Letters / Well done, boys!
Speaking to The Shetland Times about Mike MacKenzie MSP’s intervention in the SIC’s school closure programme, political leader Gary Robinson appears to confirm the abject failure of Our Islands, Our Future (OIOF) to negotiate anything of lasting value for the isles (Robinson reacts against MSP’s claims; ST 17/5/14).
Mr Robinson reportedly says the SIC is expecting reduced government grants over the next few years, there’s an achievement!
Four months to go until the “once in a lifetime opportunity” referred to by Messrs Bell and Robinson expires with the Scottish independence referendum and to “the creatures outside” it appears that not a single tangible gain for the isles has been agreed.
Apart, that is, from the announcement of a government “consultation” on the provision of a submarine cable to facilitate that most popular of projects (not!), Viking Energy.
Of course, given that councillors in SIC and Shetland Charitable Trust have been falling over themselves to get a submarine cable, they doubtless consider this a major achievement, a triumph for their negotiating skills.
Never mind that Westminster and Holyrood are both desperate to export industrial scale renewable energy to remote locations, the SIC set out to get a cable and after some excruciatingly tough negotiations in which they have been forced to set aside all notions of increased autonomy – and against great odds – they have succeeded.
Well done, boys!
And Shetland has really been put on the political map of Scotland, the plaudits are pouring in from every quarter. Malcolm Bell has been appointed inaugural vice president of the newly-formed Scottish Provost Association and Gary Robinson shares the Glasgow Herald’s Local Politician of the Year award with his Orkney and Eilean Siar OIOF confederates.
“No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” (George Orwell, Animal Farm).
John Tulloch
Lyndon
Arrochar
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