大象传媒

Like in much of the rest of the country, council workers are on strike today. The library is shut, there are no buses to Point, neither to Tolsta. Both routes are provided by the Comhairle [Comhairle nan Eilean Siar = Western Isles Council for non-locals], and therefore subject to the strike. Refuse collection is also disrupted, but one of the local restaurants resolutely put its bins out last night. I won't name names. The Town Hall is also closed, which forced the Stornoway Trust to relocate its polling station to its own Estate Office in Percival Square.

Today is the day trustees are elected to the Stornoway Trust. This body was set up in 1923 to manage the Stornoway Estate. After Lord Leverhulme decided to part with Lewis and Harris, he offered the lands to its people as a gift. Only those in Stornoway decided to take him up on the offer. The people in the parishes of Barvas, Uig and Lochs by all accounts did not trust his motives, so got landed with absentee landlords, which was worse than Leverhulme. At least he had ideas to enhance the island's economy. The people living on the estate elect their trustees by secret ballot.
The Stornoway Trust estate stretches from Arnish in the south to Tolsta in the north, a distance of 15 miles. It also reaches from Tiumpan Head in Point [the Eye Peninsula] in the east to the moors in the centre of the island where nobody lives permanently.

The Stornoway Trust is currently involved with the first stirrings of windfarms in Lewis. They are involved with leasing land to windpower developers. A site near Arnish has been earmarked, and there was talk of a windfarm along the Pentland Road, which stretches from Stornoway to Breasclete near Callanish. The pre-requisite for any major developments in terms of windpower, the electricity transmission line from Ullapool to Beauly, and on to Denny (near Stirling) is very controversial. If that is not in place, then there is no point having a windpower development. The current electricity link (through Skye) has got nowhere near sufficient capacity to take all the power to the Central Belt.