Wanting to move to Shetland

[man of kent]

It saddens me when all I here are Scottish and English voices on Da Street at Lerwick these days. Its made worse when you hear the school children speak with Scottish Accents, but then Shetland is changing along with the rest of the world and I suppose Shetland is lucky to have people who want to live and come up there, or we would have the same situation on the Shetland Mainland as we do in places like Papa Stour - a significantly dwindling population.

We have always lost people to mainland Britain or the armed forces and that is a good thing as it allows us to go and bread some descent blood into the English and Scots or even re-new some in NZ.

But never the less we are lucky to have the incomers as without them there probably wouldnt be a Shetland for long.

I think new incomers shouldnt be allowed to jump any queues on any lists as I'm sure those on the list already have just as much of a need and Britain is a nation of Queuers, and as for sleeping in cars - its got to be a No.

[unlinkedstudent]

As somebody who is looking to move up your way, I can understand some views with regard to incomers; however, I would like to say this:-

 

From my own experience, I can categorically state that I don't think my husband and I are jumping the queue. We have a total of 30 points with HA and 0 points with HIC! This is despite having a job waiting. So far, all the properties advertised on the HA website have been for existing transfer applicants within Shetland or the homeless. I am advertising for a swap and in one way it is nice that I have had no replies/pms and that people want to remain where they are.

 

The only way I can see incomers 'jumping the queue' is if the Council is meeting statutory legislation via the Children Act (for example, if people are homeless and have children, they have a legal obligation to provide accommodation) which happens all the time down here in London.

 

As stated in a previous post, the housing situation in the UK as a whole is in a crazy state.

[khitajrah]

...

[JohanofNess]

>> 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.

 

That doesn't work, you just need to look at the amount of Shetlanders that aren't born on the island these days. Myself and my brother were born in Shetland but my sister wasn't, same parents, same house born in a different region and out of the three of us I have lived there the least amount of time but under your thinking I would qualify for assistance ahead of my sister if I rolled up next week begging for a house. I have 2 nieces and one nephew who all reside in Shetland all of them born in Aberdeen. To classify a Shetlander it isn't as simple as where you are born, in fact it would seem a too simplistic view if anything.

 

I raised the point on another thread about housing and it's very simple how the housing list would work.

 

1.) How long have you resided and paid taxes on the island for along with your need for housing dictates your place on the list.

2.) Have you arrived recently with no employment and are now looking for a house then you get put on the boat south straight away, no arguments off they go.

 

The PC brigade won't like that of course but there should be no such thing as people migrating from one region to another because the benefits are better. Too many people in this country are shirking work.

[JustMe]

People in the whole of the UK should be entitled to council housing based on a fair points system unless they have an urgent need to be housed in which case they should get some priority. Sad fact for those on a points based list is that if they are already living somewhere, even though that place may not be ideal, it is still a home and those who become homeless will queue jump them.

 

Where the system fails is that people on what seems to them to be a never-ending waiting list see people arriving in their community be it on a bus from Heathrow or at the Holmsgarth Terminal and getting housed by lunchtime. Now maybe this does not happen as much as people believe (or maybe it does) but I think the politicians need to look at the system to make sure that it is fair to all which at the moment it is not as some people (single men being the prime example) always seem to be at the bottom of the pile.

 

For Shetlands short term needs some sort of system that would be able to allow housing officials to direct newly arrived homeless people to an area of the UK with surplus council housing (North East England?) when such people had no real connection with Shetland would seem to be reasonable but at the moment that is probably illegal.

[petrocelli_]

What defines a Shetlander?

 

For me the definition of a Shetlander is someone who appreciates our community spirit, values and way of life here in the islands.

 

Unfortunately not all who have been born here cherish such values but I know of plenty who have arrived who do, and whether you've been here all your life or a month, a year or 10 years, then you can proudly call yourself a Shetlander!

[paulb]

There is some dodgy thinking going on here an unemployed person ariving up here after leaving a home of some type will not get on the list. the most they will get is b&b or homeless shelter. the only folk arriving in shetland and getting a council home are nhs staff which are temp. and council staff ie teachers. if you want the islands to be populated there are only two ways of doing it either lots of babies or incomers. as someone pointed out shetland born shetlanders are becoming rare. with more births happening in aberdeen that would make them scots not shetlanders. my mum in law was born in the isle of man just because her dad worked there that gives the wife the right to live there. but that does not make her manxs. surly if a person has the desire and motivation to move up here they have protental.

should fetlar want to welcome strangers from london into there community maybe they should impose anti hobbit regulations to stop wanbe cave dwellers from living there. as a english person wishing to live up here asking for an imigration quota on english people moving to shetland is like a turkey promoting paxo. what point system would you impose, how much would they have to bring in with them. would they have to undertake compusary dialect classes and give an oath of allegance to tavish or some other leader.

[PJ of Hildisvik]

Having read the posts by "Trow", i believe the further from Shetland and especially England you stay the better, your'e just encouraging Racism, and we have enough problems here without adding your racist views to the mix.

And yes i'am Anglo Saxon ,and proud to my bit for a better Shetland.

Can't say the whites did much for the native peoples of NZ!

[nederlander]

Having read the posts by "Trow", i believe the further from Shetland and especially England you stay the better, your'e just encouraging Racism, and we have enough problems here without adding your racist views to the mix.

And yes i'am Anglo Saxon ,and proud to my bit for a better Shetland.

Can't say the whites did much for the native peoples of NZ!

 

Well said that man!

 

We have always lost people to mainland Britain or the armed forces and that is a good thing as it allows us to go and bread some descent blood into the English and Scots or even re-new some in NZ.

 

Pathetic

[JohanofNess]

Having read the posts by "Trow", i believe the further from Shetland and especially England you stay the better, your'e just encouraging Racism, and we have enough problems here without adding your racist views to the mix.

And yes i'am Anglo Saxon ,and proud to my bit for a better Shetland.

Can't say the whites did much for the native peoples of NZ!

 

Racism no, xenophobia maybe.

 

"discrimination against or antagonism towards other races" Racist

 

The vast majority of people in Shetland are white.

 

"intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries" a xenophobe would be a fairer description but still not entirely accurate for trow.

[Nigel Bridgman-Elliot]

> To classify a Shetlander it isn't as simple as where you are born,

> in fact it would seem a too simplistic view if anything.

 

I think your beginning to convince me there that your right. (I'm quite prepaired to admit I might be wrong about something, or learn a better solution, as I'm the first to admit I don't know all the answers, and many of the answers I do have in my back pocket come via listening to people in the first place.)

 

 

> 1.) How long have you resided and paid taxes on the island for

> along with your need for housing dictates your place on the list.

 

I quite like that, though I'm not sure how it addresses the issue of young people who have yet to pay taxes and find themselves in need of housing. And without housing its harder to get a job to pay taxes to be entitled to housing..

 

Perhaps we can continue to evolve the solution together collectively with our inputs.

 

 

> 2.) Have you arrived recently with no employment and are now

> looking for a house then you get put on the boat south straight away,

> no arguments off they go.

 

That seems perfectly fair to me.

 

 

As I'm looking long term to not just build a home for myself, but also to build up the community, at some point I'd like to have built some 10,000 homes, with a view to building 1,000 homes just to house all the current people on the waiting list, I wouldn't want to see the next year the waiting list back up to 1,000..

 

 

> should fetlar want to welcome strangers from london into there

> community maybe they should impose anti hobbit regulations to

> stop wanbe cave dwellers from living there.

 

FX [ smiles ]

 

You've got to have regulations, after all, you don't let just anyone live in your own home do you ?

 

What if your home was quite large, a mansion perhaps, with 100 rooms, you'd want to make sure any guests if they was trouble makers got booted out straight away.

 

It seems fair to me to only go where your welcomed.

 

 

> Now maybe this does not happen as much as people believe

> (or maybe it does)

 

My girlfriend worked in immigration for a while here and was totally shocked by the very high level of scamming going on, and upset that genuine cases of need suffered because of it. My own neighbours are either in the group who are most upset by their good name being sullied as a people, or scammers themselves who talk quite openly about their latest way to help themselves. (Rule 1 on how to combat scammers, listen to them tell you how they do it!)

 

 

> (single men being the prime example) always seem to be at the

> bottom of the pile.

 

In the borough that I'm in, last year less than a dozen single males under 50 years of age got housing, in another borough, because of the difference between rents and housing benefit, only a single male got housing benefit!

 

At one time here, rents which had doubled due to council insistance to make things better for us reached £90, with max rent benefit of only £37. (This has since changed after making a bigger fuss about it in the press to now £88.)

 

When I was homeless I was most suprised to see only wall to wall single men in the housing department waiting room/area. But its not just single men who have a hard time, its single parents with perhaps 1 or 2 kids, unable to get that magic 3rd kid which catapaults them suddenly to a place. Or its old folk on their own, struggling to look after themselves and threatened with hefty fines if they don't keep their place tidy. (How many people go out of their way to help such people, not many it seems..)

 

 

> arrived homeless people to an area of the UK with surplus

> council housing (North East England?)

 

Not so long ago you could buy ex-council homes up north for only £2.5k, mine you they was on estates full of crime, unbelivable levels of crime! its not just the bullet holes in the windows that put you off.. Having lived on an estate up north myself, in one year only two homes in the entire street of 300+ houses wasn't burglered. One poor woman came home to find her entire home stripped right down to below the floorboards.

 

Not far from me here is an estate where there is constantly 100+ empty flats, no one wants to live there and I can understand why.

 

 

> Racism no,

 

Indeed, there are few places one can talk about the subject without the race card being drawn and used against you. I had hoped because all parties involved would be the same general race, that it would enable us to go past that hurdle and look at the underlying causes, issues, solutions without getting distracted.

[paulb]

again you show your lack of knowledge of shetland. whilest doing some interviewing a while back the education dept are having to support a large and getting larger populaton of english as a second language pupils. the largest being poles but there are lots of non uk people up here, and guess what the people fit in. shetland does not want to become like the innercities of the uk. people are open to strangers up here after all there are a lot of us up here.

your planning what. you will be lucky to build an out house let alone 1000 houses. in your previous posts you have said you want to come up and set up an iternet company so when you move you will be homeless and unemployed so were do we send your coach tickets to gateshead to.

so when are we going to see you up here or is this just talk.

[ArabiaTerra]

It's all Maggie's fault.

 

Seriously. Living patterns are changing. there are more single people, single parents and smaller families while at the same time the population is rising, which leads to a higher demand for housing. While this was happening Thatcher started selling off the council stock and blocking councils from building new homes to replace those sold off. This caused the property boom which has priced most ordinary people out of the market for private homes and restricted the amount of affordable public housing.

 

The only reason I have a place is because I had medical points when I applied, otherwise I would have nothing.

 

The only answer I can see is a massive public building effort to replace those council houses which have been sold off.

[JustMe]

Nigel Jarman wrote

Not far from me here is an estate where there is constantly 100+ empty flats, no one wants to live there and I can understand why.

 

So why not offer those flats to people on the waiting list even if they do not have the right number of points?. And find a way to deal with the problems. Maybe we are getting to the stage where we need fenced patrolled estates to house the most troublesome tenants in along with finding ways to help them develop their social skills.

[PJ of Hildisvik]

Well then the sooner the Bressay tunnel gets built, the sooner the council will have enough space for hundreds of houses.

They will all be one bedroomed flats due to the divorce rate, seeing that the population up here has been roughly the same for quite a while now,what other reason would we need for extra housing?