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The New Zealand flag flew at half mast at the Lerwick Town Hall last week following the devastating earthquake that struck the city of Christchurch on the 22nd February. Measuring 6.3 on the Richter Scale it was the second large quake to hit the South Island in the last five months. The thoughts of many Shetlanders was with friends and family in New Zealand, some of whom returned to Shetland in the Summer for the 2010 Hamefarin, and also of New Zealanders who now live in Shetland.

The Guardian has two picture galleries detailing some of the incredible scenes of the aftermath, click here and here to view.

Around 50 people gathered at 8.30am this morning outside the closure threatened Lerwick Coastguard Station to make their voices heard to visiting chief executive of the Maritime Coastguard Agency Sir Alan Massey. Sir Alan is visiting all 18 Coastguard Stations in the UK during the consultation period which could ultimately lead to 10 stations being closed or reduced in operating hours.

Lee Coutts who started the Save Our Station campaign, which now has over 3700 followers on Facebook, was first to address Sir Alan and made it clear to him the concerns locals have over their proposals. Upon raising the issue of communication outages and what this could mean to maritime safety the chief executive appeared to be unaware of such occurrences. Two members of the public then made impassioned pleas to Sir Alan about what losing a relative to the sea is like and what a local station means to an island community. Sir Alan responded by saying that what he was hearing was being taken on board and that it is invaluable to hear these feelings during the consultation process. He also made it clear that endangering lives is not what the MCA is about.

Also in attendance was Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney & Shetland Alistair Carmichael and Scottish Liberal Democrat party leader and MSP for Shetland Tavish Scott. Local councilors Alison Duncan and Dr Jonathan Wills also addressed Sir Alan, Dr Wills raising the possible issue of maritime insurance in regard to local businesses by not having a local station.

Click here to read the closure article from The Shetland Times.

To read The Shetland Times coverage from today click here.

To visit the Save Shetland Coastguard website click here.

And to visit their Facebook site click here.

Click the link below to view 14 more photos:

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT: You may have seen the article on the front page of today’s Shetland Times about the threat of closure to the Shetland Coastguard Station due to government cost-cutting. A Facebook campaign has been started where you can show your support to save the station, click here to find out more about this serious issue to our isles. To read The Shetland Times article, click here.

This photo shows the Lerwick Coastguard Station which sits atop the Knab overlooking Breiwick and Lerwick harbour.

The Viking Energy Wind Farm. A ‘community’ project that has divided the community like nothing else in Shetland. This coming Friday is the deadline to make your opinion known to the Scottish Government’s Energy Consents & Deployment Unit.

Out of my own interest in the wind farm I wanted to understand how these proposed turbines would compare to other large structures, which led to me creating these illustrations. The buildings in the illustration above are from left: Canary Wharf, Strata, the London Eye, Mousa Broch, one of the 5 Burradale Wind Turbines, Shetland Museum Boat Hall, the Bressay Transmitter, one of the proposed 127 Viking Energy turbines, Lerwick Town Hall, Nelson’s Column, Big Ben, the Gherkin and the British Telecom Tower. Drawn to a scale of 1cm to 10m the proposed turbine model towers over existing Shetland structures and does not look out of place among the selection of landmarks from London – taller than the London Eye and with a turbine tower almost equal to Big Ben. The illustration below shows all 127 turbines against the existing Burradale wind farm, again the turbines are in scale to each other, and tries to convey the split in the community.

Size and number are of course only 2 factors, this is a long running argument with many contributing conflicts of opinion in support or opposition – far too many to go into here. For more reading on the project I would point you to the links below.

The supporters of the wind farm have a website, click here to visit: www.windfarmsupporters.org

The opponents of the wind farm have a website, click here to visit: www.sustainableshetland.org

You can email your support or opposition to the project to the Energy Consents & Deployment Unit at representations@scotland.gsi.gov.uk – remember to include: your name, address, reasons for support or opposition, and the development you are referring to is ‘Viking Energy Wind Farm’.

Everyone has their own opinion and you should make it known now, the deadline is Friday, 19th November, 2010.

It would be good to get some feedback on your thoughts of the Viking Energy Wind Farm, if you wish please leave comments to this post below.

Shetland has been listed at number 6 in the Top 10 Best in Travel 2011 Guide published by Lonely Planet this week, which inspired me to create this mock-up of what a Shetland Lonely Planet Guidebook might look like!

The placing in the top 10 has led to much discussion over the last few days, predictably a lot of locals have mentioned this might be the last chance for visitors to enjoy Shetland’s natural beauty before the Viking Energy Windfarm turns our hillsides into a massive industrial estate. I think I probably agree with them.

I have found the Lonely Planet travel guides very useful and buy one for each destination we go to, wouldn’t it be great if they did a Shetland one?!

To read the article on the Lonely Planet website click here. Or to buy the Best in Travel 2011 book click here.

To read the Shetland Times article click here.