Letters / Vital public service shouldn’t be provided by private company

I’m in total agreement with some of the letters in Shetland News recently regarding the lack of space on the NorthLink service. It’s clear that this year we’ve reached a crisis point with our connection to mainland Scotland, and emergency measures are called for to aid the situation.

When we came to live here four years ago, I was aware that getting a crossing back in peak times could be a problem, but not so much that it was insurmountable.

Then we had the pandemic, at which time they’d probably have let you sleep on the bridge if you’d wanted to. Now, with restrictions gone and Shetland being a bucket-list destination for Brits and others, getting a crossing South is like getting hold of a hen’s tooth.

Effectively you can’t do it in summer unless you can book three months in advance. It’s not helped by the (entirely understandable) unwillingness of NorthLink to sell bunks in shared cabins, nor by the ongoing wind farm work.

But at the end of the day, for islanders such as myself who can’t or won’t fly, it means that you either subject yourself to the medieval ‘torture by pod’, or you just don’t go.

So effectively, we’re marooned. Admittedly there are much worse places to be stuck than Shetland, but in 2022 this is a poor situation.

What’s the answer? Well, I’m no expert in maritime matters, but it seems we’re short of big ships here (I turned brain surgery down as a career option – too easy).

I watch the NorthLink go out every night and think ‘That’s impressive’. But then I see the 300 metre cruisers go out, dwarfing the ferries, and have a Crocodile Dundee moment – ‘Nah, that’s not a ship – That’s a ship!’.

I imagine these two vessels were suitable for our needs once, but times have changed, and we’re a tourism hotspot now, so it’s clear that extra capacity is needed.

Having said that, I’m sure that NorthLink are doing everything asked of them contractually. I’m equally sure that they’re overjoyed at selling 100 percent of their cabins every trip, and even making money out of the floor in the bars.

It does highlight why a vital public service such as this shouldn’t be provided by a private company.

But we are where we are, I suppose. In the interim, until replacement vessels can be found, or people’s interest moves on to Faroe or Pitcairn Island or somewhere, I wonder how hard it would be to source a third vessel of a similar size to the other two, and have it going up and down in the summer, but providing spaces only for people with Islander cards?

I think it would make an enormous difference to our lives, and I suspect it would still run at a profit. It’s probably totally impractical in the short term, but long term, something like this, or simply reserving islander space on the regular crossings, will have to become part of the contract of service.

Or we can all just sell the islands to a London-based hedge fund company and go and live in Aberdeen.

Rob Jones
Bressay