Teth aile nan Eilean Siar

Calton finds it really hard to believe the unnamed Scottish Government spokesperson who said, apropos the proposed Western Isles interconnector, that "Improved grid connections will enable the huge renewable energy resources of Scotland's islands to create jobs - up to 3,500 jobs in the Western Isles, almost 2,900 in the Shetlands and over 4,500 in the Orkney Islands by 2030." In the construction phase maybe but permanently? When, as Calton has already pointed out, a seven turbine windfarm can be managed by just two part-time technicians? If you do the maths, that means that there would need to be about 25,000 turbines on the Western Isles to give that level of full-time employment. That's 21 turbines per square mile and 8% of the total Western Isles population working on them. Well, they'll probably need to be right enough, because their tourism industry will have suffered the same fate as the White-throated Needletail and there will be no birdlife left anywhere on the islands - just a lot of sad little corpses littered around the bases of the turbines. Just as well the BBC filmed 'Hebrides' when they did. Or maybe the unnamed spokesperson is talking a lot of hot air?