DAVE THOMPSON MSP

Up until he was unceremoniously savaged by Macuilleam Himself in last week's West Highland Free Press over the Raasay sporting rights fiasco,   we had never heard of Dave Thompson MSP.  We now understand,  following Mr Thompson's bizarre letter in the West Highland Free Press today,  that he is,  indeed,  the nationalist member at Holyrood for Skye,  Lochaber and Badenoch.

From our reading of the correspondence,  it is obvious that Dave regards himself as the single-handed saviour of the Raasay Crofters saga.  As soon as he had heard of the lease of the sporting rights being granted to a South Ayrshire  syndicate,  he "immediately vigorously pursued it" with his political paymasters whom he "strongly encouraged" to talk to the South Ayrshire syndicate for the lease to be relinquished.  That  his political paymasters managed to return the lease to Raasay Crofters is "one of the marks of good government".

And not one solitary mention of why the fiasco happened in the first place or of the £9,000 of taxpayers' money it took to be corrected either!  Dave is very obviously a boy in the classic Angus Brendan mould where fiction becomes fact more often than not.  With a bit of luck,  Dave may,  just,  know where Raasay is,  actually,  situated.