At time of writing I’m waiting to finalise details of a meeting with the new owners of Silberline in Leven after the shock announcement that they intend to close the factory with the likely loss of around 100 local jobs. It’s only a few months since their parent company was taken over and at that time it was presented as a good news story. Workers and their families have the right to know whether it had already been decided that they were to lose their jobs.
The Public Accounts Committee have been quizzing top civil servants about the UK Government’s plans to decarbonise all domestic heating, a big step towards delivering Net Zero. I took the chance to ask what’s happened to the series of hydrogen heating pilot schemes they promised. H100 in Methil has given us the chance to be genuine world leaders in this technology but the UK Government then cancelled two further pilots in England and the much bigger “hydrogen towns” project seems to be lost somewhere in the long grass. This is an essential project as it will also develop the means of using hydrogen in industrial scale heating. There are some who doubt whether hydrogen will be the best option for most domestic properties in the UK but even if they’re proved right it still has massive potential for industrial heating and we’ve still got the chance to make Levenmouth a world centre of excellence in this and other green energy technologies.
Scotland’s victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal are being left out of the legislation to allow them to qualify for the compensation scheme for those who were wrongly convicted of fraud or embezzlement. The original legislation only applied in England and Wales. The Tories accepted a request from Northern Ireland MPs to extend it to Northern Ireland but then refused to extend it to Scotland. Scotland’s Tory MPs followed orders and voted against. Labour, Lib Dems and Alba all abstained. The Scottish Parliament will be able to bring in similar legislation for Scotland but not until after the Bill for the other UK countries has been through the whole parliamentary process. The petty actions of the other parties means our postmasters and mistresses will wait even longer for the justice they’ve already been denied for years.
At the time of writing it looks as though John Swinney will be the new SNP leader and subsequently our First Minister. John is someone I hold in the highest regard both inside and outside of politics. Although the Tory / Labour “Better Together” coalition has already started a vile campaign of character assassination against him they all know that in private he’s recognised as one of the most trustworthy and competent politicians in Scotland. He’s the best person to heal the undeniable divisions in the SNP and get the whole Yes movement back to working together for Independence. That’s why the Tories and their Labour allies are so desperate to discredit him.