Alasdair Allan: To ask the Scottish Executive how many Gaelic language plans Bòrd na Gàidhlig has approved for public bodies since its inception, broken down by year and organisation.
Alasdair Allan: I thank all members from across the parties who have signed my motion and who will speak tonight. Although the stories that I have to tell about fuel prices relate mainly to the Western Isles, the problem affects all our island communities. It is an issue that my colleague, Angus MacNeil, has also pursued at Westminster. The vast majority of the cost of petrol to the consumer is the tax that...
Alasdair Allan: Or from Orkney. I accept that many things are beyond the control of politicians—the price of oil reaching more than $130 a barrel is one of them. We are expected to strive to not be partisan in a member's business debate, so I will observe without comment the fact that the United Kingdom Treasury will make more than £4 billion in additional revenues from Scotland's North Sea gas and oil...
Alasdair Allan: As a Borderer, I am happy to acknowledge the problems of mainland rural Scotland. I made tonight's debate specifically about the islands because even comparing prices between Ullapool and Stornoway shows that there is a clear premium for buying fuel on an island. We know that measures can be taken and that the Westminster Government supported France's fuel derogations. It should also be said...
Alasdair Allan: As other members have done, I declare an interest in as much as my office pays rates. Whatever our arguments today, there can, I hope, be no disagreement about the importance of small business to Scotland. In my constituency, with perhaps a dozen exceptions, every single business is a small one. Under the SNP Government's proposals, business rates relief for small businesses will be between...
Alasdair Allan: That should win a prize for a non sequitur. The member should go to Ness or Barvas, offer those rather odd figures and see how long he survives socially. As I said, the Labour amendment dare not say outright that it opposes the benefits. Curiously, it states that rates reductions employed by the previous Administration were a good thing, but those introduced by the present Administration are...
Alasdair Allan: Some years ago, I attended a conference on Scottish culture at the University of Aberdeen at which an eminent politician made an astonishing statement of her view of culture, a remark that lives with me still. She said: "We should be careful about giving people in Scotland too much culture. My constituents, for instance, are not really familiar with books and libraries and so on." Good...
Alasdair Allan: To ask the Scottish Executive how many antisocial behaviour orders have been issued in each local authority area since 1999.
Alasdair Allan: A dh'fhaighneachd do Riaghaltas na h-Alba dè an ìre aig a bheil na planaichean a chur às do sgiobaidhean singilte air carbaidean èiginn anns na h-Eileanan an Iar. To ask the Scottish Government what stage its plans are at to stop the single manning of ambulances in the Western Isles.
Alasdair Allan: To ask the Scottish Executive whether its policies on addressing fuel poverty and poor housing take account of the prevalence of concrete and other difficult-to-insulate housing in the Western Isles.
Alasdair Allan: There can be no doubt about the scope and ambition of the Government's legislative programme. The committees that have complained of a shortage of legislative material to get their teeth into will regret their words. Indeed, some on those committees will now long for the days when they could get away with engineering time to take a vindictive stroll on the golf course, so to speak. The sheer...
Alasdair Allan: A dh'fhaighneachd do Riaghaltas na h-Alba dè thathar a' dèanamh gus daoine ùra a tharraing a-steach gu croitearachd. To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to encourage new entrants into crofting.
Alasdair Allan: To ask the Scottish Government whether it will extend the provision of domestic abuse courts to rural areas. (S3O-4006)
Alasdair Allan: Does the cabinet secretary agree that people reporting domestic abuse in rural communities face particular problems, not least the perceived difficulty in reporting crimes anonymously?
Alasdair Allan: To ask the Scottish Executive what action it will take to develop the marketing and promotion of Scottish scallops.
Alasdair Allan: To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has reached any conclusion about what a sustainable number of graylag geese in Uist would be.
Alasdair Allan: To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will provide an update on what measures it is taking to address the depredation of crofting land by greylag geese in Uist.
Alasdair Allan: I will overlook that slur. The Liberal Democrats' criticisms would appear a little less grudging and would have a little more credibility if it were not the case that some routes on which they want RET—not least the route to Shetland—would be dearer if the formula were applied.
Alasdair Allan: I commend the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee for the work that it has done in its excellent report on ferry services in Scotland. Given the obvious importance of the issue to my constituency—I represent 15 inhabited islands containing 26,500 people—I have a personal interest in it. The Western Isles have five mainland and two internal ferry routes, all of which are...
Alasdair Allan: It is worth noting that the opposite effect has been observed in past years, when tourists who would have come to the Western Isles have not done so simply because it is massively more expensive to get to the Western Isles than to Skye, Mull or Islay. For a long time, the Western Isles have suffered from a lack of investment in their tourism industry. It is only reasonable that that situation...