The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Claims are in need of a response
Sir, – Victor Clements (Duplicating things we already have, November 18) yet again professes to be an expert on a variety of subjects, but as always falls short of being anywhere near factually correct.
Where Victor obtains his information is a mystery.
He opens with multimillion-pound warships proposed for building on the Clyde and Rosyth “much more effectively than the Scottish Government version we currently have to endure”.
I have not heard that the Scottish Government is building warships so assume Victor is referring to the much maligned ferries.
What the all-knowing Victor conveniently forgets to tell us is that the frigate currently being built, HMS Glasgow, is almost two years behind schedule and an eyewatering £233 million over budget.
This does not look good for further ships.
At least we will eventually get ferries, unlike those the Conservative government gave £80 million for, only to find out the company had no ferries.
He goes on to mention that Indyref2 would be a risk to these contracts.
I assume he refers to the propaganda of Westminster parties claiming they could not have warships built in a foreign country.
This was most certainly not the position of the last Labour government. Yet we are expected to believe such claims, and at the same time believe the UK Government would want to continue to store its weapons of mass destruction in an independent Scotland – a foreign country!
No other country would do such a thing, and both the USA and Nato would never agree to this.
Victor states that much of the ongoing cost of Trident goes on wages of those employed in the Helensburgh area. Really?
It costs around £2.8 billion per year to maintain Trident. The Scottish Trades Union Conference estimates there are 550 people working on Trident in the area but even if we accept the inflated numbers from various politicians of 6,500 then according to Victor
these must be the highest paid employees in the UK, sharing out £2.8 billion.
“The crossrail project might be the trams project in Edinburgh”. Again, really Victor? Crossrail was signed off by Gordon Brown in 2007 and set to open 2018. It is four years behind schedule and another eyewatering £4 billion over budget.
The total cost of the trams debacle was estimated at around £1 billion, which
included the inquiry costing an estimated £18 million.
Victor again suffers from selective memory loss in failing to tell us it was the unionist parties at Holyrood who voted through the trams, and took money earmarked for upgrading the A9.
“Renovating the Palace of Westminster is expensive but is it proportionately more expensive than Holyrood”. There’s that selective memory loss again. Holyrood was commissioned by the Labour Party in Westminster at a cost of between £10 and £40 million. Eventually it cost £414 million. Yet another Labour debacle.
Victor should remember it is our tax money being spent and Holyrood truly was nothing more than a vanity project.
Finally Victor states that the Scottish benefits agency cost a reported £1 billion to set up.
Does the all-knowing Victor never carry out any research? If he did he would discover that the estimated cost is £651 million, and thus save embarrassing himself yet again.