Also in the news 3 November 2026
- Scalloway Pool meeting looms
- Inter faith event
- Shetland tops rude place name list
SCALLOWAY Community Council wants Shetland Recreational Trust (SRT) to stop seeking expressions of interest for the future of the closed Scalloway Pool.
Chairman Lawson Bisset has written to SRT ahead of a meeting this week with the two parties, which will be chaired by MSP Hannah Mary Goodlad.
The Save Scalloway Pool action group, Shetland Islands Council and Shetland Charitable Trust will also attend.
The SRT said in September it was inviting proposals for the future of Scalloway Pool, which closed in April, but Bisset has urged them to halt that process.
“To pursue this course before the forthcoming meeting appears highly presumptive and risks undermining public confidence in the sincerity of the discussions,” he said.
“We would hope that, following this week’s meeting, that process will be withdrawn to allow genuine consideration of options for reopening the pool.”
The Scalloway Community Council chairman also reminded the SRT and all attending about the strength of public feeling about the closure of the village’s pool.
“We expect representatives to arrive with a determination to find solutions, realistic options for consideration and a clear understanding that the people of Scalloway and beyond deserve considerably more than a repetition of well-intentioned words,” he wrote.
SHETLAND Inter Faith is hosting an event next week as part of Scottish interfaith week 2026.
Entitled Wellbeing, the event will be held at 7.30pm on Wednesday 11 November in Islesburgh Community Centre.
It will offer folk an opportunity to share and explore what it means to care for and nurture each other, inspired by faith and spirituality, with perspectives from some of the rich variety of faiths and beliefs held by people in Shetland.
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All are welcome to attend, and to come together to learn about how we can care for the folk in our community.
The event will be very informal in nature, Shetland Inter Faith said, “with light refreshments available to help feed the body as well as the soul”.
TWATT has been named as one of the world’s rudest place names – with two Shetland locations making the UK’s top ten.
It comes from Erobella’s new Rude Atlas, which ranks 451 real places across 91 countries on criteria such as “word strength”, “snigger factor” and its clarity of pronunciation.
Overall Twatt has been ranked as the joint sixth rudest place name in the world, tying with its namesake in Orkney.
Da Shitlins in Foula is sixth in the UK and 18th in the world, while Turdale Water in Shetland also features in the atlas.
The two Twatts are Scotland’s rudest place names, and in the whole of Britain only Cocklick Hill in North Yorkshire ranks higher.
Erobella’s head of data and research Brenda Jensen said that two places in the UK’s top 10 was “quite a haul” for a group of islands as small as Shetland.
“Twatt is a perfectly good Norse name for a small patch of land that just happens to make visitors smile,” she said.
“As for which Twatt is rudest, we’ll let the public vote settle it with Orkney.”
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