Tiny Island declares Dependence from UK and Europe

The whole of the UK government's authority in Shetland rests on the assumption that Shetland is part of Scotland. My research over the past 6 years or so into Shetland's unique history leads me to the inescapable conclusion that it never happened - and that it could never have happened.

If I am right (and so far, nobody has proved me wrong), the implications are simply huge.

• It means that the UK government never had the right to appropriate Shetland's seabed and license oil companies to extract the oil.
• It means they never had the authority to use Shetland's fisheries as a bargaining chip to enter the EEC.
• It means that Shetland has been subject to a massive fraud perpetrated at the highest level for hundreds of years.
• It means that Shetland could not have been incorporated into the UK, let alone the EU.
• It means that Shetland's true status is that of a Crown Dependency with the right to make its own laws, raise its own taxes (if necessary) and do all the things that any offshore island can do.

HIS plan to declare independence from the UK and create his own state on a tiny island off Shetland may sound like the plot of a quaint Ealing comedy.

But Stuart Hill's quest to turn the windswept crag of Forewick Holm into the autonomous Crown Dependency of Forvik has been dealt serious blows by two timeless adversaries: mother nature and the taxman.