Shetland Islands Broadcasting Company

It has been an interesting day with councils, schools, health boards, GPs, the police, the coastguard, parliament, banks and businesses, including in Shetland, which are totally reliant on Microsoft with no back-up system in place, being affected by the global Microsoft email outage.

But things have been improving, with the Shetland Islands Council able to send emails again. Until then the council had advised the use of the phone for those needing to contact council staff directly, or to call the council switchboard. Emails from other local organisations and businesses are also on the move again.

The problem is the digital monoculture, with too many organisations using the same small group of providers for email and the verification that grants access to other services.

Exercise Shopboard, the annual national counter-terrorism preparedness drill developed by the UK government’s Home Office, will be held in Shetland next Thursday.

Audit Scotland’s external auditor Rachel Browne told councillors at a meeting of the Shetland Islands Council’s audit committee that the council needed to “turn up the dial” on the council’s “slow” pace of change. [LDRS]

In Shetland an overflow at Baltasound spilled 83 times last year for a total of 2088 hours but was not reported to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

The folk trio FLIT, with Shetland pianist Amy Laurenson, Hardanger fiddle player Guro Kvifte Nesheim, and harmonica and diatonic accordion player Will Pound, is to headline, on the Saturday night, thw Soundhouse Winter Festival at the end of the month.