NorthLink sailings to go ahead but passengers warned to expect delays

NorthLink has confirmed tonight’s (Saturday) northbound sailing to Lerwick will go ahead after it was placed under review yesterday.

Search launched for missing man believed to have gone swimming in South Mainland

Rescue teams will resume their search this morning for a missing man.

No injuries after car crashed into ditch and caught fire

The occupants of a car which crashed into a ditch, flipped onto its roof and later caught fire, managed to escape without serious injury, police said.

In this week’s Shetland Times

In today’s (Friday, 27th December) edition of The Shetland Times:

• EXCLUSIVE: Transport chiefs assessed 72 vessels for the Northern Isles ferry service.
• Winner of Times 2025 calendar competition is revealed.
• Althing organisers say debate is needed now more than ever.
• EXCLUSIVE: Tourist centre sale expected in new year.
• EXCLUSIVE: Council received £700k investment returns from Smyril Line.
• Gilbert Bain’s Santa Claus retires after 10 years of hospital rounds.
• EXCLUSIVE: School absence soars as families jet off to avoid holiday rush.
• Part one of our Review of the Year and Sports Review of the Year.
• Historian Jon Sandison looks back at Christmas 1914.

Santa’s last rounds at the Gilbert Bain

After more than a decade of ward rounds at the Gilbert Bain hospital, Santa Claus is hanging up the red robes, nylon beard and fuzzy, festive garters.

Every other day of the year, David Fryer is a consultant physician specialising in hormone disorders.

But for the past 10 Christmases Dr Fryer has come in, often off the clock, to lift the spirits of patients spending the holidays lain up in hospital.

Helped this year by a shortage of elves (the children of other consultants), Dr Fryer started his tour in the medical ward.

“You go round the patients, hand out a little gift and say ‘ho ho ho,'” Dr Fryer said. “It’s quite a fun morning.”

Then it’s off to the surgical ward and finished with a lap of the maternity unit, which was empty this year.

“I’m not sure the babies really remember that,” Dr Fryer admits, “and the mothers have a far better present than I can offer them.”

Slight and clean-shaven, Dr Fryer is, by his own admission, not of a traditional Father Christmas build.

But with the help of a hospital bed pillow strapped at the waist he has filled out the hospital’s Father Christmas outfit since he first moved to Shetland from Newcastle in 2013.

After hanging up his stethoscope for good in the new year, Dr Fryer said he’s looking forward to retiring back South to Shropshire.

And as for who will take up the reindeers’ reins?

“I don’t know what’s going to happen but I think finding a replacement for Santa is less of a problem than finding a replacement physician,” said Dr Fryer.

“I think Santa will be an easier ask.”

  •  Read more stories from a decade of Christmas rounds in this week’s edition of The Shetland Times, out Friday, 26th December.

£180k from National Lottery for Clan child support

The National Lottery has awarded Clan more than £180,000 to support children impacted by cancer.

The funds will be split between the Clan’s children and family services (CFS) wings in Shetland, Orkney, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray.

CFS support is not only for children fighting their own cancer diagnoses, but also those who are affected when parents or guardians fall ill.

2024 has been the busiest year from Clan since it launched its children’s service a decade ago.

“We work with around 300 children and young people every year, often through what can be the most difficult time of their life,” said Kay Johnston, head of cancer support services at Clan.

“We are incredibly grateful to National Lottery for this significant amount which will sustain this service for three years. As a commercially independent charity this funding is essential.”

Clan currently keep five dedicated staff for children’s support, one of whom is based in Shetland.

Small power cut hits South Mainland

A power cut has hit just over a dozen homes in Exnaboe and Scatness, near Sumburgh, this morning (Monday).

The outage was reported at to provider SSE a little before 11am and at time of writing engineers have yet to respond.

SSE said the outage was caused by a fault  in its overhead powerline network and that it was aiming to have power restored by 2:30pm.

“This is the most common type of fault we see,” SSE said.

Despite affecting a relatively large area, the energy company said it estimates only 14 homes have been affected. 

It also confirmed Sumburgh airport had not been affected.

“In most cases, our engineers are able to get your power back on by simply replacing a fuse at the local substation.”

Some Central Mainland residents experienced a brief cut in their heating on yesterday (Sunday) morning, after a “short power blip” took out heat pumps in Lerwick.

Strong winds throw ferry timetable and draw flood alert

Very strong wind and rain have disrupted ferry sailings and drawn a flood alert for the west of Shetland this weekend.

70 mile-an-hour gusts are expected for this afternoon (Saturday), which the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) say could combine with heavy rain to cause “minor coastal flooding”.

“Particularly at risk are causeways and low lying coastal roads exposed to the west,” the alert reads, as a result of “spray and wave overtopping caused by very strong winds” both Saturday and Sunday.

The alert is expected to lift on Monday.

NorthLink has cancelled both passenger and freight sailings for Saturday evening, and said delays can be expected on Sunday.

The northbound service for Lerwick will leave Aberdeen at 5pm and arrive up to two hours late.

The southbound ferry has been delayed indefinitely, “allowing conditions to improve”. It was due to depart at 7pm.

Sepa have issued alerts of possible flooding across the Highlands and Islands this weekend. Parts of Orkney and Ayrshire have seen more severe warnings that flooding is likely.

MSP accuses SNP of breaking food poverty promise

The SNP has “broken its promise” to tackle food insecurity, according to Labour Highlands and Islands MSP, Rhoda Grant.

The Shetland Foodbank this year distributed almost 140 food parcels on average each month. That figure has tripled since 2018, despite the SNP pledging to make access to food a legal right under Scots Law.

Across Scotland the percentage of adults worried they would run out of food has increased three quarters since 2017.

Ms Grant has been campaigning for almost four years to enshrine the right to food and introduced a bill in February 2024 which she says SNP colleagues have refused to back.

“The SNP has no excuse for opposing my Bill,” said Ms Grant.

“Access to food is a human right and I have been working to enshrine this in Scots law – but the SNP has broken its promise.”

In response the SNP said it was committed to ending food and all other types of poverty across Scotland.

“For a Labour MSP to accuse the SNP of breaking promises is astonishing given their party’s own actions over the past few months,” said SNP member for the Highlands and Islands, Emma Roddick.

“Unlike Labour, we are delivering the real change needed to tackle poverty,” Ms Roddick said, noting her party’s plans to reintroduce winter fuel payments and abolish the two-child cap on benefits in Scotland next year.

A Human Rights Bill, dropped last month from Holyrood’s 2024-25 legislative programme, would also have placed a statutory responsibility on the Scottish government to ensure access to food for Scots.

This year’s SNP manifesto does not mention legislating for a right to food, but does describe an “essentials guarantee” to ensure everyone can afford food, and blames rising prices on Brexit.

Last month Ms Grant took her concerns about food poverty to First Minister’s Questions, where she accused John Swinney of “missing the point”.

POLL: Is Die Hard a Christmas film? 

With Christmas just around the corner, a seasonal debate has come back into conversation.