Synthetic fury over fuel card withdrawals
According to The Gazette, Angus MacNeil MP is furious about BP withrdrawing the fuel cards from businesses in the islands and has written to the Chancellor demanding that he bring pressure to bear on the company.
Yes, withdrawal of the cards would be a serious blow, but let's look at the knee-jerk reaction from our occasional MP....
Writing to the Chancellor: WTF use is that? He'll write back to say that he cannot interfere with commerical business decisions. MacNeil will blame Labour, Labour will refute any invovlement.
Contacting BP: Not on the agenda. Why not? They are the only ones who can change the policy.*
Getting the Scottish Government involved: Not on the agenda either. Could this be because MacNeil is more interested in blaming Labour than actually achieving anything. cf MacNeil's actions over the rocket range
* Actually, the cards are provided by Fuel Card Services Ltd, who are a completely separate business, and are an agent of BP, whose existence is predicated upon getting a cut of the BP turnover by driving large volumes through the cards and through the BP Stations.
As the most likely companies to have to deal with the loss of discount are the local hauliers who have failed to pass on the benefits of RET, is there not a wider issue here about lack of joined up policies that between Edinburgh and London that needs to be sorted before blame is spayed everywhere, regardless.
Yes, withdrawal of the cards would be a serious blow, but let's look at the knee-jerk reaction from our occasional MP....
Writing to the Chancellor: WTF use is that? He'll write back to say that he cannot interfere with commerical business decisions. MacNeil will blame Labour, Labour will refute any invovlement.
Contacting BP: Not on the agenda. Why not? They are the only ones who can change the policy.*Getting the Scottish Government involved: Not on the agenda either. Could this be because MacNeil is more interested in blaming Labour than actually achieving anything. cf MacNeil's actions over the rocket range
* Actually, the cards are provided by Fuel Card Services Ltd, who are a completely separate business, and are an agent of BP, whose existence is predicated upon getting a cut of the BP turnover by driving large volumes through the cards and through the BP Stations.
As the most likely companies to have to deal with the loss of discount are the local hauliers who have failed to pass on the benefits of RET, is there not a wider issue here about lack of joined up policies that between Edinburgh and London that needs to be sorted before blame is spayed everywhere, regardless.
5 comments:
Careful with the facts the letters are FROM BP
Letters from BP, because they are the owners of the relevant pumps.
Still F'all to do with Al Darling.
Yet again Macneil goes of on a tangent. He may not be the most experienced politician but he should have an experienced 'back room' staff of sufficient worldly experience that will rein him in and point him in the right direction on how to tackle issues like this. This is another fine example of how amateurish/laughable the whole SNP administration is, particularly at a local level.
Re - 5.28 pm
I must confess I resent your message.
Angus most certainly does have an 'experienced backroom staff' who point him in 'the right direction' to 'tackle issues like this'.
We're the ones who write sophisticated messages like 'is that you a' Challum Iain' every time someone writes in a message criticising our favourite Caped Crusader' on this site.
We know it makes sense. After all, it's a lot easier than putting forward a logical argument.
'was that you a' Challum Iain' Ha, ha.
The letters are not sophisticated and very often miss the point. Perhaps this relates to certain people there failing to grasp the points/ issues.
There seems to be a distinct lack of awareness about the ins and outs of various issues, how they actually work etc. Some are that complicated, that perhaps is not that surprising.
More oftn than not, there is a defensiveness of policy issues and the real issues continue unaltered.
This is because there is a failure to challenge the mandarins at the Scottish Government and ensure that policies are delivered which are not off the shelf mainland policies but ones specifically designed to tackle the issues we face here.
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