Wanting to move to Shetland

[Trow]

Well I got a job with the same firm I worked for in Shetland and was renting a house so helping the locals anyway. That's not what I was getting at though. Personally I am sick of people moving to Shetland and living of the benefits whilst sitting in a house rent free. Again, not a personal attack at the person concerned in this forum but in general there is to much of that happening and someone needs to put a stop to it. but that's going to be difficult when the bulk of our local council is run by incomers anyway!

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

Maybe you could limit the amount of time an outsider can benefit from the handouts, maybe after 6 months if they have found no work by then, expel/export them out of the islands and back to the UK mainland ?

 

Perhaps a reduction in council tax for every spare bedroom you rent out ?

 

Carrots and sticks..

[khitajrah]

...

[Fifi]

Personally I am sick of people moving to Shetland and living of the benefits whilst sitting in a house rent free. Again, not a personal attack at the person concerned in this forum but in general there is to much of that happening and someone needs to put a stop to it. but that's going to be difficult when the bulk of our local council is run by incomers anyway!

Hilarious. Sooth-moother bashing from the other side of the world. Where Trow is an incomer and was hopefully welcomed by the locals..

[Trow]

Yes your right! it is sooth moother bashing but the ratio of incomers from Shetland to NZ is a tad less than the amount of english moving to Shetland! hey I would be quite happy if 3 English people moved to Shetland every year! not a problem.

 

The problem is when they move to Shetland (because of the way of life, security etc) they either complain about it or try to change it! plus what I previously said about being prioritised over the Shetlanders who by nature don't tend to speak out or stand up for themselves!

 

Soon Shetland will loose it's friendliness and safe living in fact not soon but now! drugs theft etc is already a large part of shetland due to the outside influence. I am not saying that people should not move there but we need to be making sure that they don't take over and make it into a small London!

 

NZ has the same problem with Asian's moving here and opening shops that are Chinese speaking only etc. They bring massive amounts of money and bump up property prices making property unreachable to young kiwi's trying to buy there first house. We can't stop it but we should control it better! as I said before though, Shetland is run by incomers.. What chance do we have...

 

Forgot to mention that when I came to NZ I had a job with the company I already worked for and I had enough money to rent until I bought my own house! I didn't come here saying I was going to sleep in my car until I got a house!! The NZ goverment wouldn't alllow it and Shetland shouldn't either!

[Trow]

^^ Sorry to bring this up.. again... but, what constitutes an "outsider" then? Completely off topic but I've been researching my family history (which actually means compiling everything other people have gathered) and it turns out that although I am Canadian by birth, of my father's line of the family only he and I were born in Canada. The rest were all born on the same street in a Scottish town back to 1698 (so far). Indeed I have no blood ties to Shetland that I am aware of, but my family history on both sides of the family is British. Am I an outsider? Are people born in the hospital in Aberdeen to Shetland parents outsiders? I do realise that in Shetland I am a vile waste-of-space soothmoother... but in the grand scheme of things that matters not a whit. However, am I one of these frightening, scary immigrants that should be removed? Where should I be removed TO? The military base I was born on??

 

 

Personally I don't think the argument of am I or am I not an incomer is ever going to be answered and I am sure that the same argument has been had many times before on the board. I really don't think people understand my original argument which was incomers recieving benefits from the local council in front of Shetlanders (born and bred with family born and bred)

 

I can't answer all of your questions that you might have around whether you are a shetlander or not, and to be honest I have no interest in doing so. People say Shetland was a backwards place before incomers well that depends on the type of incomers you talk about, we always had tradelinks with Norway, Germany Spain etc and Shetland got on just fine. funny how when the English and Scottish start appearing we start to lose all of our original quality's that made Shetland stand out.

 

Complain all you want at my post's - it's my view and I am sticking to it. So what if it's old fashioned. I believe 95% of older Shetlanders feel the same, they just don't talk up as much.

[Trow]

Maybe you could limit the amount of time an outsider can benefit from the handouts, maybe after 6 months if they have found no work by then, expel/export them out of the islands and back to the UK mainland ?

 

Perhaps a reduction in council tax for every spare bedroom you rent out ?

 

Carrots and sticks..

 

Sensible Idea! if people are really keen to stay they should work for the privilage. Not be handed it

[JustMe]

Maybe you could limit the amount of time an outsider can benefit from the handouts, maybe after 6 months if they have found no work by then, expel/export them out of the islands and back to the UK mainland ?

 

Perhaps a reduction in council tax for every spare bedroom you rent out ?

 

Carrots and sticks..

 

Sensible Idea! if people are really keen to stay they should work for the privilage. Not be handed it

 

And maybe we could not because, like it or not, at the moment Shetland is part of the UK and people are entitled to live wherever they want.

[JustMe]

Nigel Jarman wrote

In the same borough as me this:

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/ho.....780948.ece

 

I am disinclined to believe this. After all the Sun has been known to be long on sensationalism and short on facts. Why would 6 bedrooms be needed for 7 children?. Surely children can share?. And why would the older children need to be housed with mummy or indeed housed at all?. After all the Sun claimed the oldest was 22yo. Maybe there are important facts that the Sun has not bothered reporting.

 

That said the idea of any council paying well over the local going rate to rent a house to sub let to someone the council needs to house needs looking at. Something wrong with the system there.

[Malachy]

Shetland is run by incomers.. What chance do we have...

Er, in what sense? Have a look at the council. The percentage of 'incomers' on the council is certainly considerably lower than the actual percentage in the population. Surely that means that, to be truly representative, there should be more 'incomers' becoming councillors? Or do you mean that somebody else runs Shetland - Stuart Hill maybe? Or, er, I don't know. Or is what you're saying just false?

[paulb]

excellent shetland should be run by a londoner and a kiwi. so shetland should have no immigration expel all none true blooded shetlanders back to say 1800 that would resolve the housing problem. of course the trowies may be a bit lonely.

the post was on housing not zenophobic racial/economic control.

if we are to resolve the housing needs of shetland a long term plan needs to be created with also medium goals and short ones. if scalloway needs more housing then the plan should seek activily the land for the said homes. just sticking houses around lerwick will have a negative impact on the community in general.

 

how many people on benifits can afford the 2-3000 to move up here. yes having loads and loads of unemployed moving up here would be terrible all those jobs in the care sector and fish processing would have to be done by the orrid british instead of importing (unemployed) workers from the rest of the world.

 

if a british citizen moves to a part of britian and they have a higher housing need than another why should they not be housed. you would expect the same treatment in the uk.

 

now if there is a massive demand for housing and a clear lack of supply then it should be built but not just in one area, at the moment there seems to be a lot of building in sandwick this is not just for locals so why are incomers wanting to live there. why can we not encourage the homless of lerwick to move out to the country. lerwicks infrastructure cant support many more homes.

[PJ of Hildisvik]

This topic in my mind is "un-answerable".

What defines a Shetlander?, Picts....Norwegian......scots....and yes the English , plus a few German Hansiatic traders, Dutch as well and maybe a bit of Spanish blood. Wev'e been a cross roads in the North Atlantic for thousands of years, we are a mixed bunch, but probably the larger blood stock from Southern Norway, and they along with the English are all from Germanic stock.

[groilick]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Is du a boy o' Baabies?

 

[shetlander]

 

why can we not encourage the homless of lerwick to move out to the country. lerwicks infrastructure cant support many more homes.

 

As much as I would like to see demand more evenly spread from Lerwick thats (and I'm damned if I know why) where most folk on the waiting list want to live.

 

In a local context, improving public transport, making a more determined effort to decentralise council jobs and offering businesses incentives to set up in rural areas could all help to offset the demand. You can't get folk to live where they don't want to though and I suspect that the general drift from country to town is part of a wider trend that can be attributed to social as much as employment factors.

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

> I really don't think people understand my original argument which

> was incomers recieving benefits from the local council in front of

> Shetlanders (born and bred with family born and bred)

 

I think I understood it.

 

 

> so shetland should have no immigration

 

Immigration yes, but controlled, otherwise you end up with the situation we have now..

 

 

> if we are to resolve the housing needs of shetland a long term plan

 

Agreed, but it goes a little deeper than that, we need the same sort of plan country wide.

 

 

> if a british citizen moves to a part of britian and they have a higher

> housing need than another why should they not be housed

 

Because a supringly large number of people get themselves classified as being in greater need than everyone else, and those patiently queing their lifetime for a chance never get a look in.

 

A simple que system would make many people pretty happy..

 

Can you imagine if you ran a bus que like that..

 

 

> What defines a Shetlander?

 

I think first off, someone born there. If anyones going to get priority, it should be the folk born in a place, and then everyone else.

 

 

> I am disinclined to believe this

 

Sadly this is only the tip of the iceberg, and why there is so much bad feeling brewing up in the country, and why some political parties are taking advantage of it, whilst others are until very recently, afraid of looking bad.

 

Shetland shows the issue to be for what it is, unfairly exploiting a system based on how well you can lie about your need, or in fact, going out of your way to make yourself needy enough, and nothing to do with race or which country you came from in the first place.

 

 

If nothing is done and its left to the free market, your end up with 50 people to a house like down here, unsanatary conditions with disease rampant, rats, cockroaches, out of control crime, not just drug related, but large scale frauds, and all because your trying to help those that need help when in fact, many of those needing help are still needing it, and its mainly the ones milking the system benefiting the most from your outstretched hand..