It’s just opinion

The serendipity with which articles appear together is sometimes breathtaking. In Thursday’s issue (18 August), Michael Kelly climbs atop his Opinion soapbox to deride our First Minister and most Scots, while overleaf, Professor Gavin McCrone provides him with a swingeing answer.

It is never hard to distinguish Mr Kelly’s column from a ray of sunshine, yet I support your broad-minded principle that he should be given a platform, if only to be hoisted by his own petard, as he was so beautifully this week.

Many support our First Minister’s clarification of what the BBC was slow to do: that this month’s riots were in English cities only and that visitors to Scotland in this peak season should not change plans.

As we Scots promptly offered and supplied several hundred police to assist hard-pressed forces there, Mr Kelly’s accusation of us being “narrow, parochial and chauvinistic” strike me as narrow and parochial itself.

But, more importantly, he decries the proposal to lower corporation tax in Scotland as an attempt to “beggar thy neighbour”. Leaving aside that this is the root of international competition, Prof McCrone’s nearby article praises Shetland for ensuring a share in a properly planned oil terminal at Sullom Voe.

The £210 million trust now spends £11m per year extra across Shetland. Mr Kelly, in refuting our “enslavement, ill-treatment or bleeding dry”, ignores our chance to have amassed such an oil fund, but on a national level, like Norway’s £350 billion.

As Prof McCrone points out, “Britain’s tax revenues have amounted to £158.9bn from first oil and gas production until 2009-10.”

By allowing the UK to live beyond its means, every chancellor from Geoffrey Howe to George Osborne squandered that chance.

As 90 per cent of UK oil is Scottish, Scots have every right to be angry at loss of their birthright and Mr Kelly would be better, in future, choosing topics based on his knowledge, rather than his prejudice.

David S Berry

Balderstone’s Wynd

North Berwick