Category: Shetland Times Column
11 May 2012
I’ve seen the future and they were great. Vair played for the third time in public on Saturday at the Shetland Folk Festival concert at Clickimin. Johnny Polson, Lewie Peterson,Ryan Couper and Erik Peterson are Shetland’s next musical export. Their performance had Clickimin buzzing and was all the stronger for being sandwiched between J.P. Cormier [...]
27 April 2012
Just when I start to think nothing goes on in politics we have this kind of week. A Shetlander up to his arms in a wet lambing this week observed that a few protagonists in Edinburgh and London should be made to help clean out a few mucky pens. Difficult to argue with that! It [...]
13 April 2012
There was plenty of election chat on the Bressay ferry this week. The issue that the Council candidates will have to deal with is ferry fares. The Council have just put them up by an inflation busting 5%. That is on top of all the other above inflation increases that Islanders have been hit by [...]
30 March 2012
There was no doubt about it. Sumburgh Airport’s webcam on a mobile phone proved conclusively that an attempted landing there would have been foolhardy in the extreme. So on Saturday the plane north diverted to Orkney and the certainty of the boat later that night.The Loganair staff at Kirkwall were quite excellent. Clear announcements were [...]
2 March 2012
Coronary heart disease kills 8000 people in Scotland every year. It is the second highest cause of death after cancer. As a result of the huge efforts of medical staff the number of deaths has fallen by 40% over the past 10 years. Yet the rates of heart disease in Scotland are the highest in [...]
17 February 2012
Most if not all crofters across Shetland have a very good idea about the boundaries of their croft. For some years now the Department of Agriculture in Edinburgh has provided Ordnance Survey maps to each crofter so that they can confirm their boundaries. Changes that occur such as the disposal of a quarter acre for [...]
3 February 2012
What a splendid week. As Guizer Jarl David Nicolson rightly said in the Town Hall on Tuesday Up Helly Aa brings a variety of emotions to bear but it’s place in cementing a very positive image of the Islands across the globe cannot be underestimated. The Promote Shetland webcams complete with Davie Gardner running commentary [...]
20 January 2012
Ending the dispute between Government and ambulance drivers was badly needed so well done to those involved. We all depend on the blue light emergency services across Shetland and the local ambulance crews are people we tend to take for granted until the day dawns when they are desperately needed. I listened carefully therefore to [...]
6 January 2012
Cameron had
23 December 2011
A wise Bressay sage held forth outside the shop the other week on the subject of learning. You never stop learning was his basic contention whether on animal husbandry, the ups and downs of the Arab Spring or the challenges of being the perfect husband. In today’s world this can loosely be interpreted as lifelong [...]