Letters / Shetland deserves honesty
Danus Skene is quoted in your article (Pressure mounts on isles MP to resign; SN 22/5/15): “It is not the kind of politics the isles deserve to represent them and it’s not the kind of thing that would have been done by Jo Grimond or Jim Wallace.”
He’s right about this; it isn’t the kind of thing that would have been done by either Jo Grimond or Jim Wallace.
Nor would either of those gentlemen have stood for parliament, as Mr Skene did, dodging questions about the systematic under-funding of Shetland education by the SNP Scottish government/COSLA while his guide and mentor Mike MacKenzie MSP was busy, cynically, supporting the rural schools parents organisation CURE and lambasting the SIC over it when their only options were:
1. Close schools.
2. Cut other services.
3. Make up the £10 million per year from dwindling oil reserves.
This under-funding is nothing to do with Westminster cuts.
The SIC has cut education spending by nearly £10 million per year and they’re still £10 million short.
It is down to the way education funding is allocated on a “per pupil” basis, which favours big city councils and densely-populated areas at the expense of small rural communities. There is no way that can be conceived of as “fair”.
I supported Carmichael’s campaign and am bitterly disappointed to learn about this today and Mr Skene is again right that Shetland deserves better. Shetland deserves honesty from all her politicians.
It follows that should Mr Carmichael resign over what First Minister Sturgeon calls “false pretenses”, Danus Skene and Mike MacKenzie should go too, for the same reason, because they have all brought shame to Shetland politics.
Yes, Danus, we do need a “new political dispensation”, but not from the SNP; rather from a new, pro-Shetland political party that can hold both the SNP Scottish government and the SIC to account.
John Tulloch
Arrochar
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