Talks aimed at securing the long-term future of emergency tug cover around Shetland will continue for a further month.

There’s a lot of discussion presently about the 2km distance of wind turbines from dwellings.

The charities regulator OSCR intervened to prevent Shetland Charitable Trust holding a meeting on the next tranche of funding for the Viking Energy windfarm because it was not clear why it was so urgent or that it was in the body’s best interests.

Shetland’s Young Fiddler of 2012 is 14-year-old Laura Smith from Cunningsburgh, with Fraser Tait of Sandwick runner-up and Sophie Moar from Cunningsburgh and Callum Watt from Walls in joint third place.

A man who drove at night at three times the drink driving limit with no lights on has been banned for 20 months and fined £660.

A young mother called off a fight with an old adversary because she could not find a babysitter to look after her child.

Investment decisions by the Shetland Charitable Trust (SCT), as presently constituted, lie with the newly elected councillors for Shetland Island Council (SIC) as SCT trustees, ex-officio.

Newly elected SIC councillors can vote whichever way they please on any subject, commensurate with their own ideas and political opinions, irrespective of their intrinsic merit.

However, they do not enjoy the same freedom of decision while acting as SCT trustees.

As appointed trustees of Shetland Charitable Trust it behoves them, legally, to take investment decisions in order to make the best returns possible while, at the same time, protecting the trusts’ funds. This, …

As soon as I learned of the Shetland Charitable Trust meeting arranged for Monday 30th April, I contacted my SIC representatives Florence Grains, Frank Robertson and Gary Robinson, who are also SCT trustees, to ascertain their opinion.

None of them knew anything about it. This not only shows a singular lack of respect, decency and consideration towards these three trustees, and possibly others, but also clearly illustrates the moral void those trustees, desperate to hand over a few more of our millions to their pet project, now find themselves in. We live in sad times.

Rosa Steppanova
The Lea,
Tresta.…

Communities and individuals have both rights and responsibilities – enshrined in the UNECE Aarhus Convention – to demand the highest standards in environmental decision-making.

Where this does not happen, they must also have the right to affordable access to the courts to challenge decisions where their rights have been breached or an environmental law broken.

The urgency of climate change arguably gives developers and decision makers a greater burden of responsibility to get renewable energy developments and decisions right, and ensure that projects are appropriately and sensitively sited, in full consultation with communities.

Friends of the Earth Scotland believe that …