OhFio

  Most days I can walk through the Stromness street of the, ‘best place to live’, and tourist brochure fame and meet the same man, who as a boy taunted and ridiculed a seven year old black foster child who was living with a family in the town. Around 1969. I don’t blank that man, I say, ‘hello’. There were very few black people in Orkney when I was young and I knew none. But a ‘black’ doctor saved my 6 month old sister’s life in Aberdeen Royal infirmary. She was rushed there with an incurable illness. So from the age of two I grew up with a knowledge of ‘blackness’ that came from outwith Orkney. I still did not understand what the term ‘black’ meant. Ours was a family that stood out as commies, lefties, non church going and ‘dangerous’ to the settled status quo in Orkney. ‘Deep’ Orcadians viewed us suspiciously. I knew that Paul Robeson was the son of a slave, a Shakespearean actor and singer, and about how the American dream of the ‘land of the free’ was a myth. Paul Robeson

 I intended to re-write this in a more accessible form by hey ho just didn't get the time and as Scot Gov tend to not publish responses they dont like thought I wouldn't take that chance.  Consultation Submission on the proposals to implement HPMAs in Scottish waters. General Observations and comments on the proposals : Please note that the responses below are to be taken as responses to all questions relating to all parts of the consultation and not confined to policy framework and site selection guidelines questions only. I most strongly and vehemently oppose the proposals for HMPAs in Scottish waters. As a professional fisheries representative having worked with Scottish government and Marine Scotland for over 10 years to build professional, evidenced, transparent processes towards inclusive, consensus driven and stakeholder-invested decision making, I have never seen a worse presentation of a consultation. I was part of the original process, building of the initial