Recently in Infrastructure Category

First off a confession as this blog entry may be slightly skewed by my rose-tinted personal experience.

You see I was one of thousands of primary school children taught to ski at the Midlothian Snow Sports Centre - known as Hillend to everyone - in Midlothian so have some quite fond memories of it.

Learning to snowplow, trying to grab the button tow properly, hurtling down the main slope with carefree abandon and laughing hysterically as friends fell over and hit the mat are all part of my childhood.

I'm not alone in having fond memories as a Facebook campaign with more than 26,000 members is dedicated to saving the facility.

Hillend's future, or lack of, has been on the agenda for the past few months with Midlothian Council struggling to subsidise what is now a loss making venture.

Some positive news for businesses in Inverness and the surrounding area.

Highland Council has agreed to approve the construction of the ambitious Inverness Airport Business Park.

Infrastructure work for the first phase of this major development could get underway later this year with around 10 hectares being made available for office and other business use.

In the fullness of time the whole 250 hectares at the site will be developed with up to 350,000 square metres of business accommodation built including supporting facilities such as hotels, conferencing, shops, creches and other amenities.

News the government of Dubai was seeking a standstill on the debt repayments of its investment vehicle, Dubai World, is currently reverberating through the world's financial markets.

Dubai World has interests in all manner of industries globally and has a number of UK investments in property, leisure and ports, among others.

However it is being weighed down by its property arm Nakheel, which counts the iconic Palm Islands development in the Gulf among its assets.

Ripples from this reach all the way to Scotland as Leisurecorp - a division of Nakheel - bought Turnberry, host of the 2009 Open Golf Championship, for £55m last year.

A new Forth Road Bridge simply has to be built.

Political backbiting and recriminations need to be put to one side as this is a project which is vital to Scotland.

The current version is creaking at the seams under a weight of traffic it was never designed to cope with.

However wrangling over the funding, which is a not insignificant sum between £1.7bn and £2.3bn, for the new crossing is a worry.