Shut again, our road to nowhere

WHEN I worked in newsrooms across Scotland before I was elected, we had stories referred to as ‘hardy perennials’.

And just like the plants which flower each year without interruption, so such stories recur with monotonous regularity.

A ‘big freeze’ would be on the way every winter with ‘Arctic blasts’, some poor Brit would get ‘banged up abroad’ accused of having broken rules or laws in a foreign land on their holidays, and any type of bad weather or flooding would shut the A83 at the Rest and Be Thankful, causing cars to have a hundred-mile diversion.

So it has proved again. Landslips have dumped 6,000 tons of rubble on the Argyll road and will take weeks to clear.

It’s been happening for decades and surely – surely – it’s not beyond the wit of man to find a permanent solution. Time for the Scottish Government to step up.

FANTASTIC news in the Highlands, where a rewilding exercise has boosted the local golden eagle population. A pair of the birds have reared a chick at the Dundreggan Estate by Glenmoriston, Invernessshire, for the first time in 40 years. The birds were housed in an artificial eyrie, created on an old nest site in a mountain crag. Estate workers planted ‘eagle-friendly’ mountaintop forests to help encourage the birds’ return. After checking the empty nest for five springs, it now houses a family of eagles. Well done to estate manager Doug Gilbert and his team.