Letters / OIOF? No, it’s OIFO
Mike MacKenzie MSP’s interest in Shetland affairs has ‘come of late’ and happens to coincide with the twin anti-climaxes of the Our Islands Our Future (OIOF) negotiations announcements with Holyrood and Westminster.
Mr MacKenzie’s intervention in the SIC’s programme of rural school closures will, nonetheless, be warmly welcomed in Shetland’s rural communities.
He argues persuasively with experience of a similar council rural school closure debacle in Argyll, in 2010.
His argument about the potential for Shetland to create 2,900 new jobs from renewables, however, depends on the installation of the billion pound submarine cable required to link Shetland to the national grid, which will, presumably, be the outcome of OIOF and which will provide some interesting side effects:
• Shetland already has high employment levels so workers to fill the 2,900 jobs must be attracted to bring their families to live in the isles;
• to create this number of jobs from renewable energy installations will require the industrialisation of most, if not all, of Shetland;
• that will negate Mr MacKenzie’s optimism on the future of the isles’ tourism industry;
• five thousand plus new incoming voters will end SIC’s hopes for gaining autonomy by ‘salami slices’, a strategy already flawed due to the flat-out exploitation and depletion of Shetland’s oil resources, which will be long gone by the time any meaningful autonomy transpires.
I wrote recently that the OIOF outcome would be presented as ‘fete accomplis’, selling Shetlanders down the river in the context of saving Shetland’s rural schools and I see no reason to doubt that.
It would seem the Scottish and UK governments’ responses to OIOF have been along the lines of: “OIOF? Er.., if we may correct you, it’s ‘OIFO’!”
And as long as Shetlanders are prepared to ‘lie back and enjoy it’, that will continue.
John Tulloch
Lyndon
Arrochar
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