Jim Sillars’ letter to The Times today
If the Scottish National Party elects John Swinney and, as hints indicate, again enters the “fantastical world view” of the Greens, as your leading article “Humza the Brief” accurately describes it, there will be a total collapse of electoral support. People in Scotland are “scunnered” (utterly fed up).
JIm Sillars – ‘Scotland needs a government anchored in reality’
They have had enough of the fixation on pronouns instead of learning in schools; of pretending men are women; of the absurdity of believing that a Highlander burning wood in a stove can save the planet while in China, India and elsewhere 1,400 coal-fired power stations are at full blast.
Scotland needs a government anchored in reality, one that is able to reverse the decline in education, not talking of but actually reforming the NHS, building homes and stimulating, not throttling, small businesses.
We need a leader to wipe clean the Sturgeon slate, someone intellectually equipped for the job, with a mind that can encompass other opinions, who is authentic and respected. I have just described Kate Forbes, pictured left.
Jim Sillars Former MP and deputy leader of the SNP; Edinburgh
Top picture: Humza Yousaf with Greens Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater.
Here is an example of Green nonsense when we say cash is tight.
Fifteen years ago hugely expensive new National Park headquarters were built in Balloch at a then cost of £6.3 million whereas a similar building elsewhere would have typically cost less than a third of that.
Indeed such was the cost of the building that Audit Scotland on audit of the National Parks accounts instructed that the asset value reported at £6.3 million was to be reduced to £2.0 million.
But no embarrassment the government passed off the £4.3 million hit in the accounts. Big money budgets no problem.
And now a mere fifteen years on the new headquarters lies empty as a new air source heat pump system at a cost of £1.2 million is installed.
Again no expense spared. But to quote the SG the new heating system will save “some 27 tonnes of Co2 a year which is the equivalent of a car doing 90,000 miles a year.
Now I don’t know about anyone else but £1.2 million upgrade on a new Uber expensive building to save the equivalent of one car doing 90k miles is just an outrage.
But that’s how the SG spend your tax money at a time when budgets are said to be tough.
Frankly the taxpayers and citizens of this country are just mugs to put up with this.
And now they’ve banned wood burning stoves – but guess who was big into wood burning stoves in properties around the National Park. Well don’t even think about that one cos the NP were big into that, and actually paid more to buy ethically sourced wood to burn. Check the annual reports and prepare to have a laugh.