Wrong A9 blame

I WAS outraged to hear Danny Alexander, MP for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, and sadly my representative in Westminster, accuse the Scottish Government of failing to dual the A9 quickly enough (your report, 28 September).

Few would disagree that the A9 is woefully inadequate and should have been dualled decades ago. It is true that infrastructure improvements in the Central Belt have taken precedence over those in the Highlands.

However, unlike Mr Alexander, who appears to specialise in ducking responsibility and rarely lets the facts get in the way of political point scoring, most of us who live in the Highlands lay the blame quite squarely at the door of his own party, the Liberal Democrats, as well as their colleagues in the Tory and Labour parties.

These parties took turns to rule Scotland from the inception of dual carriageways in the UK until 2007.

They are the politicians who failed to provide the north of Scotland with transport infrastructure befitting of the 20th century, let alone the 21st century.

It is Danny Alexander’s own party that, between 1999 and 2007, failed to commit to dualling the A9 and consciously neglected to undertake any meaningful improvements, preferring instead to waste hundreds of millions of pounds on a flawed tram system and vanity airport rail links.

The SNP, on the other hand, has committed to dualling this vital spine road.

It has just completed the Crubenmore dual carriageway extension and is in the process of designing new dualled sections between Perth and Drumochter.

The SNP is making real progress where all others have failed; but dualling the A9 is a massive project and, thanks to misplaced priorities and years of neglect at the hands of the Liberal Democrats and their counterparts, it cannot happen over night.

David Balfour

Craobhraid na Coilltich

Inverness