My psyche liked all the different things you had to do
Recorded 1 month ago
About this recording
In this recording Bill Fernie talks about Caithness.org, the community website he founded with his son Niall, as well as reflecting on his time as a councillor and his role as a healthcare campaigner as chairman of Caithness Health Action Team (CHAT).
Bill was born in 1948 in “one of the slums of Edinburgh” before the family moved to Portobello. He left school at 15 with no qualifications but later studied at night school.
His first job was as a Post Office messenger boy, then he sat his civil service exams and eventually, after further studies, joined the tax office, or Inland Revenue as it was known. He moved to Wick in 1982 and covered Caithness, Sutherland, Orkney and Shetland.
He served as a Highland Council member for the Wick area 14 years until, in his own words, “finally getting kicked out in 2017”. Bill says: “I did enjoy being on the council because I think my psyche liked all the different things that you had to do – masses of information! Plus I liked the fact that you could go and ask officials about a problem that maybe one of your constituents had, try and find the answer, find out if there was a way of sorting it or not.
“One of the things I look back fondly on was achieving the new Wick High School and the surrounding campus… I’m quite pleased that I went through endless meetings with officials about different aspects of the school – not least of which was getting the finance.”
He also talks about the origins of Caithness.org, and how its extensive pictorial coverage of community events helped the website become increasingly popular. “Taking photographs really put Caithness.org on the map,” Bill explains, “and every time I increased the output the numbers just took off. For several years that happened, really until the advent of smartphones when everybody had a camera in their pocket and Facebook had come along and social media began to take over all the things that I was doing.”
Bill was among those at the forefront of the North Action Group in 2004, seeking to safeguard Caithness maternity provision. Then came CHAT, which has been campaigning since 2016 to retain healthcare services in the county and to reverse the downgrading of the maternity unit in Wick.
“We had these big demonstrations in Wick and Thurso,” Bill recalls. “That really gave it a lot of publicity, and probably a big headache for the health board, but they’ve stuck to their guns ever since.”
Bill is no longer involved in CHAT but he points out: “I think CHAT is still doing a very good job by highlighting the issues.”
Bill’s late wife Maggie was a nurse at Caithness General Hospital.
Bill continues to serve as a director of the HI-Scot credit union. He says: “I’m quite interested in finance and how that can help people.”
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