood. Cuts to vital services, the centralisation of control to Inverness and Edinburgh, and a constant erosion of the facilities required to help the community to thrive, became the norm.
Well times have changed – very much so. CHAT has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the county and to put it “on the map”, and so has CRR (Caithness Roads Recovery), along with a few other dedicated campaigners. The two groups have said what needs to be said, and have done so without fear or favour, because – with the honourable exception of some of our elected representatives – it seemed perfectly clear that the general plan was to make the odd “sympathetic” noise, but otherwise to do nothing, so it fell to us to say what needed to be said.
It does not help when attempts are made to defend the current situation. A situation which is – quite simply – indefensible, as is the tendency to try a spot of “political point scoring” in response to the expression of perfectly sensible concerns, and CHAT and CRR will continue to campaign without fear or favour, no matter what is said by those who should know better. Nor, incidentally, will we take any lectures about what we choose to post on social media – we will continue to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and if that does not go down well elsewhere, then so be it.
In the past week or so there has been headline after headline, TV and radio slots, and FB and website posts, all concerning our home county, and that is just as it should be. We can no longer be dismissed and ignored, because we are now “front-paged” across Scotland. We need to make it clear that we will no longer put up with being treated as second-class citizens. We will no longer put up with having our mums being expected to travel an insane distance to have their babies, at all hours of the day and night, and in all manner of weather conditions. We will no longer put up with the bland, meaningless responses from the very politicians who are supposed to represent us. And we will no longer put up with roads, pavements, and streets that resemble the aftermath of a war zone.
The attacks continue. The “pause” to Capital funding for NHSH – (and it will be interesting to see how they define a “pause”); the pathetic £600k for road repairs for the whole of 2024/25 (when we need about £25m); the apparent belief that the A9 is only a concern as far as Inverness, whilst we must make do with a 1950’s -standard route to and from the county, all the while being accompanied by tax rises, and the attempted imposition of policy after policy eroding, day by day, the Highland way of life.
But this is all going to change. We have some very capable people on board, we have a massive groundswell of support amongst the residents of the county, and we have the determination to succeed. And we will.
This link will take you to the recent series of articles published by The Herald Newspaper. They mention the “New Highland Clearances”, and they are right. But we will not be cleared. Caithness will not be depopulated and destroyed to make way for the giant pylons, the waving mass of wind turbines, or anything else dreamed up by what Fergus Ewing recently described – with great accuracy – as “Coffee shop pseudo intellectuals”.
Caithness Matters.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24080027.new-highland-clearances-full-list-articles/?ref=twtrec
Caithness Health Action Team 