A question. How much money would it take for you to move to one of the Scottish islands? £1,000? £1,500? £50,000? I ask because a cash incentive is one of the ideas being considered to tackle the problem of island depopulation and it makes you think doesn’t it? Presumably it’s based on the age-old principle that everyone has their price. So what’s yours?

Personally, I’m not entirely convinced the idea would work for most people. Sure, money is a big factor in where you live, but being happy in a place depends on a lot of other things, including your job, how much you get involved in the community, and so on. Would you move somewhere because you were paid to? And when the money was gone, wouldn’t you just move away again?

The latest people to suggest the incentives, the authors of a new report for the Scottish Government, say a similar idea has worked quite well in Japan, and that’s fine. However, the SNP has also just dropped the idea of a £50,000 grant to encourage people to move to the islands because a consultation with islanders found that they didn’t think it was the right way forward. They think there are other priorities.

Some of those priorities are going to be discussed this week, at the first Islands Forum, on Orkney. Chaired by Nadhim Zahawi, the UK minister for intergovernmental relations, the meeting on Wednesday will be attended by representatives from across the land, including Orkney and Shetland, the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles, and the subject of the first get-together will be net zero. It strikes me as a very good idea indeed.

Sadly, not everyone thinks this way which brings me, with a heavy heart, to Ariane Burgess, the Scottish Greens MSP for Highlands and Islands. According to Ms Burgess, the island forum is a cynical drawing together of disparate groups and an attempt by the Tories to prove the Union is still relevant. She also said the government had chosen Orkney to “launch a land grab for the spoils of Scotland’s greener economic future”.

Ms Burgess didn’t not stop there either, I’m afraid. “If this new minister really wanted to give our islands a stronger voice as he claims,” she went on, “then he would persuade the PM and his colleagues to drop their opposition to Scotland holding a referendum on independence next year.” Ah yes: a referendum.

Maybe we should be generous here and accept Ms Burgess’s intervention for what it is: an attempt by one party to promote its agenda by exploiting the actions of another and fair enough, everyone does it. But actually, the forum, and the issues around it, are too important to be mis-characterised and mis-used. I also fear Ms Burgess’s remarks are a sign not only of the way some nationalists think, but the fact that some politicians – and remember the Greens are actually in government – have still not woken up to the island dimension of Scottish politics.

So here’s what’s actually going on with the islands forum. It has not been imposed on Orkney by the UK Government – far from it: the idea of the islands working together came from the islanders themselves, notably the leader of Orkney Council James Stockan. And it makes sense. For years, the island councils would approach the UK Government about reserved matters using the Scottish Government as a conduit but they got frustrated with a lack of progress, particularly on issues such as digital and broadband, and so now they’re trying the direct approach.

Island communities working together in this way is also a good idea – all the UK islands used to do it as part of the EU before Brexit and they did it because islands face similar kinds of issues – infrastructure, travel, connectivity, and so on. Also, policies that work on the mainland will not necessarily work on the islands. Sadly, Ms Burgess does not seem to get this: the island forum, she said, was a drawing together of “disparate groups”. Eh? Perhaps she’s just annoyed at Orkney working with Anglesey and the Isle of Wight within the UK and if so, that’s a pity.

The reasons the islands are doing it this way are pretty simple. Firstly, many of the issues that affect them the most – energy, aviation, digital – are reserved, so it makes sense for UK ministers and the islands to work together directly to get them sorted. They’re also working with the reality of where we are. Ms Burgess and her friends can campaign for independence all they like, that’s fine, but in the meantime, can’t we work out how to most effectively help the islands? The good news is the Scottish minister Richard Lochhead is going to the forum. Good for him.

The second reason many on the islands feel the forum is needed is to do with power, specifically where it should lie in Scotland. The island councils work with the islands minister Mairi Gougeon in a forum of their own, but not only are councils exasperated by the bureaucracy, they’re frustrated at the fact that decision-making about the islands is happening more and more in Edinburgh. Ms Burgess talks about a land grab, but what we have here really is a power grab by the Scottish Government.

The Government has been enacting this grab in a number of ways, some very sneaky indeed. Firstly, they’ve passed on a disproportionate share of recent cuts to local government and where there have been some increases, they’re not enough to meet the actual needs. What they’ve also done – and this is the really sneaky bit – is they’ve massively increased the list of government priorities councils have to deliver – in other words, council autonomy is being undermined because there’s an increasing proportion of their cash that’s controlled by national government. As I say: power grab.

It is all of this, and more, that the island councils want to sort so who can blame them for setting up a forum that seeks to give them a direct say over many of the issues that affect them. What Orkney and Shetland really want is a proper devolution of powers – on social care for example – so they can fix their own priorities and spend the money where it’s really needed. The Scottish Government likes to talk about fixing the “postcode lottery” but the idea is nonsense when it comes to the islands. They want different priorities in different postcodes – that’s the point.

Unfortunately, I’m not confident we’re going to get a change of thinking, particularly if Ariane Burgess’s comments are reflected in the thinking of the Scottish Government. In the meantime, the islands must do what they have to do to be heard, and the forum can hopefully be part of that. Ms Burgess says that if Nadhim Zahawi really wanted to give the islands a stronger voice, he and his colleagues would permit an independence referendum next year. OK. That’s what you think. But I have a question for nationalist politicians who believe in a greater say: what exactly is your problem with islanders having a direct voice of their own?

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