YOUR VIEWS: Inverness Academy Street - what should happen next?
What should happen next with Academy Street?
Make Academy street one way from MacGregor’s bar to the Railway Station. Make Church Street one way from The Mercure Hotel to Leakys,that way there’s room for parking/pedestians /cyclists.
Most of the traffic lights can be removed which will reduce emissions as cars will not be idling as much.
David M Edes,
Brudes Hill
Inverness
Reducing car numbers through Academy Street will only be fully possible if public transport if seriously improved. Only then will the majority of shoppers and visitors to central Inverness have a viable alternative.
The current driver shortage crisis on trains and buses in the Highlands make services infrequent - and furthermore, some passengers in recent months have frustratingly been subject to short notice cancellations.
This is no incentive to either the car user, or those short on time. For everyone else, both the infrequency and unreliability of public transport is a deep source of frustration and the non-car user feels like a second class citizen.
James Rorison
Skye Court
Inverness
When will the Academy Street bollards go?
Mystery surrounded how long it will take Highland Council to remove the bollards from Academy Street installed during the coronavirus pandemic to aid social distancing. The decision for them to go was taken at last week’s council meeting when the local authority ditched plans to revamp Academy Street. However, when asked, the council was unable to give a timetable for their removal at this stage.
“Remove unnecessary bollards. Uncover the cobbles beneath which would give a bit of character back to the town centre and more durable than tar.” - David MacKay MacLean
“Get rid of bollards and resurface without cycle lanes as only a few ever use them.” - Catherine Gilchrist
“The sooner the better, it's been an eyesore now for a number of years. But seeing as it’s the council it will probably be another five years.” - Jacquie Urquhart
“Dangerous and an eyesore.” - Ewen Watson
“Surely they can’t be that difficult to remove.” - Sandra Ian
““Emergency services have always struggled to get through when busy. Shame the council never removed them a long time ago!!!” - Debbie Pickering
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Survey doesn’t tell the full story of energy
As opposition escalates against Big Energy in rural Scotland we are being bombarded with their propaganda on the hour every hour on local radio, sponsorship emblazoned across our TV screens, their sticky fingers in just about every pie you can imagine from donations, fantasy jobs, promises of ‘wonderful’ things to come for us all and getting into our schools to help ‘shape’ young minds to their advantage.
If that wasn’t bad enough the last couple of days has seen a study and a poll backing their industry to the hilt and we watch in dismay as politicians fall on the figures as if they are some kind of Holy Grail and their relevance taken at face value.
It is pathetic to watch especially as thousands across our country are feeling real pain and mental anguish at what is being allowed to happen in our communities by energy multinationals.
Profit before peace and wellbeing sums it up pretty well as global investment companies colonise where we live. The poll being trumpeted at the Labour Party Conference (and blindly and vociferously endorsed by Scottish Green Lorna Slater) is a horror. It was commissioned by mega wind developer Fred Olsen. It asked the opinion of 1012 people across the whole UK - 0.0015 per cent of its population.
The alleged backers of onshore wind in Scotland was 0.0075 per cent of our population – hardly a relevant sample.
The Scottish Government has been too feart to give targeted communities a say on wind development. Had they bothered to fairly ballot those who are so adversely affected any proposal would, without doubt, be run out of town with the vast majority rejecting them.
The survey by Biggar Economics, commissioned by Scotland’s grid operators SSEN and Scottish Power, states that property values have not been affected by the monstrous Beauly-Denny line.
You have to wonder why they are attempting to compare apples and pears by inferring the new massive infrastructure its commissioners are proposing is the same as the Beauly-Denny. What is coming at communities across rural Scotland now is far far worse. There were not substation sites of 800+ acres, nor a plethora of volatile battery storage units being proposed or the same amount of expected onshore wind turbines with the Beauly-Denny.
The crucial thing is this. No one has ever gone to an estate agent and asked for a rural property near a pylon, substation, turbine or battery storage.
A reduction in potential purchasers will, quite simply, mean a reduction in value.
It is time that these energy companies stopped with their public manipulations and dishonesty to get their greedy way.
Our communities feel invaded and deserve more respect.
Our elected representatives should stop falling over themselves to welcome these global giants who see Scotland as a very fertile cash cow.
Governments love to declare their country as being a “world leader” in something. Well Scotland and the rest of the UK certainly is. A world leader in spineless politicians who roll over and believe everything Big Energy tells them!
Lyndsey Ward
Spokeswoman for Communities B4 power Companies
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