Meaningful powers

Thanks, Allen Fraser, for clarifying your comment (Councils should be careful; SN, 16/04/14) which you kindly reproduced in full.

I was more concerned with your lack of ambition for Shetland and lack of support for local referenda than whether you are a Yes or No supporter, however, I take your point that the actual result of “Da Muckle Referendum” is irrelevant to your caveat about Our Islands, Our Future and I’m sorry if my comment caused you distress.

I’m not “short of things to write about”, you are a former vice chairman of Sustainable Shetland and an influential campaigner.

You mentioned that I don’t live in Shetland and I say this to anyone who would make something of that, “You can tak da boy oot o’ Shetlan’ bit you canna tak Shetlan’ oot o’ da boy” and living away from the day-to-day hurly burly of Shetland life makes it easier to ‘see the wood and not just the trees’.

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The SIC may have the power to stop the wind farm but they haven’t the will, just as they have the power and not the will to halt the relentless centralisation of facilities and services to Lerwick.

I’m calling for local referenda and meaningful powers of self-government for the isles, not independence. Nevertheless, I want that option to be open to those who do want it, that’s democracy.

Snookering people by denying them a perfectly reasonable option in the process of self-determination may be clever politics but it isn’t democracy.

The point about local referenda is that they will achieve, at least, two things:

1.  the threat of a potential independence campaign will put pressure on the governments to deliver what is being asked for by the councils,
2. it should spur the councils to be more ambitious in their demands which, according to reports, are pretty feeble.

Readers can sign the ‘Referenda on the Islands’ petition online and in paper form at the Hamnavoe (Burra) shop, if nowhere else.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/GettingInvolved/Petitions/islandgroups 

John Tulloch
Lyndon
Arrochar