The REAL Lib Dem Roads Policy

So now we have it ... our local Lib Dem MP Danny Alexander loves to bleat on about how the Scottish Government has done nothing to dual the A9 and how the Scottish Government is delaying the Trunk Link Road around Inverness. This, of course, is the same Scottish Government that has put dualling the A9 firmly on the agenda, and the same Government that has already committed to funding the eastern section of the TLR - all after seven inglorious years of Lib Dem / Labour inaction.

Yet here we are, come general election time, and Lib Dem policy is to cut three thousand five hundred million pounds (£3.5 billion) or 90% from the roads capital budget and use £500 million to fund cheaper rail fares and £3,000 million to reopen or improve railway stations and lines, and build new ones.

This, of course, is all very well in the congested urban centres of Englandshire, where the balance between private and public transport is surely out of kilter, and getting worse. But here in the Highlands, I challenge Danny Alexander to come clean about Lib Dem plans for road building in his own 'patch' and to tell us exactly which stations and lines he would reopen, improve, or create from scratch. Would he seriously expect us to believe, for example, that electrification of the Highland Main Line would come anywhere other than close to the bottom of a Lib Dem wish list? Or would he, perhaps, re-open the Dava line? I don't think so! And what price Lib Dem promises about the A9 or the TLR now?

The bottom line is that it is the furthest reaches of the United Kingdom, with the most thinly spread of populations - West Wales and the Highlands of Scotland - that will never attain sustainable mass public transport systems, and will inevitably suffer most at the hands of this policy.

What we urgently need here in the Highlands are local champions who will stand up for local issues from a policy base of integrity, not politicians that try to face both ways at once. Only the SNP will stand up for the Highlands in Westminster. We need to elect John Finnie to replace Duplicitous Danny, Alasdair Stephen to displace the spent force that is Charles Kennedy and Jean Urquhart to usurp Viscount Thurso.

A Safer World - but not in Scotland

Today, The United States of America and the Russian Union have agreed to a further 30% reduction in deployed nuclear warheads. The world is a wee bit safer for that - another step toward total removal of these weapons from the face of a planet with no need for them, and no wish for them.

But in Scotland, can we feel that wee bit safer? Our Westminster Government still cling on to their pathetic wish to keep their place at the UN Security Council by dint of keeping hold of, and upgrading Trident missiles and the archangels of underwater death, the submarines that carry them. The real cost of upgrading Trident is £100 billion - I'll say that again - one hundred thousand million pounds - and again - £100,000,000,000.

What, in these times of recession and hardship, against the background of massive national debt, could we do, if we didn't spend this money?

Both Labour and Conservatives would continue with the replacement programme. The Lib Dems as usual prevaricate and only say they won't replace trident 'on a like for like' basis. Perhaps this means they will replace it with something still nuclear, but cheaper?

So even against a background of the world's major powers reducing their nuclear arsenals, still the only option realistically available in Scotland to send the message to scrap the obscenity of the weapon of mass destruction that is Trident altogether is to send SNP MP's to Westminster.

Here in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, it's time to dump dithering Danny Alexander and elect a real National and Local Champion - John Finnie.

Ask Wales, Ask England, But Don't Ask Scotland

Today is a momentous day in Scotland, as the SNP Government publishes their consultation document on the planned referendum, proposing a question on further devolution, and one on outright independence.

The opposition parties are, as one, baying like wolves under a full moon, stating that this is the wrong time, that it's a waste of public money to have a referendum at all, and that they will kill this off at the earliest opportunity.

These are precisely the same opposition parties who, down in Westminsterland, fully support a referendum for Wales on greater powers from the Welsh Assembly, and it is the disunited and totally treacherous Labour Party in England who have promised a referendum on proportional representation if they are re-elected - something the Lib Dems have wanted since the days of Jo Grimmond.

Yet the withered Scottish arms of these wimpish, clueless and gutless parties would deny Scots the opportunity to express their views on the most important question for Scotland since the Parcel O' Rogues in 1707. They say it's a waste of time because there's no way Scotland will vote for Independence - yet they don't dare risk it.

Scots need to have faith in themselves, and courage for their futures - it will be for those of us who believe in Independence to convince them to emerge triumphant from under the thumb of Westminster rule - but it should never be for the rag bag unholy alliance of Labour, Lib Dems and Tories to deny even the opportunity to choose.

In my Westminster Constituency, the hapless Lib Dem incumbent is Danny Alexander, and the SNP Candidate will be John Finnie - the hugely capable leader of the SNP Group in Highland Council.

I challenge Danny to tell me here and now if he supports his pals in Holyrood in their stance not to support a referendum. If he does, every voter in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey should reflect, come May 6th, or whenever, that this man would deny their right to choose, and should exercise their alternative right to choose John Finnie to replace him.