Jonathan Wills
Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia
Dr. Jonathan Wills (b. 1947) is a Shetland journalist, author, broadcaster, political activist, SIC Councillor, mariner and wildlife expert, whose colourful career over the past forty years saw him elected as the first student to be Rector of the University of Edinburgh, Muckle Flugga Lighthouse boatman, Scotland correspondent for The Times, Senior Producer at BBC Radio Shetland, and editor of the Shetland Times, before he pioneered the e-media Shetland News. He has also held a number of public posts and has written books for children.
Wills is now a writer and freelance environmental consultant who has specialised in the oil industry for over 25 years. He is the author of A place in the sun - a study of the development of the oil terminal at Sullom Voe in the Shetland Islands of Scotland - and 'Innocent Passage' - a detailed account of the wrecking of the tanker Braer in 1993. A frequent speaker at conferences on oil and the environment, he has also written and broadcast extensively about oil in Alaska. In his 1990 British TV documentary, 'Slick Operators', he revealed that the Exxon Valdez disaster could not have happened if the oil companies had implemented in Alaska the tanker surveillance scheme they had helped to set up in Shetland ten years earlier.
Dr Wills operates a wildlife tourism business around some of Shetland's finest seabird and seal colonies during the summer months, and is an honorary warden of the Noss Island National Nature Reserve. He holds MA and PhD degrees in Geography from the University of Edinburgh.
Political Career
| Councillor Contact Details | |
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| Ward: | Lerwick South |
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| e-mail: | jonathan.wills@shetland.gov.uk |
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Wills is also a SIC councillor for the 'Lerwick South Ward' and was the 1999 Labour candidate for Shetland, in the first elections for the Scottish Parliament.
The results of the election can be seen here.
Previously he had been the Labour candidate for Orkney and Shetland in the two elections held for the UK Parliament, in February 1974 and October 1974. The results of both those elections can be seen here.
He was also an independent SIC councilor for the Whiteness & Weisdale ward from 1993 to 1995
He left the Labour Party in 2001, and entered the Lerwick South by-election as an independent candidate on the 28th February 2008. He subsequently won the election.
Books by Jonathan Wills
- Old Rock - Shetland in pictures
- A Place in the Sun: Shetland and Oil, Mainstream, 1991
- 'Innocent Passage: The Wreck of the Tanker Braer', Mainstream Publishing, 1993
- 'The Travels of Magnus Pole', Chatto & Windus / Canongate Publishing, 1984
- 'Wilma Widdershins And The Muckle Tree: A Shetland Story', Bressabooks, 1991
- 'The Lands of Garth': A short history of Calback Ness, 1978
