Today we attended the funeral of a long-time friend, Willie Matheson. He died aged 83 on 29 March in Perth, his home for the past few years.

Willie, who came from Ross-shire, was to my mind a Highland gentleman. It was he who introduced me to the world of politics and took me canvassing for the first time – door knocking in the Redmoss area of Aberdeen.

He shared digs with David Steel while at Edinburgh University. A long career took him to Dounreay, to the Macaulay Institute in Aberdeen in 1969, and later to Tayside.

At the service he was described as “a good man”. No doubt about that.

I recently discovered there is an author in the family. My cousin’s son-in-law has published thrillers, and I have just finished reading his first, “Killer Intent”.

I’m usually quite a slow reader of books, but this was a cracker, and literally a page-turner. Every word works for a living and there was none of the waffle that you find in some books.

Tony Kent – and that’s the author’s name – kept me spell-bound throughout.

I met him for the first time a couple of weeks ago at a family event. Another cousin asked if I would be buying a copy. I caused a bit of a chortle when I said no, I’ll be going to the library. Well, I mean, I didn’t know if I’d like it!

I’ll be asking the library service for the next one too.

I’m disappointed and annoyed. I have just posted a letter at the main box in the village. In small type a little notice says that “to improve efficiency” Royal Mail is changing the collection time.

Wait for it …

From 4.30pm to 9am Monday to Friday and from 10.30am to 7am on Saturdays.

Now, I could accept maybe an hour or so earlier, but how does 7 1/2 hours earlier improve efficiency and provide a better service.

Especially with the cost of a first class stamp going above £1 shortly. Not exactly a first class service.

I suspect other communities will be about to experience a similar drop in standards.

With national pay talks teetering on the brink of collapse and management threatening to put Royal Mail into administration, something is deeply amiss with the company.

I seem to mention a lot of deaths these days. Here is another, but this time not local.

We were at the funeral of my uncle, in Cheshire. Eric Mollison was 94, and still active. He had recently bought a new car.

He was the first member of our family – as far as I know – to go to university. Once he graduated, he and his wife left Dundee to work south of the border, and eventually ended up running a company making medicines for animals.

Along the way they had three sons and a daughter, all successful in life, spread across the world. Sadly their daughter died in 2020. Alice was quite some woman. A beauty queen, then the first female officer in the merchant navy, and an accomplished actress.

It was a strange feeling being in a room full of Mollisons. As you will probably realise, we are a rare breed.

Rest in peace Uncle Eric.

More sad news. Former Evening Express editor Dick Williamson has died. He was 86.

It was Dick who offered me a job as a sub editor at the EE back in the 1970s. We moved here from Paisley, and friends who came to visit and liked Newtonhill followed later. So many lives would have been very different if Dick had taken a different decision nearly 50 years ago!

Although my time at the EE didn’t end well (a year-long strike), I am very thankful to him. Rest in peace.

One of our former Liberal councillors has passed away. Anne Tunstall represented our area on the local authority.

Her son Gareth has posted the following on Facebook, including photographs with her husband Michael (also known as Mike), who has a street named after him in their home village of Newtonhill.

Anne Norman Tunstall, Born 30,03,1930, and the Matriarch of the Tunstall family. Passed today, 14 Oct 2022 at 03:25 am in the morning. She has left us to join her husband and be with God. She sends her love and respect to all she knew and met.

They were a lovely welcoming couple and it was a pleasure to be in their company. Anne was a dedicated councillor who had the best interests of the area in her heart.

Here is an interesting advert from the Press and Journal on 14 July 1949, which has popped up on another Facebook group I follow.

It shows that a return fare by train from Newtonhill to Aberdeen was 1s 6d (for those of a younger vintage that is 7 1/2 pence). The Portlethen/Aberdeen return was 1s (i.e. 5p).

One pound in 1949 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £39.28 today. The inflation rate then was 2.89%.

And just for clarity, I don’t remember those days – I wasn’t born.

I wonder how much today’s equivalent would be. Google tells me that from Portlethen an Anytime Day Single to Aberdeen is £4.30 and an Off-Peak Day Return is £5.20. An on-line calculator tells me £5.20 is the equivalent to 13p in 1949, or 2s 7d. So it is more than double the price now.

I had written in my final report for Portlethen’s Clochandighter community magazine that the a planning application for more houses in Hillside was due to come back before the Kincardine and Mearns Area Committee meeting in June.

Well, I wrote that at the beginning of May, and things have changed!

Area manager Bruce Stewart wrote the following in a report for councillors:

“Update as of June 2022 –
The Head of Planning and Economy has advised that there are still a number of technical details to be agreed with the applicants andtherefore the planning application will not be reported to Area Committee until after the summer recess.”

This application is controversial because of the impact on the school roll at Hillside School. The application for 175 houses had originally been approved in 2019 subject to a resolution of concerns about capacity at the school.

At that time, it had been anticipated that children would be rezoned to Portlethen Primary or Fishermoss School. If the rezoning proposals were not accepted, then the application would have to come back to the committee. As Education Scotland (a Scottish Government body) objected to the rezoning – as well as local opposition – this is resulting in the application having to come back to the committee, following discussions between the Planning Service and the developer, Stewart Milne.

Aberdeenshire Council has all planning applications on its website: https://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/planning/public-access/… You will need the application reference, which is APP/2016/0934.

However as matters have not yet been finalised in this application, they are subject to change. All the relevant information will be included in the report to be presented to councillors later in the year, and these will be available on the council website about a week before the meeting at https://committees.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/committees.aspx?commid=8

Good news. Finally Scottish Government Reporters have given their verdict on where development should and should not take place in Aberdeenshire.

Aberdeenshire Council submitted its draft Local Plan some 15 months ago after it was agreed by councillors, and Reporters have been scrutinising the proposals. The outcome will be accepted by the council as there is little choice in the matter.

I was always a bit worried that the Reporters would overturn the views of councillors and approve further development between Newtonhill and Muchalls. After all Scottish Ministers did give the go-ahead for the current Barratt development, setting aside the opposition of local councillors and some 600 objections.

However, as you will see below, Reporters have agreed that there should be no further development between Newtonhill and Muchalls.

My thanks to Michael Morgan, the past chair of Newtonhill, Muchalls and Cammachmore Community Council, for publicising this.

On the community council’s Facebook page he writes: “The Scottish Government reporters have published their final report into the examination of the Proposed Local Development Plan.

“Their recommendation for Newtonhill, Muchalls and Cammachmore is to uphold Aberdeenshire Council’s decision to not allocate any sites for house building. This means, that once Barratt have completed the 121 houses they are building on the moor, there will be no more house building for the duration of the plan (to 2027).

“The planning authority is required to accept the reporters’ recommendations except in instances where there are specific reasons for not doing so as set out in Section 19 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 (as amended) and in the Town and Country Planning (Grounds for Declining to Follow Recommendations Regulations) (Scotland) 2009.

“The next step is for Aberdeenshire Council to incorporate the reporters’ recommendations into the Proposed Local Development Plan and present it to the Full Council for approval.”

If you want more information such as the Reporters’ recommendations for each issue, click on this link to the DPEA website: https://www.dpea.scotland.gov.uk/CaseDetails.aspx?id=121481

On entering the website, click on the “Examination Report” tab and then, under the “Document Name” heading, click on the blue highlighted “Report of Examination” document.

Alternatively, go to the council’s website: https://aberdeenshire.gov.uk/planning/plans-and-policies/pldp-2020/?fbclid=IwAR1hqPxTsG6FF4NJBNnIDCFBNXrrOF9oOU7_gLg4zZ6CObju8KNno5L5XLs

Congratulations to Peter Flockhart on becoming the new chair of Newtonhill, Muchalls and Cammachmore Community Council.

Peter was chosen last night to succeed long-serving chair Michael Morgan who has stepped down after 14 years on the community council. Rob Peaker has also retired after valiant service.

Disappointing though that there were no fresh faces coming forward to join the community council. There are still vacancies if anyone would like to be co-opted and help. It is only a couple of hours each month. Please?

There are always lots of interesting issues being discussed, from policing, to school buses, local projects and road repairs.