This car, which I drove from Aviemore to Kingussie, is to be used by the Badenoch and Strathspey Car scheme, providing lifts to those who need them through disability or lack of mobility.

The administrators of the car scheme hope that the novelty of the chance to drive an electric car may attract more volunteer drivers - always in short supply! What is striking about driving an electric car is the noise - there isn't any. The other feature is a lack of power, especially acceleration, compared with a normal car. However, I accept that this may have been because of driver unfamiliarity. So, will we need to convert to electric cars and if so, when? Will oil run out?

Those who argue that "peak oil" will happen imminently ignore the lesson of history: That, as John D. Rockefeller, the doyen of oil barons said: "The world has been running out of oil since I was a boy." He said that in the 1920s. But, it is true that oil and gas are finite resources - and so at some distant point in the future we will need to use another kind of fuel if we are still to have the use of cars. And I suspect that our grandchildren will, like ourselves, find them pretty handy and indeed necessary. The cost of running electric cars is only 10 per cent of running a diesel car - and of course the cost of fuel in the UK is the highest in Europe. I expect that just after electric cars become widely used, the government of the day will increase the tax on using them too.

Meantime, it will be interesting to hear how the car scheme find the electric car - and how it stands up to a Highland winter.

ANTI EVERYTHING

The Glasgow by election result was good for Labour, disappointing for my party, poor for the Tories and a disaster for the Lib-Dems. But what struck me was the parochial nature of the themes used against the Scottish government: the SNP was "anti Glasgow."

Just before the last Scottish election, when my party promised in our manifesto to scrap two Lib-Dem/Labour transport projects in Edinburgh, namely the trams and airport rail link - both parties claimed that the SNP was "anti-Edinburgh". The reason I put forward these policies to spend less - well over one thousand million pounds less - than our opponents was nothing to do with where they were located and everything to do with their startling lack of value for taxpayers' money.

I noticed that during the last council by election in Inverness, my party were accused, by the Lib-Dems of being a central belt party - presumably anti Inverness. Sooner or later our opponents should express a proper analysis about how we as a country prioritise our transport plans - given the huge lack of progress in the Highlands over the last two decades. But I suspect we will instead see more futile and fruitless political snipery.

The truth is that in government - unlike opposition - one has to take tough choices and cannot throw money around like confetti at a bridal party - and with as much thought involved in the process.

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