Letters / MP claiming credit
Mr Carmichael is performing his old trick of “claiming credit for other people’s work”.
Until now he’s failed to attract criticism for this self-promotional deceptiveness, but it really is time someone challenged his behaviour.
So far this week he has claimed credit for the following:-
1) Apparently the LibDems have been responsible for giving parents £2,000 worth of tax free childcare. How exactly? Childcare is the responsibility of the Scottish government.
2) Cutting the cost of living, giving local people an £800 tax cut? What? I don’t know which local people he’s talking about.
The LibDems have worked hand in hand with the Tories to bring in changes to the tax and benefit system that has seen the poorest in our country, mainly working families, suffer the most.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies informs us that “those with children in the lowest 10% of earners lost £1,223 on average”.
The LibDems have presided over a period which has given rise to a new category of poverty – the working poor. A period that has seen the necessity for food banks in Shetland. Perhaps he’s talking about some of his rich pals?
3) A 5p decrease in fuel duty on petrol for rural places. I will give him some credit for remembering to include Shetland on the list as a rural place.
This “price decrease” lasted a whole week before it was swallowed up on the forecourt.
Mr Carmichael totally failed to understand the reason why rural places have higher prices at the pumps is mainly due to the high delivery charges and lack of competition, not the duty. Monopolies tend to charge what they think they can get away.
4) £10 million invested in renewable energy. A tiny sum in the scheme of things. Really nothing to brag about.
Why has he not mentioned the absolutely monumental deal the coalition have signed with EDF and China to build a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C in Somerset? Maybe because they’ve promised to pay EDF double the present day unit price for its electricity, when it’s finally built.
The UK government has effectively ploughed massive subsidies into nuclear power at the expense of support to renewables. SSE and Scottish Power have pulled out of offshore wind developments because of this and Pelamis in Orkney has gone into liquidation following investor uncertainty.
The Scottish government, thankfully, has rescued Pelamis’s intellectual property for Scotland’s future, by purchasing it.
5) Persuaded HM Treasury to resolve Shetland’s historic housing debt. Really? For 30 years successive Westminster governments ignored this matter until local Shetlander, Allison Duncan, buttonholed a minister at the airport.
It was only when the Scottish Cabinet visited Shetland and John Swinney initiated tri-partite talks that the long standing issued was resolved.
People who take credit for other people’s work do so because they have little of their own to claim credit for. I for one am looking forward to seeing what he claims credit for next.
Angela Sutherland
Weisdale
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