The Forgotten Land

So there you are, despite the roads in Caithness being in a dangerous condition The Highland Council do not appear to intend to repair them all due to lack of funds. See Caithness roads Recovery on Facebook.


We can, therefore look forward to many years of bumping along damaging our vehicles and risking our lives due to The Highland Council and the Scottish Government not giving a sh1t about the population of Caithness or the Highlands as a whole.


Thanks to Caithness Roads Recovery some of the worst areas are receiving some attention but if you are unlucky enough to live on a road that is classed as minor etc, then you are going to be left to endure road standards that would normally be associated with a third world country.


The only way forward is to send your dissatisfaction to those who are responsible for providing us with basic services like safe roads. Many say that no one will take any notice but if we can continually flood their inboxes with complaints and valid points then they will at least know how unhappy we are.


The Highland Council will continue to plead poverty and the Scottish Government will continue to say it's not their problem, however the money is there in the Government coffers but they will not even acknowledge the seriousness of the situation. It would be good to see a member of the Scottish Government visit Caithness to see just how bad the roads have become, may be they are afraid of falling off the edge of the world when they pass Inverness !


Let's not leave it until some one gets seriously injured before bothering to put finger to keypad.

interesting to see all these road crossings popping up in Wick, why are they so close to the junctions, which seems a little dangerous to me

I noticed the crossings as well. The one just along from Tesco is just before/after a bend so it will be ideal for creating rear end shunts, that will make a change from damaging the underside of our vehicles on the cart track roads we have to endure.

I thought funds for the road infrastructure were in short supply or is it classed as pedestrian work ?

Meanwhile, there's plenty of money available to re-furbish Inverness Castle as a visitor attraction- why am I not surprised.

OK. Let's assume we repair every pothole in Caithness to the complete satisfaction of Tom Bowler. I guarantee others would be on this forum the very next day complaining that because all the potholes have been repaired there is no money left to do the things they care about and consider important. There are many entirely worthy calls upon the monies allocated to THC. Officials and councillors have to make judgement calls about where best to spend the available cash in the interests of us all. If we spend it all fixing the roads then education, refuse collection, social care, street lighting etc, etc will all suffer. Consider yourselves lucky that you don't have to make these difficult decisions.

but road safety should come first and dont say our roads are because i trvel between wick an thurso every day and i thinkour roads would not be out of place in third world countries. and yes we are very much forgotten up here

I don't buy the argument that it has to be one or the other- it should be possible to do it all, within reason. The Scottish Government has manged to find largesse to hand out ahead of the elections and I do not accept that there is no money to fix roads that are acknowledged to be in a horrendous state and that ultimately, there could be a fatal accident as a result. Truth is, as others have said, they do not care a toss about us up here. Nicola Sturgeon said that the views of the people should be the thing that is listened to, but you only have to read the Groat recently and the furore regarding the granting of planning permission for the Golticlay wind farm when there was total local opposition including by Highland Council, to realise that as far as the SG is concerned, we don't matter.

Maybe the gaelic Road signs and livery on service vehicles was an unnecessary expence

I really do wish someone would provide some real, verifiable evidence that Caithness is the forgotten land. By evidence, I don't mean anecdotes or isolated individual circumstances but evidence of a clear and concerted policy of ignoring Caithness.

If it is not possible to provide any such evidence then it is just a case of "poor us" and "the grass is always greener...". As I have said before I have lived all over Scotland and have heard many communities make similar allegations without having the slightest foundation. Glasgow thinks Edinburgh gets all the money yet curiously Edinburgh thinks it happens the other way round. Rural communities feel aggrieved at the money spent in urban areas. Urban communities cannot understand why so much is spent in rural areas.

If such assertions are to be taken seriously then evidence must be produced.

Shocking down- grading of mental health services and maternity services in Caithness- what more do you want?

Well, for a start what you said is not evidence. It's just your opinion. And no matter how many people pile-on and say they agree with you it is still not evidence worthy of being taken seriously. I am not saying that a down-grading has not happened but you have not provided any evidence that it did. If you wish your arguments to be taken seriously then you need to produce some facts and figures to back up what you say. Without that verification your statement is effectively just an anecdote.

To illustrate my point one need only look at the arguments employed in the lead up to the Brexit referendum where immigrants were simultaneously accused of "coming over here and taking our jobs" and "lying around all day claiming benefits". That was a nice trick if you could do it but was clearly nonsense since doing both was mutually exclusive. Despite that, many people believed in one or other (or sometimes even both ???) allegations but could not provide any hard facts to substantiate their belief.

I am not saying your, or Tom Bowler's assertions are wrong; merely that you have not come anywhere close to proving them. That's all I ask - some proof to back up your opinions.

Perhaps you need to look at what the likes of CHAT have been saying since you remain unconvinced.

The theme of this post is that Caithness is the forgotten land. Tom Bowler used the state of the roads to illustrate his/her argument. You have since suggested that a down-grading of mental health services is another example of how this county is forgotten.

My argument is that for these sentiments to have any meaning they must be backed up by evidence. Neither of you have produced any. If you can show me that no other area of Scotland suffers from a pothole problem and no other location has had a down-grading of mental health services then I will accept that both of your examples are true. I suspect, however, that you will be unable to do so because other areas of Scotland will have similar concerns. In other words Caithness has not been singled out as you suggest because other areas have the same problems. Even if you can prove to me that Caithness has been treated differently, so far as potholes and mental health are concerned, that is still not sufficient evidence to say the entire county has been forgotten.

I'm pretty sure that if you told the people of Lanark, Dunbar, Brechin and Fort William (whose towns are roughly the same size as Wick) that Wick has an airport; a railway service; a modernised and working harbour, a general hospital, 3 good-sized supermarkets, 2 dental practices; a community campus with a library, gym and swimming pool then I suspect they would consider us well off.

I am not saying that everything in Caithness is rosy. Clearly there are issues of concern to many people but to suggest that the county is forgotten is nonsense.

corky lets us see your facts that the things you say have not happened

Oh Jeez. Did you actually read my posts? I am NOT saying these things haven't happened. For the final time:- I just want to see proper, verifiable evidence that Caithness is the forgotten land. Just because someone says there are unfixed potholes and someone else says that mental health services have been down graded does not prove that Caithness has been forgotten.

I think that too much has been read in to the title of this thread, it was designed to get attention and motivate people.

It is, however good to see that the Roads Team are out doing what resurfacing they they are able to do with a very limited budget.

It is mainly thanks to Caithness Roads Recovery that these works have been started. It is also thanks to those that have made their feelings clear in what ever way they chose.

The crisis has not been resolved but at least some action is being taken which should make it safer on our roads.

Hopefully after 6th May THC and Scot Gov can actually bring themselves to work together and come up with solutions rather than playing the blame game which has resulted in a stale mate situation where no one wins. THC have acknowledged that the roads need attention but unfortunately Scot Gov, in my contacts sadly, don't even want to discuss the matter. I can't help but feel that politics is getting in the way of progress on many issues in the Highlands.

And what did the Romans ever do for Caithness?

If they were to enforce the no parking on Wick High street, the fines alone could pay for road repairs. Everytime I go through Wick cars are parked on the double yellow lines and nothing seems to get done.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ColinWhittaker

If they were to enforce the no parking on Wick High street....

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Not to mention all the 20mph speed limits that have popper up everywhere without rhyme or reason.

Spending on Highland roads discussed at the Economy and Infrastructure committee on 5th May 2021.

You can see the web cast of the discussions at https://highland.public-i.tv/core/po...ractive/536023 See item 6.

The paper for this item can be found at https://www.highland.gov.uk/download...tal_allocation

This report details the prioritised list of schemes for inclusion as part of the strategic £7.4M allocation of the £20M capital budget during years 2021/22 and 2022/23.

The last backlog figures for Highland were calculated in 2019 and are shown below:-
• Overall backlog: £194 million
• Steady State: £25.09 million