It’s been a week of ups and downs in the sporting world.

As a football supporter the last minute disappointment for the Scotland team against world champions Italy was harsh for Alex McLeish’s men who performed so well in the toughest of qualifying groups. Sadly, it’s all over for Scotland in Euro 2008.

But on a brighter note the announcement that the Commonwealth Games is coming to Glasgow in 2014 has been met with great enthusiasm across Scotland.

The bid was very athlete centred and it is promising to think that on the back of the preparations for the Games a generation of kids will be encouraged to take part in sport.

We will surely benefit in the Highlands at the time of the games with extra visitors – but I also hope we can gear up our efforts in supporting training and local athletes and their clubs.

In Parliament this week the news has been dominated by the first SNP government budget.

It’s interesting to see the SNP face the dilemmas of governance and it is a lesson to all opposition parties to be careful what you promise you can do when in power because the trust of the electorate can be easily lost when you haven’t done your sums properly.

One of my main concern over the budget is that the Scottish Government is trying to strike a deal with local councils to offer them more ‘responsibility’ – which in principle is fine unless the responsibility carries with it the ‘responsibility’ to deliver promises made on class sizes, frozen council tax and more police officers and the subsequent blame if that doesn’t happen.

One of the issues close to my heart when I was an MP was the GP out of hours service.

Again, we find a NHS issue in the local headlines.

A number of residents have contacted me with their worries over the provision of ambulance services in Kingussie and Aviemore. I took part in a programme on Speysound recently with Helen Cook where I added my concerns over the trial of the 24/7 service based in Aviemore.

Having raised local people’s concerns with them I have received a letter from the Scottish Ambulance service.

They are keen to emphasise that the service is designed to eliminate the reliance on on-call working over night.

They have agreed to share monthly demand and performance information and have guaranteed to stop the trial if there is a reduction in the provision.

We will all be watching the situation closely until the next community meeting in February.