Disenfranchised or what?

We were once told, by elected councillors, that the Viking Energy project wouldn’t go ahead unless it had the consent of the “community”.

The only community meeting about it I’ve attended was in the Dunrossness Hall, where most folk were against it. Now we are told that, after a prolonged campaign of newspaper adverts and inserts by Viking Energy, paid for by us but not agreed to by us, it’s going to cost too much to ask our opinion again on a revision which apparently does not materially alter the original application. Disenfranchised, or what?

Could it be that the environmental-friendliness of this revised addendum is so full of holes that it is only held aloft by hot air, smoke and mirrors, and an assumption of public weariness?

To cap it all, we are told that the final decision will be made in Edinburgh anyway, as if Shetland Islands Council had had nothing to do with it, and that as a statutory consultee the local authority’s views will have to be considered by ministers! Now, that’ll be interesting, because although they represent us, councillors apparently don’t want to listen to us any more.

I laughed at the novel Noost when I first came to live here, but life was far simpler then. If somebody wanted to try writing Paet, the scope is massive.

Martin Heubeck
Dunrossness.