In the bustle of the brewery shop in Aviemore, Sam Faircliff is trying her best to stay positive. It’s hard, she admits, because for months she’s been suffering from a sense that politicians and civil servants in distant Edinburgh are intent on putting her out of business.
“They’re just not listening,” Faircliff sighs. “They pay lip service to the notion that they represent the whole of Scotland. I’m sorry but they don’t represent us.”
Faircliff, 58, is the managing director of Cairngorm Brewery and her gloomy view is far from unique in the Highlands and Islands. In 25 years of reporting across post-devolution Scotland, I’ve never encountered such widespread frustration, antipathy even, towards government as there is towards the SNP-Green coalition at Holyrood. This is a country divided.
But there are plenty of grievances turning rural communities against central belt mandarins. Some of these are becoming all too visible, such as the exponential growth in the number and size of wind turbines from Skye to Aberdeenshire and north to John O’Groats, and a proposal to march giant pylons from Caithness to Beauly. Others, the rural housing crisis and a chronic labour shortage, are hidden from view but a cause of profound anxiety.
One issue, the government-owned ferry service, has been a national joke for years and the failure of Nicola Sturgeon, the departed first minister, to have Ferguson’s shipyard build just two new vessels was found to have “badly let down” islanders as costs soared beyond £300 million.
There are consequences. This week when MV Loch Seaforth became the latest rusty tub to putter up portside for repairs, most of the population of the Inner and Outer Hebrides were cut off from the mainland.
It doesn’t help, says Joe Reade, 51, a baker from Mull, that the public institutions running the ferries are based in the central belt: Calmac, the operators, are in Gourock; Cmal, the owners, in Port Glasgow and Transport Scotland, the controlling government agency, is in Edinburgh.
Ministers’ latest green initiative, highly protected marine areas (HPMAs), is held to have delivered yet another blow to the islands from Edinburgh. For critics, it threatens a way of life, with the fishermen who catch lobster, scallops and langoustines — some of Scotland’s most prized delicacies — among those most at risk, along with salmon, mussel and seaweed farmers.
Under the plans fishing and other economic activities would be banned in at least 10 per cent of Scotland’s coastal waters — by contrast HPMAs covering just 0.53 per cent of English waters are to be trialled. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/434f7b90-dadd-11ed-89ad-19e3cfc05db4?shareToken=42642d55696a9967716bd2a82228ac53
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