A Shetland blog thing

A previous commenter was interested in knowing if the community spirit here made people happoer.

This is a difficult one to give a straight answer too, as Shetland has many different qualities to, for example, city living, and that has drawbacks as well as benefits.

So please excuse this post as it will most probably be very stream of thought based - I'll try and keep it coherent!

I spent some time last year in a very well-to-do area of England last year, for the first time ever. I was invited to an event by my friends' employers, which was incredibly generaous of them. I met some amazing people there - mostly public school educated, with an absolute air of confidence. They chatted away about nothing at all during the entire time. It was educational for me. They were incredibly generous with money and about the fact I was a fish out of water with people that lived in a world completely removed from anything I could ever have expected to experience. But it was a bit like candy floss. There was no real substance to it.

Socially shetland is more like puff candy (does anyone remember that? Its a more rustic version of a crunchie). No one here is really accomplished at the kind of small talk I experienced there, in some ways its much more honest in a 'rough around the edges' way.

I'm not sure how that translates to happiness. I was going to say that you know you can rely on people to be there when you need them, but I think that is also true of where I was. But I feel that it would maybe be in a different way. Up here I could go to my friends and cry and cry if I needed to, and that they would be totally there for me. And when I say friends, there would be quite a wide network of people I could call on if I needed it, and know I could trust, from friends I have had for years to parents of kids at my kids school to colleagues to neighbours to family and their neighbours. It has its downsides because you can't get away from people that you know, and everything you do can (and probably will) be scrutinised by others.

But you know, there is no fear here. A single woman can go home late at night without thinking twice about 'is the cab driver safe' or 'can I was through this park alone', without having to look back to hear where the footsteps are coming from. There have been incidents of rape, of drinks being spiked and of assaults. But they are few. 'Rush hour' here means that you might have an extra five minutes on your journey time (admittedly not community spirit related). I'm not sure if it means that people are happier, but it possibly means that they are more content.

I am surprised and delighted to already have two comments on my first blog entry!

Point taken though - I first came across the article due to a reference about it in my local paper, and I read it in the same light as the paper was written. It may not be an entirely negative view of Shetland, but it is certainly unflattering in the extreme. Shetland has many 'soothmoothers' that have chosen to live here, so it can't be all bad!

Having said that - there is much in the article that is actually not true or very much an over exaggeration - for example, the report of the oil industry having collapsed is blatantly false.

Interestingly, the journalist that wrote the article was quite willing to talk to our local journo's about the article, but the gentleman quoted was nowhere to be seen...

I was born, bred and currently live in the 'most depressing place in the British Isles' according to the Birmingham Post - although on the web they have changed the title of the article.

http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/birminghampost/news/tm_objectid=16943968%26method=full%26siteid=50002-name_page.html

Much of the falsehoods and half-truths that are represented within the article are reported to have come from Roger Casemore, allegedly an academic, and someone that came to Shetland to set up courses in Counselling and Psychotherapy as a director of the University that accredits the courses. Surely that makes it fairly abhorrent that he takes reasonable statistic and twists it into something that it isn't - and what it isn't is unique to Shetland. 26% of Shetland inhabitants have had some mental health symptoms - which is what would be expected as that is in line with national figures.

Now, it is fairly obvious that he has taken a dislike to Shetland and yes, our weather for example can be absolutely shocking. But when you consider that we are on the same line of latitude as Alaska then its maybe not all that suprising - in fact it could be regarded as surprising that our weather is actually not all that bad in comparison!

So what can you take from the article?

Well, Mr Casemore doesn't like Shetland. Apart from that? I would take nothing at all, as untruths like us being in the Arctic Circle and that we suffer 'emotional poverty' when in fact we have a much higher degree of community spirit than many people on mainland Britain will have experienced makes the article in its entirety unreliable at best.