Letters / Odin’s eye
The following dropped though my letterbox recently. Quite apart from its undoubted literary qualities, I thought it fair to share with your readers, as news reports of the Shetland Charitable Trust meeting last Thursday (Legal advices leaves charitable trust in disarray; SN, 19/02/15) apparently failed to mention the appointment of its new financial advisor.
“Odin’s Eye.
(An occasional commentary that sees all things Viking).
With spring almost here nesting birds will soon return to hill and cliff in the hope of a successful summer. However for moorland breeders of the Central Mainland, such as the Rain Gös and the Whaup, 2015 may well be their last peaceful summer. This is because the latest in a series of legal challenges by Sustainable Shetland opposing the building of the vast Viking Energy wind farm has been rejected.
In the view of Viking Energy this latest legal judgement gives them the green light to send their bulldozers, excavators and dump-trucks into Shetland’s hills. Of course they can’t start doing that just yet. Why? Well, because they have to be funded to do it by their owners. Shetland Charitable Trust owns 90% of Viking Energy so will have to raise their share of almost half of a project that will cost an unknown figure in excess of £700 million.
Those joined at the hip (or is it elsewhere?) twins, the Shetland Charitable Trust and Shetland Islands Council boast that they always act on the best possible legal and financial advice. This has allowed both of these bodies to make sound judgement on a whole range of ‘investments’ and ‘projects’ over the years.
With this in mind no one should have any qualms about the most recent meeting of Shetland Charitable Trust where five of the seven Councillor Trustees walked out of the meeting. These five ‘took the dorts’ on being told they couldn’t participate in parts of the meeting due to ‘conflict of interest’. Strange as it may seem, when equivalent conflict of interests arose on giving the Viking project the go-ahead councillors were allowed to vote in favour of the project.
We should also have no worries that in the questionably quorate meeting that followed the walkout a new financial advisor was appointed to advise on further ‘investment’ in Viking Energy. The new financial advisor is to be the Scottish merchant bank Noble Grossart, appointed for one year at a cost of £30,000 (+ VAT and expenses).
Recommendation of Noble Grossart came from Drew Ratter, ex-director of Viking Energy and now chair of the SCT Investment Committee. No questions were asked by Trustees on the suitability of this advisor or their remit. Remarkably for such an important decision neither of the two remaining councillor trustees, Mr Ratter and Dr. Wills, was physically present at the meeting. Trust rules are such that a telephone link to trustees is sufficient to qualify as their attendance at the meeting.
We can but hope for the sake of the moorland and residents of Central Mainland that Noble Grossart recommends that there be no further Charitable Trust money poured into the Viking wind farm project. Back in May 2013 Alan Bryce, Chairman of Viking Energy, advised Shetland Charitable Trust (behind closed doors) that the wind farm was not viable unless transmission charges were lowered and subsidies increased.
Since then, with the fall of energy prices, increased costs of any connector cable and uncertainty on falling levels of subsidy, the viability of the wind farm is even less likely. When Alan Bryce, chair of this community project, next comes to advise the Charitable Trust, the meeting should be open to the community and not just the few remaining eligible Trustees. If it is, Odin’s Eye will be there.”
Yours sincerely,
James Mackenzie
The Lea
Tresta
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