LABOUR MSP Neil Bibby writes his latest column...
When Nicola Sturgeon’s old chief of staff needs three hundred grand to run a book festival that will promote her old boss’s book, no problem. The Scottish Government stumps up £300,000 of your cash.
When ministers from education to health to transport preside over falling standards in our schools, record waiting times for cancer treatment and a broken bus service they don’t need to worry. First Minister John Swinney rewards each of them with a £20,000 pay rise of your cash.
When the SNP’s ex chief executive faces legal costs because he has been charged with embezzlement, well it’s obvious isn’t it? He gets legal aid which YOU pay for.
But when Ardrossan traders suffer because the ferry to Brodick doesn’t run because of failures manufactured in Bute House, are they compensated for their losses? Forget it – there’s no Scottish Government cash for that.
No recompense from an administration entirely to blame for their losses. It is just not right, it is not just outrageous, it is not just unjust, it is far too typical of how the SNP mismanage our country.
We all know the story but it is so outrageous it needs to be told again.
The country that built the Queen Mary, the QE2, the Royal Yacht Britannia and innumerable world class warships from HMS Hood to our current aircraft carriers cannot build the ferries we need under the SNP.
The Glen Sannox and the Glen Rosa – with or without painted-on portholes – are too big to berth at Ardrossan Harbour. It takes a special type of incompetence to preside over the building of a ferry which is the wrong size to serve the route it was supposed to be designed for.
So the ferry service from Ardrossan to Brodick that has run for almost two hundred years will no longer run in the 21st century because this SNP government cannot meet needs which were met by Scottish craftsmen in the earliest part of the 19th century.
When the current ferry retires the service people in North Ayrshire need will have to move to Troon. No disrespect to our neighbours but that is a disaster for the North Ayrshire economy.
Ardrossan Harbour needs refurbishment as my colleague Katy Clark and Labour councillors have been arguing for years. If the SNP had bought the harbour when we suggested it the work could have been done by now. Instead we have waited for seven years and nothing has happened.
It is strange that the SNP found the cash to nationalise Prestwick Airport when it was in trouble but can’t find the money to nationalise and refurbish Ardrossan Harbour when we need it.
Maybe if failing ministers took a pay cut, not a pay rise, or public money was not used to fund events to promote an ex-First Minister’s book they would have the funds.
If Margaret Thatcher had scrapped the Ardrossan ferry there would have been protest marches galore with the SNP heaping blame on Westminster.
But the blame for this lies fair and square with Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney.
While they dole out our taxpayers’ cash to their mates and their ministers, North Ayrshire businesses suffer.
North Ayrshire and Scotland desperately need a new direction and an end of SNP cronyism funded with our cash.
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