Letters / Pie in the sky
SNP candidate Danus Skene is quoted in an online Shetland Times article (http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2015/05/08/carmichael-reacts-after-narrow-election-win):
“The process I’m trying to describe about a new political dispensation up here is something I feel I’ve contributed to ….. and that’s what should be happening. But it’s not a question of ‘me, me, me’.”
Hmm, “a new political dispensation”? With respect, Danus, I’d say you hadn’t much to do with that.
You’ve barely uttered an unscripted word. Permitted to appear at a couple of hustings, you’ve also made pre-processed media statements, like some waxwork that comes to life, periodically, in an episode of ‘Dr Who’.
You and SNP Shetland have studiously avoided important local issues like rural school closures, a crisis precipitated by Scottish Government under-funding of Shetland’s schools via an arrangement they set up with COSLA (local authorities body). Despite the high profile involvement of SNP MSP Mike Mackenzie in support of parents, you ignored the schools and focused instead on tales of bogeymen, like “austerity” and “missiles on the Clyde”.
Danus, your silence on local issues is deafening.
How many years is that Shetland’s inter-island ferries have been missing out on Road Equivalent Tariff’ (RET) on the SNP’s watch? Seven…eight?
For five years NHS Shetland was “short-changed” by a net £2 million per year before the SNP finally admitted, weeks before the election, that Shetland had been under-funded versus its true need. NHS Shetland is £10 million out of pocket, shouldn’t that loss be restored?
In reality Shetland is many tens of millions out of pocket from seven years of SNP government and it isn’t because “every council faces cuts”. No one is complaining about that. It’s because island communities have much higher costs of living and providing services, a fact ignored by the SNP Scottish Government.
Thanks to Alistair Carmichael, Westminster now recognises these higher costs and has enshrined that recognition in departmental guidelines designed to “island-proof” new legislation.
Similar recognition by Holyrood should end controversies over under-funding, RET exclusion and the like, such issues should all be sorted out “fairly”, at the outset.
Alas, interested in Shetland only for themselves, the SNP have coveted the SIC’s oil reserves and are busy transferring them, by funding ‘sleight of hand’, to their Central Belt heartland.
Were they honest brokers, the isles and all their vast natural resources and strategic importance could be theirs forever but they’re too greedy. All they can see is the ‘main chance’.
In the best tradition of Scottish administrations since 1469, the SNP are ‘carpetbaggers’.
The “new dispensation”, Danus, has nothing to do with you and it flies in the face of the SNP’s abysmal track record. Something else has intervened, sufficiently powerful to compel many to vote against Shetland’s interests. What might that “something” be?
It’s the unparalleled ability of the spinners of SNP folklore yarns to create a Tolkien-esque, post-independence alternative reality; a “Promised Land”, from which “austerity” and poverty have been banished forever and there’s no need to fret over inconveniences like ‘making ends meet’ and having to service our national debt.
The “Revelations of St Alex” are then evangelised by legions of activists with a zeal that would be the envy of iconic Christian preacher Billy Graham. Voters troop forward to be “Saved”, stepping blithely through the ‘wardrobe’ into the magical land of ‘Blarneyia”
A new fervour, a “tsunami” of quasi-religious hysteria, has gripped the nation. Hysteria not seen since Ally’s army marched triumphantly to Argentina to watch “Scotland win the World Cup.” Enough said.
Disciples, united by the righteous bonhomie that the abolition of poverty and war forever conveys, dream of Alba as they sing of Wallace and of Bruce around the Stone of Scone, all the while chomping generous portions of “pie in the sky”.
John Tulloch
Lyndon
Arrochar
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