Letters / Not fit for purpose?

I refer to the concerns continually being voiced in the local press and media about Shetland’s internal and external transport links (ferries/tunnels and associated matters). In a recent issue I counted about a dozen.

The acronym NFFP – Not Fit For Purpose springs to mind for local, Scottish and Westminster administrations, but Shetland is dependent upon them for its survival and indeed future existence.

Furthermore many other items are interconnected or dependent upon them and should be brought into the broad sweep of these NFFPs for appreciation, discussion and rectification.

Ferries, freight, passengers, ferry-crewing-wages-qualifications, housing, fishing, tunnels, funding, medical, population decline, tourism/tour operators, planning, agriculture, spaceports, jobs, Sullom Voe, H2 developments, VE, energy, finance, political miss-representation – local-Holyrood-Westminster.

Surely of deep concern to all, but constrained by a political and financial system NFFP. Efforts to shoe-horn Shetland into a Scottish or UK, one system fits all, are counter productive:

“We never get the government we voted for?”

Surely that has been the rallying cry by far away Edinburgh vis a vis Westminster for perhaps a century. Sympathise with them? But only because Shetland has never itself got the quality of government it needed or asked for, not just for the past decades during the re-established Scottish Parliament with its flag waving acolytes but for centuries, coping with depopulation whilst providing heat, power and man-power (immigration) south of Fair Isle, in addition to the present needless austerity, Brexit and under investment. Result: lack of proper transportation infrastructure, ferries NFFP and no tunnels.

Recently the electorate have dispatched the Westminster government, NFFP, but as Holyrood (pleading nae money, nae credit and ultra centralisation) is also NFFP, no improvement is likely.

Time therefore for Shetland to take back control and institute discussions (negotiations!) directly with the UK Crown – regarding its political and financial status firstly to seek amendments to the ZCC 1974 UK Act, as a step in the right direction if not autonomy. But in the meantime is the SIC taking proper advantage of the Isles Act of 2018, and if not why not? Are they in control, would Mr Grimond approve?

Cecil Robertson
Inverness