Political opportunism

With reference to Jean Urquhart’s call for Scottish Government funding for decommissioning.

It might come as a surprise to the MSP but Lerwick is already well on the way to establishing its claim for decommissioning work and it is being done without input from the taxpayer. 

For me her posturing smacks of political opportunism jumping on the bandwagon of an initiative already well established.  If the Scottish Government really wants to invest some money into Shetland they could do so elsewhere, how about parity on fuel prices with the mainland, or addressing our freight and travel costs?

I also find it a bit rich she suggests such aid when her own government stopped short on a miserly £25,000 when it came to funding a relief ship during the recent NorthLink dry-dock outage.  Of course that was a cynical attempt to get the Shetland Islands Council to help with funding, thereby creating a precedent for future pilfering of our oil funds.  This was luckily spotted by Orkney Islands Council and Lerwick Community Council, who helped in pulling our councillors back from the brink.

Yes folks, we undoubtedly do get a raw deal from Westminster but in my view we would get a much worse one from Holyrood in an independent Scotland, the SNP are not to be trusted.

Billy Fox
Prospective councillor
for Shetland South