News / Wills defends his stance
A SHETLAND councillor has said he had immediately apologised for a Nazi salute in the council chamber and would fight any attempt by the council leadership to “conveniently” divert from the real issue, the local authority’s desperate financial crisis.
Lerwick south councillor Jonathan Wills admitted he had used the Nazi salute and had said ‘Jawohl, mein Führer!’ directed at political leader Josie Simpson during a council meeting held behind closed doors, last week.
The two had quarrelled over whether or not councillor Wills was allowed to speak to support his motion not to spend £200,000 on buying property to provide accommodation for visiting consultants.
The incident was leaked to the Sun newspaper, in which a council spokesman was quoted as saying: “Dr Wills respectfully withdrew his comments. That was the end of the matter.”
However, on Monday vice convener Simpson contacted the local press after councillor Wills had issued a statement the night before, accusing senior councillors of running council meetings in a “dictatorial manner”.
Mr Simpson said councillor Wills’ conduct had been of “very poor taste, to say the least” as it came “after we stood a minute’s silence for the victims of the atrocity in Norway by a rightwing extremist”.
He said that a statement issued by Dr Wills on Sunday gave “a very distorted view of the meeting”, and added that the code of conduct for councillors prevented him from discussing details of the meeting.
On Wednesday, councillor Wills said that he had immediately apologised for the Nazi gesture as his “sarcastic joke” had not been appreciated and understood.
He continued: “He (councillor Simpson) tried to silence me at the meeting, and now he tries to smear me. That is contemptible.
“I want to know what he is doing about the real issue, which is the imminent insolvency of Shetland Islands Council.
“It is a very useful diversion if you could smear your main critic as an associate, or sympathiser, with an insane mass murder in Norway. How very convenient.
“My question is this: What is the plan, Josie? How are you going to protect the jobs of the lower paid council workers? How are you going to protect their pay and their conditions? How are you going to do that, because we don’t know, and you are the leader?
“Where are they going to save the £25 million? And all of a sudden they have got £200,000 for a bunkhouse for consultants.”
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