Capeesh

The way I read it is Holyrood only gets involved if the planning rejection is appealed. Is this not right?

Interesting development with Alex Salmond and others setting up another indy supporting party to stand on the list in the May election, the big questions are...Will they secure enough votes to pick up seats and who will they take seats from if they do? Every party, including the indy ones, are in full panic mode so who knows what’ll happen?

People who live and work here - Yes People who don’t - No Simples

Agreed, the roundabout seems to work fine, even at the busy times around 5 o'clock weekdays I can get the way I want to go whatever direction I'm travelling. On foot crossing at the sound exit seems easy enough, Could they use traffic lights and pedestrian crossings near the approaches, maybe, not sure, it might make things better. What are they proposing?

Stupid decision, at the start of the pandemic there was several examples of major outbreaks on cruise liners. The Spanish Flu more than a century ago was spread with troop ships going to the Western front. Will we ever learn from our mistakes?

£2.6 Million for this Downing St media room renovation???? The old Hamnavoe Hall looked better than this, all it's missing is a dozen electric bar heaters around the ceilings!

Doffing the cap to a family of privileged toffs is completely mental.

Never understood the idea that the Royal family should be kept to keep the tourists coming in. For the money these spongers are on we could build a theme park in every town and village in Britain, I'm sure that would bring in more ££££ than looking at the locked gates of Buckingham Palace or Balmoral, we could even keep the soldiers with the Bearskins for the photo ops if we wanted too, they're only on around 28k a year.

One of the problems is the way the national grid charges suppliers is way out of date when you take renewables into consideration. This link explains it better than I could... https://thecommongreen.scot/2016/09/12/grasping-the-grid/. The gist of it, as far as I understand it, was it made sense before renewables to build the infrastructure close to population centres and take the fuel to them, (coal, oil, gas,uranium), the further away from those massive power stations and population centres = higher infrastructure/transmission loss costs = suppliers have to pay higher charges to supply the grid. This gives suppliers an incentive to build their power stations closer to the people who use the most. This is completely turned on its head when it comes to wind generation. Looking at the maps of transmission charges for suppliers and who pays most for electricity, links... https://images.app.goo.gl/zkzYWEd6Yyq6dMiS7 https://images.app.goo.gl/W8TwvB71hcu4D3By8 It seems to me the elephant in the room for our council looking for change in the way electricity is charged is a political one. If you superimposed the map where electricity is cheapest and the map where suppliers have incentives to build power stations against a map where most MP's are elected my guess is there would be a convergence which means persuading any UK government, Tory or Labour to change the status quo would be problematic.

You don't find it strange that billions of ££££ of our money was funneled to tory chums with no experience in PPE?

The covid PPE procurement scandal is corruption on an epic scale. When we break the law we expect to be fined or jailed, not so it seems if you're in government, nowadays they don't even have the decency to resign. https://goodlawproject.org/news/

The countries that have succesfully eliminated the virus have shut their borders with strict quarantine measures on arrival for anybody wanting entry, anything less doesn't seem to work, the Faroese example in Muckle Oxters link suggests a single test on arrival definitely doesn't work, the twin negative tests 6 days apart has been more succesful but as Colin says it's still not enough to guarantee 0 cases without some kind of quarantine in place. Personally I think they're going to stick with suppression and continuing to put measures in place to try and keep any new strains at bay until a large proportion of us are vaccinated.

EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zones) are for independent sovereign states not autonomous regions. For example the 'Falkland Islands EEZ' is the UK's EEZ, The 'Faroese EEZ' is Denmark's EEZ. If Scotland won independence they would have their own EEZ. It's up to the sovereign independent state to decide what they want to do with their EEZ. The big fat lie that Wir Shetland tried to fool us with is this... "Mr Tulloch sets out a case for autonomy based on Shetland’s “unique” position as an island group, that would see Shetland controlling the resources of its own 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). This would include the vast bulk of fossil fuels and a majority of the most productive fishing grounds at present in the UK EEZ." link here...https://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2015/12/28/wir-shetland-sends-explanation-to-islands-minister I remember saying on here to supposed supporters of Shetland autonomy that we'd have more chance of a Faroese style of autonomy in an independent Scotland and was shot down in flames, then lo and behold a few months later I see Leslie Riddoch, a vociferous supporter of Scottish independence and admirer of the Scandanavian approach to government chairing a meeting in Shetland about Shetland autonomy.

I can understand our council using Scottish independence to try and leverage more funds from central government whether it's Edinburgh or London. I think playing the two governments against each other is a high risk strategy and the people doing it are way out of their depth but that's just my humble opinion. What I really don't like is being sold a pup with pie in the sky promises. One being the bizarre belief that autonomy means the UK government would suddenly forget about the £2.5 trillion debt and bankrupt English councils and take the revenues they currently collect and blow annually from the waters around Shetland and gift them to us. (copyright Wir Shetland).

Lets have a look at how the UK government treats councils in England to see if our council is onto a winner with Boris... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55754882

How come the areas of the country that provide a surplus charged the most for electricity? https://images.app.goo.gl/FdqCCV7FjXoVYNXD8 and...Why are grid transmission charges higher the further you get from London? https://images.app.goo.gl/BpjzPjgFrV29Y6m46

They're thinking about training Space Cadets in Unst now? Am I the only person waiting for the punchline?

An independent Scotland could copy Denmark, on all measures their pension system scores better than ours, now I think of it, why stop there? The small independent Nordic countries seem to do everything better than us.

The UK has the lowest state pension in the developed world, if all those countries can manage it why can't we? https://www.ageuk.org.uk/latest-news/articles/2017/december/lowest-state-pension/

@Davie P I understand and share your preference for representative democracy v's direct democracy, the only country I can think of who seem to make a form of direct democracy work is Switzerland, (average 4 referendums a year). I can't see any desire to have referendums on every major subject but I see no problem having a referendum when all other democratic avenues have been exhausted as is the case right now in Scotland. As for time scale there is precedent in the UK right now, in the Good Friday Agreement a timescale of 7 years between referendums on Irish unification was agreed. Mandate 1 - Westminster elections - a majority of independence supporting MP's from Scotland. Mandate 2 - Scottish elections - a majority of independence supporting MSP's in a parliament that uses a voting system designed to prevent these majorities happening. Mandate 3 - The Scottish parliament voting in favour of holding a referendum on independence (postponed due to Covid). Mandate 1 would've been enough 35 years ago when Maggie Thatcher said this... "Scotland doesn't need a referendum on independence. All she needs to do is send a majority of Nationalist MP's to Westminster to have a mandate for independence." Mandate 2 and 3 should definitely fulfill democratic requirements, if not for independence then surely to hold a referendum. We should know better than most what happens when you refuse a democratic route to independence, the former British Empire is full of examples, spoiler, it never works.

I'm glad to hear it, does that mean if independence parties win a majority on May 6th you'll be happy for them to fulfill the mandate they've been given?

Democracy never stands still, people change their minds, voters die and new ones take their place, policies change, the world around us changes etc. The people who want to prevent the people from voting can never be described as democrats, it's as simple as that.

The democratic argument is a bit easier to follow for laymen like me. I would be genuinely interested if anybody can refute this claim... Blocking, or attempting to block a democratic route to Scottish independence is an impossible position for anybody who wants to call themselves a democrat.

If the majority of the Scottish electorate vote for parties supporting independence that's democracy in action. If those parties use their mandated majority in the Scottish parliament and vote to hold a referendum on independence that's democracy in action. A referendum is a further democratic event designed to guage the will of the electorate (it also removes the doubt that Urabug raised regarding voters that vote for independence parties but don't support independence). If Westminster refuses then you tell me, what democratic route to independence is left?

How would it be illegal?