We travelled from Perth on the A9 yesterday morning to Inverness, leaving at 5am. It is not the road that is the problem, it is the standard of driving and the need for excessive speed.
Yesterday was wet, the roads were greasy, yet still the lunatics continued with their excessive speed.
We were towing a caravan, travelling at 50mph, the limit for this. HGVs are entitled to do 50mph on this road but were overtaking us as though we were stationary. A dirty white van who must have had a death wish travelling at God knows what speed.
There is a real problem with excessive speed. It's no good putting a speed van all marked up so people know its purpose, we need unmarked vehicles if this problem is ever to be addressed.
We have dashcam footage of this entire journey but when we have talked to the police before regarding this they were not interested. So who would be interested?
My heartfelt sympathies to those that lost their lives yesterday and to the devastated families left behind. So, so sad.
As I read in the Inverness Courier on September 16, the issue of urban gulls is once again making headlines. Residents and businesses don't need reminding: they live daily with the noise, fouling, swooping, and the wider impact on health, wellbeing and quality of life.
That is why it is so disappointing that councillors representing the city centre and surrounding areas were excluded from the forthcoming "Gull Summit". We are the ones hearing directly from those most affected, yet our voices and, by extension, the voices of our communities, are not at the table.
If local input is ignored, any so-called strategy risks missing the mark. This is not a minor nuisance; it is a growing public health and "liveability" issue for our city.
Inverness deserves a genuine partnership approach: residents, businesses and councillors working together on real solutions. Anything less will fail the people we serve.
Mrs J Maclennan (Letters, Courier, 12/9/25) accuses the Scottish Government of having their "heads in the sand" because they are not charging ahead with oil and gas extraction. But whose head is really in the sand?
The truth is, the Climate Crisis is not going away just because the Tory (or any other) party want it to.
Almost every week brings fresh news of climate chaos, and not just in far-flung places: whoever imagined there would be a summer drought in Aberdeenshire?!
Sadly, the science is clear - human-induced climate change is already leading to more and more extreme weather events, which will only get worse. And fossil fuels are to blame.
Antonio Guterres, head of the United Nations, writes: "The evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions are choking our planet and placing billions of people in danger. Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible. We must act decisively now to avert a climate catastrophe." (Tweeted on X, August 9, 2021).
And emissions have only increased since then, including the past year (https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-emissions).
So we need to get our heads out of the sand in terms of the climate.
But we also need economic realism. A just green transition to clean energy jobs is where the smart money needs to be, and increasingly is, rather than in a volatile and morally bankrupt fossil fuel industry.
To name one example, with energy source predictability, Renewable Energy says: "Wave and tidal are both proven technologies that can help to offer predictable renewable energy from the UK's abundant coastline. The UK is currently a leader in tidal stream, with world leading projects operational around the country and a total of 50MW of developments in the pipeline. While currently more expensive than other renewables, tidal stream is on a cost-reduction journey and could be cheaper than nuclear by 2035." (Wave and tidal power | RenewableUK).
Fossils belong in museums! And the future is electric.
Dr Ruth Dunster
Extinction Rebellion Highlands and Islands and Moray
City roads just can't cope with development
The recent furore over repainting lines on the Inshes Roundabout obscured the real issue of it and its surrounding roads being structurally inadequate for the vast volume of development permitted around them - and the roundabout's location at the end of the SDR/West Link, which is itself becoming a burgeoning traffic issue.
In just five miles between Inshes and Tomnahurich, there are 13 roundabouts, 15 sometimes not ideally timed sets of traffic lights and no pedestrian underpasses. This is despite considerable development, including five schools, four supermarkets, a retail park, and still increasing housing close by on either side.
Add in the vast volume of through and local traffic and the upshot, especially at busy times, is tailbacks of half a mile and more, especially at several roundabouts between Inshes and Holm Mains.
Then at the Tomnahurich end, mayhem deepens thanks to the notoriously unreliable canal bridge system beside a pair of roundabouts which not only handle A82 traffic but also much of the access and egress for apparently limitless development at Craig Dunain. This then impinges on Glenurquhart Road, including extra traffic emerging via Bught Drive from the Bught leisure areas because the riverside exit has been closed by the overwhelmingly unused cycle route on which £2.4 million of public money has been squandered.
I am sure that perhaps four underpasses would be an asset, but it rather seems that the council has painted itself into a strategically hopeless and chaotic corner over the demand with which it expects the SDR/West Link to cope.