Tag Archives: roads

Mark Valladares

10 April 2026 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Fri 10th April 2026 - 10:30 pm
  • Cole-Hamilton comments on declining nursing applications
  • Cole-Hamilton sets out plan to “fix the damn roads”

Cole-Hamilton comments on declining nursing applications

Responding to an embargoed report by the Royal College of Nursing about a falling number of applications for nursing courses, with over 1,000 fewer people applying to study nursing in 2025 compared to 2019, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

For nineteen years, the SNP have made a dog’s dinner of NHS staffing. These gaps stretch all the way back to Nicola Sturgeon cutting nursing training places and claiming that was sensible.

Such a drastic fall in the number of people applying to

…

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Mark Valladares

30 March 2026 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Mon 30th March 2026 - 10:30 pm
  • Teacher numbers in STEM subjects fall by 900
  • 606 fewer modern language teachers than when SNP came to power
  • Greens scrapping road projects will kill Highland communities
  • Greene: Calamity Kemi should apologise for cheerleading Iran War which is sending prices soaring
  • If you’ve been to A&E, you shouldn’t trust Swinney

Teacher numbers in STEM subjects fall by 900

Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie MSP has accused the SNP of “playing fast and loose” with Scotland’s economic future, as new figures revealed there are 900 fewer teachers in STEM subjects than when the SNP first came to power

New figures show that between 2008 and 2025:

  • The

…

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Mark Valladares

14 February – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 14th February 2023 - 10:30 pm
  • ONS figures: Families see pay squeezed by Conservative incompetence
  • Two-week cancer diagnosis target missed by half of NHS trusts in every month last year
  • Welsh Lib Dems Comment on Welsh Government Road Review

ONS figures: Families see pay squeezed by Conservative incompetence

Responding to the latest ONS figures showing a 3.1% real-terms fall in pay in October to December 2022, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said:

This Conservative government has hammered families with soaring mortgages, rising energy bills and huge unfair tax hikes.

Hard-working people are having their pay squeezed thanks to the incompetence of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt.

A long list

…

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Iain Roberts

A longer read for the lockdown – Winning the battle for our roads

By Iain Roberts | Tue 5th January 2021 - 11:28 am

This is the first in a series of articles exploring how we can improve the places we live and work

Entire neighbourhoods in Maartje van Putten’s city were being demolished to make space for the motor car, and still it demanded more. Bicycle use was falling year-on-year. Worst of all, road deaths were soaring.

The place was Amsterdam, the year was 1971. 400 children had died on the roads in the Netherlands that year – an agonisingly high toll. It could have continued, as it did in most other countries. Instead, Maartje and thousands of other Amsterdammers – including many mothers worried about what the future held for their children – decided to take a stand.

Stop de Kindermoord (Stop the child murder) was a grass-roots movement and Maartje van Putten was its first president. They marched, they blocked roads, they even got arrested. Many motorists were outraged: how dare these people take away their right to drive wherever they want at any time. But campaigners persevered. They sat down with politicians, they talked, and in time the politicians listened.

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Mark Valladares

30 September 2019 – yesterday’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 1st October 2019 - 11:07 pm

I allowed myself to be distracted yesterday… you know how it can be sometimes, so it’s time to catch up…

  • ‘Out of touch’ Tories plough money into roads despite people and planet crying out for public transport investment
  • Brexit renders spending promises impossible – Davey

‘Out of touch’ Tories plough money into roads despite people and planet crying out for public transport investment

Following Sajid Javids announcement of £25bn investment in roads, Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Transport, said:

Just as people are starting to become aware of the damage we’re doing to our planet, the Conservatives have committed to spending £25

…

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Paul Walter

Newbury by-pass – memories 20 years on

By Paul Walter | Mon 11th January 2016 - 9:54 am

In January 1996, protestors took to trees and tunnels just outside my home town of Newbury, trying to stop the building of the by-pass.

It was a bit of surprise to be at the centre of such national furore over our by-pass.

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Danny Alexander MP

Danny Alexander MP writes… Investing in Britain’s future

By Danny Alexander MP | Thu 27th June 2013 - 1:08 pm


Video by hmtreasuryuk on YouTube.

Yesterday, we set out a Spending Round that delivers Liberal Democrat priorities on investment and improving our public services while making responsible choices to deal with the financial problems Labour left us. It demonstrated that the Liberal Democrats will remain firm in our commitment to tackling the deficit, but fair in the way we go about it. Our number one priority in Government has been to fix the economic mess we inherited from Labour.

Today I have set out how we will invest in our country’s economic future by creating balanced growth and delivering lasting prosperity. I have announced the most comprehensive, ambitious and long-lasting capital investment plans this country has ever known.
In doing so we are putting long term priorities before short term political pressures and we are ending the culture of short-termism that plagued so many of our predecessors.

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Andreas Christodoulou

Opinion: Cameron’s road plan is a terrible idea

By Andreas Christodoulou | Thu 22nd March 2012 - 6:05 pm

David Cameron’s announcement that he was planning on getting private enterprise to fund roads in the UK has to be a contender for the worst idea since the Potassium Teapot.

While, in principle, the idea of private enterprise building new roads isn’t necessarily a terrible idea, any private involvement in refurbishing existing roads, widening motorways or improving junctions would be a financial mess.

In this case, private enterprise would borrow some money (probably from a pension fund), widen the motorway or make the junction better, then get some sort of pay off from the Government based on road/junction usage.

Unfortunately, private businesses …

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