Wednesday notes

No mail today. Yes I know that's a 60s popsong title, but it's also the situation in the islands today. After yesterday's fire at the sorting office, firecrews were back there at 7pm last night as the blaze had reignited. As I reported yesterday, the fire had started in the roofspace. If we get any mails, they'll be the soot stained lot that was in the sorting office yesterday before the fire broke out.

The Arnish Fabrication Yard, our piece of heavy engineering across the water from my position, is to be mothballed again. For the third time in as many years. After heavy injections of cash, company failures in the face of heavy demand, there is now a dearth of orders. If currently outstanding plans for windfarms in the UK and elsewhere are approved today, it would still take 3 months before the Yard could start operating again. A handful of staff will be kept on on a care-and-maintenance basis.

Readers who have read me a long time will detect the undertone of sarcasm in the above paragraph. I'll explain for general benefit. Three windfarms, with a total of 300 turbines, each standing 500 feet tall, are proposed for the isle of Lewis. I'm against, for reasons of environmental damage, insultingly low recompense for local communities (£5m per annum may sound nice, but it is only 0.1% of the profit) and empty promises of employment. My sarcasm over the Fabrication Yard is based on the third point. Arnish was supposed to be the place where the turbines would be made, bringing some 400 jobs to the island. It has now got such a poor record for reliable employment that very few local people are prepared to work there.