Letters / Deliberate scaremongering
With reference to this Monday’s Shetland Charitable Trust meeting where Viking Energy Ltd intend to ask for a further £6.3m
I attended the (questionably quorate) meeting of the Charitable Trust in July of last year when the last £420,000 was asked for and granted.
The same tactic was used by Jeff Goddard on that occasion. The Charitable Trust share would be diluted and taken up by Scottish & Southern Energy and the four individual shareholders if SCT did not continue to invest. One trustee did refer to having a gun held to their heads!
This was an unacceptable level of pressure to put on trustees but disappointingly none of them pressed Mr Goddard to explain the level of detail in the agreement which could lead to such a dilution.
This coming Monday trustees will again be put under pressure but the stakes are much higher, invest or sell appears to be the message.
In my opinion this is deliberate scaremongering. If the partnership agreement is so poorly drawn up to allow this to happen, then just what did the council sign us up to, the public have a right to know. Bear in mind this agreement was signed by the council. When ownership was transferred to the SCT, was the agreement revisited? Presumably the needs of a charitable trust would be very different to a local authority?
The trustees need to realise that they own 90% of Viking Energy Ltd, it does not belong to Jeff Goddard, Bill Manson et al. Trustees have a direct responsibility to the trusts’ beneficiaries, the Shetland public.
I would ask trustees on Monday to defer this request for a further £6.3m until detail has been given of where the previous £3.42m has been spent. We know none has gone on the promised Health Impact Assessment, but just how much was spent on PR ‘learning journeys’ south and on salaries?
Deferring for a month or so to obtain this level of detail would not affect the SCT’s investment level. If it does, the agreement is to be questioned and the public should be allowed to see it.
If trustees defer I would also be confident they would have the backing of the majority of the Shetland public.
Billy Fox
Quarff
Prospective councillor
for Shetland South
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