Ive been looking at the page here, and there are a lot of members but very little discussion about the core question. Indeed, I wonder if the core question could almost be widened, to what is the future of Orkney and Shetland in a post-referendum Scotland? Because any long-term strategy for the islands has to take into account the possible political and economic context, and we have two Maybe we havent been saying very much because its difficult to find a starting-point, since the only way to have any kind of worthwhile discussion on these kind of issues is to structure it a little so that we pick out particular points to discuss and see if we can come to any conclusions. If we were to do that, it seems to me that a starting-point would be to take the policy document of the three Islands Councils, Our Islands Our Future, and discuss what we would get from this, and then ask if it covers all that we want, or if there is more, or indeed there may be those who think its too much. But it provides a very good place to begin. Since although Sean asked me to contribute to this thread, I havent so far done very much to justify his confidence, Im willing to lead off the discussion, not to come with any views of my own, but to suggest questions which you might all like to comment on. If you like this, I can make a start. Just before doing so, Id suggest two house rules for a good discussion. One is that we should leave aside the question of whether we as individuals are going to vote Yes or vote No, simply because if we start to debate this, there will be no time or space for the core issue of Orkney and Shetland that we have gathered her to discuss. We would logically of course have to consider everything in terms of two scenarios, the Yes one and the No one, but for the purposes of this discussion we need to think of them as the background context. My second suggested house rule is that we should all refrain from any comment that is likely to raise hackles - in other words, concentrate purely on issues. What do you think?
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 20:44:24 +0000
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