Letters / History repeating itself?

Over thousands of years, Shetland has endured invasions and victimisation by people from many overseas nations. Monuments of their rule stand all around Shetland, from the time of the Vikings to the present day.

One of the largest monuments of the victimisation of the Shetland people, the Scalloway Castle, presently stands in ruin overlooking the Scalloway harbour, from a past time of governance from Edinburgh.

And now in the modern era of governance from Edinburgh, are we to witness history repeating itself?

Foreign owned fleets of fishing vessels have fished these Shetland waters for hundreds of years; we thought with Brexit; that this would come to an end; but no!

It is now even worse.

Foreign fleets in the past only took the fish and went, leaving room for our own fishermen to try to scrape a living from what was left.

Now foreign fishing fleets are being allowed to take over the seabed and the fish, preventing our fishermen from access to the fishing grounds around our own shores.

And now, as if this wasn’t bad enough; our own Scottish Government are in the process of selling off our country’s seabed to wind farm developers, in an act as tyrannical as the land clearances of past Scottish rule; that saw land claimed and people cleared off their family crofts, to be replaced by sheep.

Now our country’s fishermen are to be cleared off our traditional fishing grounds, to be replaced by offshore wind farms.

This will prevent our fishermen access to enormous swathes of traditional fishing grounds.

The wind farms are also proposed to be built on important nursery grounds, with no thought as to how the infrasound from the wind turbines; or the radiation from the spaghetti of power cables to link them up, will affect the fish eggs or the immature fish fry when the eggs hatch.

The fishing industry is one of our countries important sources of food and has been one of the largest providers to the Shetland economy for hundreds if not thousands of years, now to be decimated by an uncaring government in Edinburgh; all in the name of saving the planet we are told, but the resulting profit from the sale of our country’s fishing grounds; may also be an important consideration for those few in control in Edinburgh.

William Polson,
(On behalf of the Whalsay Community Council.)