A look back at events of 2002

October

• NorthLink¹s first day of operation in Orkney was memorable for all the wrong reasons, when the company's Stromness phone line went down, and call centre lines were completely overwhelmed.
  
  Callers reported long delays in getting through to NorthLink to confirm or make bookings, and were diverted to a call centre which did not have direct link with NorthLink¹s reservations department.
• Burray parents resumed peaceful protests on Orkney Islands Council's doorstep more than two years after they campaigned to save their closure threatened school.
  
  Their demonstration was prompted by a vote at an OIC policy and resources committee meeting to delay building a new Burray school for a year and bring the creation of a community school for Rousay forward instead. A group of councillors were accused of subjecting people in Burray to "mass community stress" by voting to postpone the rebuilding of the local school for a year - a decision which was reversed by the OIC.
• Almost 4,400 people took advantage of an open day aboard the New NorthLink vessel Hrossey at Kirkwall pier.
• The campaign of opposition to the threatened closure of the Stromness depot of the Northern Lighthouse Board stepped up a gear this month when Orkney¹s MP Alistair Carmichael called for a debate in the House of Commons on the subject of cost cutting within the Department of Transport.
• Scapa Dental Centre announced that they were to go fully private with the two remaining dentists at the Centre set to take in hundreds of thousands of pounds from the move which left 6,500 people in Orkney without an NHS dentist.
• Councillors agreed to allocate £50,000 in the financial year 2005/06 towards the preparations for building a new care home in the Linked South Isles of Burray and South Ronaldsay.
• Athletes hoping to attend the 2003 Natwest Island Games in Guernsey accused the Orkney Island Games Association of having a "village mentality", following their efforts at organising travel to the event.
  
  The criticism came from Orkney Athletics Club, whose chairman Norman Shearer said that the travel arrangements being done by OIGA for the trip to Guernsey were of a poor standard. Chairman of OIGA, Mrs Karen Williams, said that a number of individual Orkney teams were organising their own travel arrangements, after discovering cut-price deals over the Internet.
• It was claimed that the delay in completing the new terminal at Scrabster could be costing the contractor £50,000 a week in penalties. The claim appeared in the trade journal New Civil Engineer.
• Orkney MS sufferer Biz Ivol said that her disease had become almost unbearable to live with, claiming that suicide could be her final protest. She claimed that a lack of care had forced her to spend up to 18 hours a day in bed, and was considering taking her own life.
• NHS Orkney were given Scottish Executive permission to recruit two more salaried dentists in a bid to alleviate the crisis facing patients in the islands.
• The NorthLink ferry Hrossey completed an epic journey in October with a fairly full compliment of passengers when the ship arrived in Aberdeen 16 hours after it left Orkney. The vessel left the county just before 2am two-and-a-half hours late and arrived in Aberdeen at 6pm in the evening.
• Twenty dead grey seals were washed ashore at the Pool of Cletts in South Ronaldsay. All of the mammals, most of which were pregnant females, had been shot.
• Kirkwall fishmongers William Jolly claimed they faced ruin, blaming NorthLink for refusing to carry their raw product down to the county from Shetland. However, NorthLink countered that the problem was with the hauliers, who were not providing an adequate service for customers with small and part-container loads.
• Orkney's retained firefighters announced that they would not be joining thousands of their full-time colleagues in strike action. The decision by 40 part-time staff at the Kirkwall and Stromness stations led to widespread relief around the county.
• It was confirmed that a seal discovered dead in Orphir had died of the deadly Phocine Distemper Virus (PDV), which killed thousands of common seals in the North Sea in 1988.
• Orkney Rugby Club were drawn against BT Premiership outfit Heriot¹s FP in the third round of the BT Scottish Cup.
• Orkney and Shetland MP, Mr Alistair Carmichael, called for the Transport Minister to force the North Lighthouse Board to co-operate over the proposed closure of the Stromness depot. He asked the Department of Transport to use their powers under the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 to make the Northern Lighthouse Board disclose information which Mr Carmichael requested in September.
• The North Ronaldsay dyke which keeps the native sheep on the shore, where they feed off the seaweed, fell victim to storms towards the end of October. Around 500 yards of the dyke parts of which date back to the 18th century was damaged in various sections during high winds.