Cars in Thurso to be restricted to 10mph
Speed limit for Thurso
From the Groat of November 14, 1924
Efforts were to be made to introduce a motor speed limit in Thurso.
At a meeting of the town council, Councillor Wilson said that “there was every likelihood of an accident occurring and the question would then arise as to why no precautions had been taken”.
He then formally moved the introduction of a speed limit of 12 miles per hour within the area bounded by the railway station, Gillock Park and Thurso East toll.
Provost Anderson agreed that “coming from the bridge to Princes Street it is really dangerous”.
In fact, such was the support for a reduction of the speed at which vehicles could travel in the town that a suggestion by ex-Provost Brims that the limit should be 10 mph, not 12 mph, was readily accepted.
The matter was remitted to the clerk “to ascertain the procedure necessary for the introduction of a speed limit”.
Meanwhile, the Caithness Education Authority had received a deputation comprising Mr Henderson, organising secretary of the Educational Institute for Scotland, and Mr Kerr, headmaster from Wishaw, on behalf of assistant teachers Mrs Sutherland and Mrs Taylor, Lanergill and Stroma public schools respectively.
They had been dismissed because they were the wives of teachers.
As a result of the meeting the authority had agreed to “pay the ladies a sum equivalent to their salaries from now until the close of the current session on June 30, 1925”.
Council move to halt reorganisation
From the Groat of November 15, 1974
Wick Town Council had agreed to support a move to postpone the reorganisation of local government “until the relationship between any future Scottish Assembly and local authorities could be approved”.
The motion from Arbroath Town Council was to go before the Convention of Royal Burghs and Wick’s support for it had been prompted by a letter from Thurso Town Council.
Some Wick councillors were all too ready to give their backing to the cause, with Police Judge James Kay saying that “we should support this wholeheartedly. People are saying that regionalisation, with a base in Inverness, removes local government from the people.”
Bailie Robert Durrand agreed that “reorganisation was something that had been foisted upon local authorities”.
The councillors learned that every MP and local authority in Scotland were being canvassed for support.
Meanwhile, eleven Caithness schools were to be hit by industrial action being taken by members of the Educational Institute for Scotland.
A total of 132 schoolteachers were to withdraw their labour for three days the following week as part of the EIS action to gain an interim pay rise.
The schools which were to be affected were Bower, Castletown, Dunbeath, Hillhead, Pennyland, Pulteneytown Academy, Reay, Wick North, Miller Academy and Wick and Thurso High Schools.
Around 5500 local children would be affected by the dispute.
Knowledge test throws taxi drivers off course
From the Groat of November 19, 1999
It was no longer enough for a taxi driver in Caithness to know how to get from Wick or Thurso to John O’Groats in order to get a licence.
New rules meant that anyone who wanted a licence to drive a taxi in the county had to be able to tell council officials the shortest route from Forres to Fort William before they were allowed on the road.
Perhaps not surprisingly, most people in Caithness who had sat the new knowledge test introduced by Highland Council had failed.
Local drivers believed some of the questions being asked were daft and council officials locally were known to be sympathetic.
But unless the council decided to scrap its Highland-wide knowledge test, no-one would get a licence unless they could answer questions about routes between places which previously it had been pointless knowing anything about.
Those who already had a licence would not need to sit the knowledge test when they applied to renew their licence, something which had come to as a relief to existing drivers.
One of them, Trevor Chadwick, of Thurso, maintained that it was “crazy to decide the livelihood of someone working the streets of Thurso on questions like what is the most direct route between Fort William and Forres. It’s plain daft.”
Local area manager Brian Whitelaw said the new test had only been in place for a week and feedback was being relayed to a working group which would review the situation.
