We are not too old to pass on our skills and know-how
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
COLUMN: Stone's Throw by Jamie Stone
"I may be corrected, but I fancy I am the only person in this place who has worked in an oil fabrication yard".
So I opened a short contribution of mine, during a debate in Westminster last Wednesday. As I spoke, the thought did occur to me that there might be somebody else in the House of Commons who had once worked in somewhere like Kishorn or Nigg. But when I thought again, I reminded myself that an astonishingly high number of MPs in all parties have never really done any job that wasn't in or around politics. Certainly no one in the Chamber challenged my assertion.
I went on to make the point that when I worked in the Nigg yard (complete with hard hat and steel toe-capped boots), I was one of as many as 5,000 people. In the 1980s, that represented an awful lot of families in Sutherland and Ross-shire- for whom the work was a godsend.
'"We have the skills still, but they are ageing skills and the skills are going. If we miss the opportunity to build offshore floating wind structures in Scotland, we will be failing the Scottish people."
This is something I feel very strongly about. Yeah, sure, I worked there myself, but when I see all those yellow platforms for wind turbines stacked up in the yard, I wonder to myself, why on Earth are they being made in Japan?
Back then, those 5, 000 of us built the Conoco TLP all the way from flat steel plates to the finished product - all made in Scotland.
As I said to my fellow MPs, the welders, fitters and riggers, and everyone else who was involved, are mostly still around. However, they (like me) are getting on - and yet we are not too old to pass on the skills and know-how.
You see, once that knowledge of how to make things in our country is gone, then sadly it is pretty much gone forever.
So that was why I made the plea in the Commons. Both the UK and Scottish Governments should work together right now to make sure that we get cracking with our welding torches, before it is too late!
Sure, it is great to see a level of activity in the Nigg yard today, but I long for the clang of metal on metal and the flash of acetylene. Call me a romantic, but those days of my youth still loom large in my memory. We did it then, and we can do it now!
Later that day, I came away wondering if my words had had any effect.
Most of the debate seemed to be dominated by the pros and cons of Scottish independence - all of which, struck me as being so much hot air compared to the huge importance of there being high-quality job opportunities in the Highlands for our children, and our children's children.
I married and brought up a family in Tain because of the Nigg yard, or at least until oil moved me to Aberdeen.
It's a personal thing - and I'm still prepared to bet that I really am the only elected person in Westminster who did what I did.
Jamie Stone is the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.
