Highland Council convenor Bill Lobban
At this festive time of year I’d like to wish you, your family and friends a very Merry Christmas with best wishes for the New year ahead from The Highland Council.
If I were allowed one Christmas wish it would be that in this festive time of goodwill that people throughout the world could enjoy a period of peace with their families and neighbours.
Many people will be alone this Christmas time so please extend a hand of friendship in the hope that they too can enjoy this festive season. Merry Christmas one and all.
Councillor Angus MacDonald
Have a great Christmas everyone in Lochaber, people need a time of good cheer and happiness.
I love seeing the excited primary school children arriving at the cinema, and grandmothers contemplating what books to buy for their offspring at the bookshop.
Christmas brings such pleasure to many. Good food, accompanied by family and friends; special times.
However a massive thanks to the many people doing great things for others over the holidays, in the care sector, Lochaber Hope, Ewen’s Room, Lochaber Food Bank, amongst many other third sector organisations. You are great!
2023 hasn’t been a great year for many, financial hardship, illness, personal struggles.
Let’s hope the coming year is a cracker for those who have suffered in 2023 in particular…..
Happy Christmas from Angus and Michie MacDonald, our four sons and at last a girl, granddaughter Jemima.
Councillor Sarah Fanet
A recent engagement with the Caol Regeneration Company, whose invaluable work has again supported so many Lochaber residents, was a reminder of the extraordinary dedication and generosity existing in our communities.
Volunteers are working hard to deliver food and ensure that people from our communities get the chance to spend time together.
I would like to seize this opportunity to thank ALL organisations and individuals in Lochaber who have given again so much of their time in 2023 to help others, particularly this time of the year as Christmas can be a time of anxiety when many of us struggle through the cost of living crisis and loneliness.
I look forward to visiting communities in 2024 and wish everyone a happy festive season.
Ian Blackford MP
As another year draws to a close, we take time to pause and think of those who are less
fortunate than ourselves.
It has been a desperately sad year for so many throughout the world, with conflicts continuing to rage in the Middle East and Ukraine. Closer to home, too many people are facing spiralling energy bills and an alarming cost of living crisis, forcing families and individuals to make many difficult choices.
Conjuring up feelings of joy this festive season will be hard for so many but wherever you are and whoever you are spending the festive season with, I wish you a safe and enjoyable time.
Please have fun, stay safe and take care of yourselves and your loved ones.
As always, special thanks must go to our emergency services and to all frontline workers – particularly those who will have to work over the festive period. We owe them all a huge debt of gratitude.
I would like to send my best wishes to all constituents and hope a healthy, happy future
awaits us all in 2024.
If you need assistance at this time, contact me and I will do my best to help you – or to put you in touch with the best organisation to do so. Please email me at:
ian.blackford.mp@parliament.uk or call one of my offices on 01349 866397/01397 700030.
Kilmallie Community Council
Kilmallie Community Council and Kilmallie Community Fridge and Garden, would like to thank all our volunteers, past and present, for all their hard work in our Community.
We would also like to thank all the other volunteers and volunteer groups in the area for all that they do including (but not exclusively, sorry if we miss anyone!), Kilmallie Community Centre, Kilmallie Community Company, Corpach in Colour, Kilmallie Christmas Lights Group and Friends of Kilmallie Church.
From ensuring food is not wasted, to delivering newsletters, from keeping our Community Centre running to keeping our woodlands accessible, from making our area look lovely to making sure we have a beautiful Christmas display, from keeping the local Church from closing, to litter picking, and everything in between.
You really do an amazing job and we are so grateful. Merry Christmas!
Rev Donald McCorkindale, Moderator, Lochaber Presbytery
The angels brought good news of great joy.
Christmas is a joyful time, but not for all. This Christmas we bring to mind continuing unrest and conflict in the land where God shared our humanity being born a babe in a manger.
There, as in war between Russia and Ukraine, and several places of conflict around the globe humanity seems to have missed the message of peace, hope, love and joy.
In our individual lives too, memories are stirred up of Christmases past shared with those we have loved and lost, or of times when youth and better health accompanied us.
Joy is not the experience of all. Sometimes it is said that the letters J.O.Y. remind us to put Jesus first, then Others and finally Yourself.
I’m not so sure that’s the right order. Maybe we need to make some ‘me time’ in order that we can better help and serve others and only then are we truly following in Jesus’ way.
This Christmas be gentle with yourself. Know that God loves the world and loves you. Know that for you God sent his son, Jesus.
May hope, peace, joy, love and all God’s good gifts be yours this Christmas time and always.
Kate Forbes MSP
As I reflect on the last 12 months, it has been something of a mixed year.
I am glad that plans for the new Belford hospital are moving forward, and I am also mightily relieved to see the MV Corran back in service after spending most of 2023 in dry dock.
Other issues are a work in progress – the future of the crossing, congestion at peak times around Fort William, and managing growing tourism numbers at Glenfinnan.
I give you my commitment I will continue to do my utmost as your constituency MSP in 2024.
All of us hope that Christmas will be a refreshing break from work and studies. For many though, it will be a time of sadness and fear – having lost a loved one this past year, or because of social isolation, employment or health worries.
It has never been more important for each of us to look out for our neighbour – whether that is a colleague, friend or stranger.
I am immensely impressed by local volunteer groups and businesses who have risen to that challenge across Lochaber.
More than ever before, our world needs peace in the face of chaos and uncertainty.
As we are buffeted by the winds of economic uncertainty, political turmoil and personal worries, there might not appear to be much cause for peace.
But Christmas reminds us of the birth of Jesus Christ, who came to give peace – peace with God, peace with each other and peace with ourselves.
I hope you know the peace which rises above the troubles of our world this Christmas. I wish everyone contentment this festive period and throughout the new year.
Flora McKee, President of Lochaber Rotary
I am grateful to everyone who has supported our projects and events this year.
Through your contributions, Rotary has been able to help so many good causes in Lochaber, many of which have been reported in the local press.
To name but just a few of these – the hugely successful 62-stall Christmas Festival and Cairngorm Reindeer Parade, the inter-schools young writer programme, the AM-AM golf tournament, funding for young Lucy Bloom’s musical tuition summer course at the School of Music in Manchester, underpinning funds for the Inverlochy Primary School Parents Council for their new trail run, supporting and manning the Lochaber Agricultural Show and donating the cost of a generator to Nevis Radio….. and a lot more.
This is all due to YOU so please keep watching this space in 2024 to see how we have continued to help others in the Lochaber community and remember that every single penny is re-donated to local and other worthy charities.
We have no overheads – all our members donate their time and skills for free!
And on the international stage, the Lochaber public have now raised and donated over
£60,000 towards the Rotary Programme for World-Wide Eradication of Polio and we
funded three shelter boxes for the earthquake-torn Middle East thanks partly to the
generosity of Rotarian Ian Nicol who sadly died earlier this year.
On behalf of Lochaber Rotary, I wish all our supporters a very merry Christmas and a
happy and healthy new year.
Please raise a glass to “Rotary and Peace the world over” and visit our website at www.lochaberrotary.org.uk, follow us on Facebook and, if you are interested in our work, join us at our weekly lunch meeting in the Alexandra Hotel.