Scandalous plan

SO THE Boundary Commission for Scotland has revealed its revised proposals for two new enormous UK parliamentary constituencies for Argyll, Lochaber and the Highlands.

This plan is utterly wrong. One new constituency will be called Argyll, Bute and Lochaber, and will cover an area from the Mull of Kintyre to Fort William and the Ardnamurchan peninsula, as well as a number of islands, including Mull, Coll and Tiree.

The other – Highland South – will replace the existing Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency and will spread from Grantownon-Spey in the east to Skye, encompassing Inverness, Spean Bridge, Mallaig and islands including Canna, Rum and Eigg.

How on earth is one member of Parliament supposed to represent an area as huge as that proposed for Argyll, Bute and Lochaber?

This smacks of city-dwellers who know nothing of the Highlands and Islands geography shuffling numbers in an office in the central belt.

It’s all part, of course, of a scheme to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600, a disgrace in itself.

It’s a disgrace because our bloated House of Lords is stuffed to the gunnels with around 800 unelected legislators. But, then, successive prime ministers from both parties have spent decades loading the so-called upper house with their placemen and women to try to ensure they will be able to have legislation passed unhindered.

If the powers-that-be want to slim down our parliamentary representatives, they should start with a sweeping cull of the Lords or, better still, scrap it altogether.

Meanwhile, the Boundary Commission says it is undertaking a final consultation about these constituency proposals lasting until December 11.

Aye, right.

Does anyone really imagine that our views up here in the Highlands and Islands will be worth a button? We will be completely ignored and ridden roughshod over.

It’s scandalous.