The Nessie Monster Bridge - Six
Transport Broader plans, Inverness
Transport Broader plans, Inverness
Val Sweeney
The Inverness Courier, Inverness, Scotland
Friday the 13th of March 2009
Dear Val,
At long last the exclusive article by you placed on the front page of your newspaper, The Inverness Courier, drops the distorted falsehood of dressing up a project “first mooted” a decade ago called a TLR (a city street leading into a national highway) as an Inverness By-Pass thus misinforming its citizens for Liberal Democrat benefit.
Thank goodness Val for that Westminster inclusive of Scotland’s Highlands & Islands overall plan, for I can’t image what visiting diasporas Scots and others, having had to face an old time, helter-skelter, funfair like entrance into a once proud Inverness city, actually would think of us after motoring along the Loch Ness scenic A82 route coming from the South, surely expecting to be welcomed into the City, majestically, by a magnificent new Nessie Monster Bridge – morons, I expect. See last paragraph.
Let’s hope that Transport Scotland officials look to the bridge as part of their “broader plan to link up the A9 and A82,” not only those two roads as you say Val, but also, the A96 joining them as has been suggested by you know who - KJR, others, and the Review itself.
I do not see what “Highlands and Islands nationalist MSP Dave Thompson who fears the news of the project has got to be alarmed at” – perhaps he will reply to my letter as did the Tory Minister, Mary Scanlon that included the one sent to Principal Engineer, James A Smith at Alness.
See KJR website. (i.e. this site).
You all keep expressing digging a tunnel under the canal is an aqueduct – it isn’t, the canal will still be the Caledonian Canal whatever you dig under it, and as for the likes of depicting the Loch Ness Monster in so doing crawling under it, is of utter stupidity - a touch of TLR nonsense, a failure well deserved to be ”ripped up”.
Look, surely we can do likewise for the city of Invernes.
Somehow - I much expect that we can't.
So Jimmy Gray, Provost of Inverness, “agreed it was back to square one” and on that verse, I detect a touch of commonsense creeping in, but what's the spoiler, the “Highland Council doesn’t have the funding.” Well Jimmy, you do not need it. Spend what you’ve got on the roads and streets that badly need repairs in the city, because an Inverness BY-PASS that has been expressed inclusive of the Nessie Monster Bridge element IS the jurisdiction of the Westminster Government.
To Val Sweeney, I say, with having the mass unemployment in a period of economic downturn an Inverness highway BYPASS of substance and sound engineering inclusive of a Nessie Monster Bridge is timely, instead of squabbling over “explaining away politically motivated documents”.
I note that the Inverness Nessie Monster Bridge has been equated in lieu of the proposed new Forth Road Bridge, near Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital for environment reasons, outwith the Transport Project Review as “question-marked” thus leaving grant funding open for the construction of the Inverness Ness River, Nessie Monster Bridge, instead of replacing a no fault of Inverness, a faulty Forth River Bridge for earmarking in
The third last paragraph in the editorial, just like much of the Courier’s past misguided reporting
on the matter is confusing, and would have best been left out.
Ian King, KJR, Inverness, Scotland
March 2009
e-mail copies to:
Transport Minister, Stewart Stevenson * Transport Scotland *
Principal Engineer, James Smith, Highland Council * The Highland Council - Planning * Councillor Michael Foxley * SNP MSP Fergus Ewing
Conservative MSP Mary Scanlon *, Ross, Skye and Inverness MSP, John Farquhar Munro * SNP MSP Dave Thompson * Jim Ferguson Tory MP
Scottish Provincial Press * The Press and Journal * Helen Bushnell, Highland News * Editor, Scotland on Sunday.
Copies by hand to:
Inverness Provost, Jimmy Gray; Neil Gillies, Highland Council.