Papa Stour

[unlinkedstudent]

I can't help but wonder that given that some on here seem to think that Papa Stour should not have the school opened or that SIC should not be supporting a small community - imagine what would happen if the Scottish Government and Westminster adopted the same attitude towards Shetland.

[Kavi Ugl]

paulb, who are you calling "dumb little Shetlanders"?.

 

I firmly believe that Shetland would have been and would still be infinately better off without Scotland, England, the UK as a whole and Europe.

 

Give us our oil and fishing and we'll soon see who's £100 million short per year....

 

What's sad is that all the people who are living off the back of Shetland just now won't be here when the future generations of Shetlanders have to deal with the mass unemployment and mass exodus that will rock these islands when our fishermen have finally been driven off our own seas and the last drop of oil has been sucked from under our feet and all the Charitable Trust money has been drained by the care homes and sports centres.

 

daveh, you have the comfort of being retired so it's not you who will have to face and deal with these problems.

 

You may mock Stuart Hill's project vis Forewick but he is actually right - it's just that we've been living off years of oil prosperity and are too gormless to see beyond the horizon and that the sand is running out.

[paulb]

paulb, who are you calling "dumb little Shetlanders"?.

 

I firmly believe that Shetland would have been and would still be infinately better off without Scotland, England, the UK as a whole and Europe.

 

Give us our oil and fishing and we'll soon see who's £100 million short per year....

 

What's sad is that all the people who are living off the back of Shetland just now won't be here when the future generations of Shetlanders have to deal with the mass unemployment and mass exodus that will rock these islands when our fishermen have finally been driven off our own seas and the last drop of oil has been sucked from under our feet and all the Charitable Trust money has been drained by the care homes and sports centres.

 

daveh, you have the comfort of being retired so it's not you who will have to face and deal with these problems.

 

You may mock Stuart Hill's project vis Forewick but he is actually right - it's just that we've been living off years of oil prosperity and are too gormless to see beyond the horizon and that the sand is running out.

my english is rubbish it should have read

and if were talking about dumb. little shetlanders (the mentality not the people) believing that they could survive better alone is very dumb.

 

people are people you don't need to be born here to love shetland or want it to work. it gets very tiring being told that we are free loading of the hard working ethnic shetlander.

 

hope that clears that up.

[daveh]

ku - you say that Shetland could be given the oil. If it wasn't for the exploration of companies from outside of Shetland, the oil would have remained undetected. Even the SIC, with its history of throwing money away, wouldn't have sanctioned many millions of pounds being spent with the possibility of no return for the money.

 

I studied hard, worked long hours and worked bloody hard in my working life so have absolutely no guilt at seeking to have a comfortable retirement now that my time has come. My wife and I could have moved anywhere in the world but chose to come north to Shetland. We had holidayed here previously several times, spending money and gone home afterwards, but had holidayed elsewhere too. It was Shetland that we chose, not for any care home solution (if we were to need one) nor because there are more people willing to clean my bum more happily should I ever need to avail myself of such service. We didn't move here because it was oil-rich nor because we wanted to have a child educated on a remote island. Believe it or not, we moved here because we fell in love with the islands and the locals were always so welcoming towards us; up until now, anyway.

As for the suggestion that I have mocked Stuart Hill's project; you are totally wrong there. I live not far from Stuart, know him well and was, in fact, chatting with him briefly this afternoon in the local hall. He and I have spoken about his project and I have praised him for his efforts. My sister, who came to visit us and spent money here also, actually purchased one of Stuart's "Friends of Forvik" t-shirts. Stuart, like my wife and I, has embraced all things Shetland since we have come here. My wife and I regularly bore our friends and relatives with how wonderful the islands are and we have had several groups visiting us in the last 30 months and some more coming next year. They will be all be bringing spending money with them and the local economy will benefit from them being here.

 

You and the rest of Shetland, will, I feel benefit from having my wife and I in your midst. On our part, being widely travelled, I cannot think of anywhere else on this planet that I would rather be. Is that bad? Should I feel guilty for loving this place so much?

[Kavi Ugl]

paulb, ok no worries:).

 

daveh, it is very refreshing to hear your reasons for moving here and that you and your wife seem to embrace Shetland. It's also nice to hear of people moving here for sincere reasons. And for the record I'd rather live next door to you than some drugy, loud and jobless native Shetlander!(and yes, I can think of one or two!).

 

Personally, I'd say that Shetland could easily have developed an oil industry on its own just as the Faroe Islands are doing under home rule. Indeed, you only have to look at how the councillors of that era took on both the oil companies and Westminster for a fairer share of the crumbs (and won)to see that within itself Shetland has the ability to take care of itself.

 

It just makes me wonder what we could do if we had sovereign control of our lands and seas.....

 

Peace.

 

[Guest Anonymous]

whilst mentioning Papa Stour again, it brings to mind that there might be another nearby island, perhaps close to Forewick Holm, that you could purchase and declare independence

why should i have to buy an island to declare indipendance. this is already my islands my ancestors have been here fo longer than most, your statement is typical of the arrogance encountered by shetland when dealing with soothmoothers. who should i buy back my land from you?

are the faroes now going to be a puppet state of some yank oil company now that oil has been discovered there or the falklands for that matter. your arrogance knows no bounds and your disrespect of the abilities of the shetlanders is amazing.

[daveh]

paulb, ok no worries:).

 

daveh, it is very refreshing to hear your reasons for moving here and that you and your wife seem to embrace Shetland. It's also nice to hear of people moving here for sincere reasons. And for the record I'd rather live next door to you than some drugy, loud and jobless native Shetlander!(and yes, I can think of one or two!).

 

Peace.

 

Thanks, ku.

Just to add that, in the two years since we have been here, we have learnt many of the traditional Shetland dances and will probably be signing up for evening classes to learn the Shetland dialect. We have dropped anchor here and will remain here.

I would similarly be happy living near you also. As it happens, we already have some lovely Shetland neighbours so you will have to put your name down on a waiting list to live nearby!

Peace to you also and enjoy the rest of this weekend, despite the weather.

[daveh]

whilst mentioning Papa Stour again, it brings to mind that there might be another nearby island, perhaps close to Forewick Holm, that you could purchase and declare independence

why should i have to buy an island to declare indipendance. this is already my islands my ancestors have been here fo longer than most, your statement is typical of the arrogance encountered by shetland when dealing with soothmoothers. who should i buy back my land from you?

are the faroes now going to be a puppet state of some yank oil company now that oil has been discovered there or the falklands for that matter. your arrogance knows no bounds and your disrespect of the abilities of the shetlanders is amazing.

 

I have come to the long-overdue conclusion that it is not worth investing any more of my time and effort in responding to your ill-informed comments. You think that I am arrogant whereas I consider you to be ridiculous and short-sighted. Hurling insults at each other will only get tedious to the extreme and adds nothing to the debate so it is best to stop. I will leave it to others.

For your sake, I hope that if you ever travel south, you would be afforded the same level of health-care if you fell ill that I would expect here.

I will leave it at that as far as responding to you is concerned in this thread. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

[Guest Anonymous]

like kavi I am happy that your motive fr moving here is not purely for what you can get from us and that you are willing to put something back, but for those of us who have been here all our lives and have witnessed so many come and take whatever they can with no thought of repaying even the slightest thing in return then maybe you might be understand our point of view.

maybe if you live here long enough without losing your marbles and you end up in a care home you will realise that the accents you hear there are not predominately local.

my aunty can't get a place in a care home so is stuck in the gb probably till her dying day yet there are so many care home places taken up by folks that only arrived of the boat a matter of months or even in some cases only days before. where tell me is the justice or fairness in that.

[paulb]

getting off the topic for now.

 

if your aunty is in GB. there are a few reason why.

1 here condition is to complex for the care centres. they are just that not nursing homes.

2. a number of long stay patients have been promised that they may remain as it was there wish.

3. she may be too weak to cope with the move. lots of elderly people die shortly after being moved.

4. she is on a waiting list and no one has died to make room for her. lerwick is worst.

 

now your aunty is in the hospital which means she is safe. there are lots waiting who are not. priority should go to those in greatist need.

 

resorces no matter were you are limited. the best thing to do is first find out the reasons she is still in the GB. THEN IF ITS JUST HER SOCIAL WORKER DELAYING THINGS KICK UP A STINK.

it should take upto 6 weeks to run through all the tests and assesments.

anything much longer then find out why.

 

hope your aunt is ok the staff on the wards were your aunty is will try there best to answear your questions. but get onto her social worker.

 

my father in law has just gone through the process. having to find 2000 a month is eating through his money/house but he is happy and safe which is the most important thing.

 

now those english/ scots/irish speakers could have moved up here in the 70/80s which means that they may have been up here for most of there life. unless you know their story be careful jumping to conclusions why they are here.

 

paying for care up here is not cheap so there should not be to many care home tourists.

[Guest Anonymous]

daveh as I have never met you (or at least dont know that i have), I can not comment on your personal circumstances but to be sure I have over my 40 odd years on this planet seen a hell of a lot of folks come up here and grab as much as they can with the blessing of our council. What pisses me of is if any one of us speak up and say we believe this is not right in any way we are branded xenephobic racist or worse. The original topic here was the provision of a school for one child on papa stour, and as we have seen over and over again up here providing this one to one tuition at vast expense will not benefit papa or shetland in any way when the family decide the remote location and hard life are not for them, I also object to the provision of a high school for 4 bairns in skerries and I have known the parents of those kids all their lives, it is an extravegance we can not afford. And to be encouraging folks to move here from south on the back of promises of schooling on any isle of their choice is total madness.

when it comes to the elderly i have seen folks move here get their folks into care homes and sausage of again once mam and dad either died or were too senile to know whether it was new year or new york. what started out as a bonus to the shetland folk who have lived and worked here all their lives has turned into a free for all with the only end being the bankrupting of the CT. I do wish you well in your time here and sincerely hope you dont have to avail yourselves of the facilities provided and not just because it will cost a lot of money.

 

 

paulb many folks dispose of their assets before going into care and therefor pay sweet F A

[paulb]

well if they do its wrong. the native born shetlanders are equally keen on loans and grants that they can milk either the council or the development trust out of. greed does not seem to be exclusively an incomers condition.

[Guest Anonymous]

never said it was paul and I think youll find I am even more critical of those home grown parasites than anyone else(check out the windfarm thread). but at least they can counter that argument (rightly or wrongly) with better to get some of it to keep in the isles than watch it all disapear oot the sooth mooth.

[enkelt skapninger]

This thread has become really depressing.

[wullie m.]

Surely this confinement of one bairn to a school amounts to cruelty. At school you learn as much by interaction with your peers as from a teacher, where's the human experience to fit him for the outside world, what has he to remember of his schooldays in later life, a hugely expensive prison sentence with an adult selected by the education authority, where's the crack, where's the laughs, where's the devilment?

 

A famous ecologist had his son brought up with them on various rocks in the Hebrides, mostly alone. "Wonderful character building experience", he ended up a scoundrel and still in jail in Thailand? for offences which may be imagined.

wullie.