Letters / Nazi slurs?
Having whetted our appetites with praise for John Scott’s criticism of SIC inaction, condemning Jonathan Wills’ recent attack on Sustainable Shetland and recalling past SIC failures and injustices, Peter Hamilton, disappointingly (some things never change), smears existing/past autonomy campaigners with nazi slurs.
U-turning on his former revulsion at the concept of autonomy, he aligns himself with ‘jack-in-the-box’ autonomists Hannah Goodlad (SNP) and Alex Armitage (Greens), both freshly ‘beamed down’ from a de-centralising, parallel universe.
He say: “Both promote an inclusive and outward looking idea of Shetland that is far from the repellent, exclusive, insular and backward-looking Viking blood, Aryan nonsense that is still too fashionable in some quarters”?
Lol! Where exactly is that “fashionable”, Up Helly-Aa committees?
Of course, The Norsemen’s Home is the Shetland national anthem. Perhaps, that’s what he’s referring to?
Recalling the isles were pawned with redemption in perpetuity, illegally annexed and the language and laws illegally changed is not Nazism.
It is historical fact that inspires legal actions involving Udal Law, such as, contesting the removal of St Ninian’s Isle treasure to Edinburgh.
Was that so different from demanding the return of the ‘Stone of Scone’?
How about the nationalist songs, Scots wha hae and Flower of Scotland? A tad “backward looking” and chauvinistic, perhaps?
The post-1469 pillaging of Shetland by Scots is ancient history however injustices like the following continue to this day:
- seizure of Shetland’s rate support grant (Westminster compensation for SIC’s £40M oil boom housing debt interest);
- the six year withholding of internal ferry funding (£5.5M per year);
- planned destruction of Shetland’s fishing industry with vast offshore wind farms on traditional fishing grounds;
- Etc..
None of which could happen in self-governing Faroe.
Donning fig leaves of “sustainability” and egalitarian, socialist principles, Hamilton proposes “co-existence of the fishing with offshore renewables” by restricting it to “small, hydrogen-powered, seine netters”, dodging between the anchors and electrical cables of wind farms!
His priorities could not be clearer.
Ok. Are the SNP-Greens sincere about devolving local powers? Great! Then, let’s see them, now, before the election.
Talk of Faroe-style autonomy is electioneering blarney. Only Westminster can grant that and no independent Scottish government ever will, except to avoid worse.
Holyrood desperately needs the isles’ marine resources, their strategic location, and the political ‘Blue Peter Badge’ of renewable energy.
The most obvious route to full self-governance is to pit Westminster v Holyrood in an all-or-nothing negotiation, most likely to arise with a Scottish Yes to independence and a Shetland No.
John Tulloch
Aberdeen
