Highlands battle of the skies settled
AIR routes to the Scottish Highlands and Islands are some of the most stunning and serene in the world so it is somewhat ironic that over the past year there has been an underlying acrimony over whose airplanes soar over the glens, lochs, seas and mountains. The issue looks to have been settled however as earlier this week Flybe revealed it would pull the last of the services it launched in direct competition to Loganair in a wave of publicity just five months ago, though it will still operates flights from Aberdeen to Stornoway. It brought to an end a battle for the skies, which took off after the airlines ended a nine-year franchise agreement on August 31 2017.
10 years ago
EDINBURGH residents could face an annual £3 million bill to grant elderly and disabled passengers free tram travel. An agreement reached with the Scottish Government will result in City of Edinburgh Council picking up the cost of extending the use of free bus passes to journeys on the eight-mile tram line when it is completed next summer. The National Concessionary Travel Scheme offers unlimited free bus journeys to disabled passengers and those over 60. However, there have been years of negotiations over whether to extend this to tram travel once the troubled £1 billion scheme is completed.
25 years ago
INNOCENT motorists will be stopped at random and forced to submit to breath-tests under tough new anti-drink drive legislation to be introduced later this year. The move, which will anger civil liberty groups, is aimed at a “criminal minority” who continue to ignore Government appeals for an end to the annual death-toll on Britain’s roads. It marks a dramatic extension of published plans for a sharp reduction in the amount of alcohol drivers can consume before getting behind the wheel. For the first time, police will have the power to set up road blocks near pubs and along roads with a history of drink-related traffic accidents.
50 years ago
WORK may start in August on a £4m. shopping development in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. Outline planning permission was yesterday unanimously recommended by a Glasgow Corporation sub-committee for an application by the Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Society to develop the site formerly occupied by Pettigrew and Stephen and Copland and Lye. These two department stores, which have been closed for some time, will be demolished. Consent of the Secretary of State for Scotland is being sought to demolish the part of the stores which is on the list of buildings of historic or architectural interest.
100 years ago
UNDER the auspices of the Glasgow Underwriters’ Association Mr Foster King, C.B.E., Chief Surveyor of the British Corporation Registry, gave a second lecture on Tuesday night in continuation of his previous review of the history of ships, which linked up the past with ships of the present time. The lecturer pointed that the most primitive methods of shipbuilding were still almost as virile as they were thousands of years ago, and that the persistence of outworn methods in higher developments of the art was usually traceable to this virility. The association of underwriting with the risks which attended ships should be influenced by technical knowledge, as surely as it was by that of ownership, and modern advances in design and arrangements which reduce structural risks and diminish costs of repairs.