Fly-on-the-Wall
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whalsa reacted to a post in a topic: Lerwick town centre
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Vexed to hear that Osla's is on the market.................. Maybe Sandwick couple Emilie and Ben Gray can encourage more of those people who backed their campaign to buy two £45 shares in Brewdog. See ShetNews article from 13 November - this bunch could perhaps give Lerwick a shake up on customer service. This could be the start of something good, not just another nail in the coffin of Commercial Street. How's about some positivity and 'festive cheer'
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The sky at night (meteors, Iridium flares, the moon)
Fly-on-the-Wall replied to Colin's topic in Science & Technology
There's something special about watching a meteor shower and I was unaware of this one. Let's hope all the rain forecast will have passed through and we have a nice clear sky. Thanks -
bon scott reacted to a post in a topic: Shetland Home Company
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Queuing........ don't they just go round and round in circles until they can get parked?
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Fly-on-the-Wall reacted to a post in a topic: Shetland Home Company
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'Sort out your pricing' Perhaps they have Mrs Miggins...... they probably need to keep the prices high to help subsidise all the jaunts that's happening. Fair enough HIE is helping to fund the trips, this won't be 100% funding - COPE will have to pay its share? I guess that now that COPE knows their main funding is secure for the foreseeable future, they are quite within their rights to go and talk about their successful social enterprise, I'm just surprised that they feel a trip to Milan is essential. What's more important................ clients or glory?
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I heard at the weekend that the manufacture of Stewarts Rum is supposedly ceasing completely, as far as I'm concerned no other dark rum can match Stewarts.............what are they thinking? Pussers is a good rum for the odd occasion, not for an everyday tipple. I am suitably horrified and saddened with this news ((((
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Staff can't be sacked unless there are reasonable grounds to do so, so even if you think he was a lovely man he must have done something seriously wrong............ Wrongly sacking an employee would only give the Manager a whole lot of grief if the union were to get involved. I'm sure that's the last thing any manager wants or needs.
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Freefield Centre 'Disposed' of?
Fly-on-the-Wall replied to Voice of the Mysterons's topic in Shetland News
Isn't it a case that if Buildbase are owners of the land, that they have the rights to a building that is sitting on their property if they are no longer receiving rent, regardless of the value? The building can't be in great shakes anyway or the pensioners would never have moved out in the first place - so maybe the easy option for the Council was not to pay rent on the site and then Buildbase would have to deal with a property that the Council can't get rented out, and which ultimately needs serious upgrading. -
My point is that they have an extremely high ratio of staff, I thought the whole ethos of COPE was to provide work placements for adults with learning difficulties. I would dearly love to see COPE employing more people within this spectrum instead of numerous 'normal staff', then I may feel we are getting value for our money................. .
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The question though is not how much it costs to run COPE, it is how they spend the amount of Government Funding - I'll reiterate - on the mere 126 placements/sessions they provide. These sessions give COPE their funding and a contribution to the their turnover. If the people/participants were not there, the staff would have to do the menial work themselves or then they would need to employ more staff. If all the funding and people/participants were removed from COPE, would they have a viable business? I find it quite alarming that without funding, their own income is £547,039.00, and as previously quoted the wages is £594,088,00. The percentage of wages to turnover doesn't make pleasant reading - for a normal business I think the recommended ratio is between 30% - 38%. Even allowing for additional staff to work with their people/participants, I just can't see how COPE has a ratio of 108%. Using their total income (funding and turnover) to wages the ratio still comes in high at 56%. They maybe had a marginal profit in 2014 but if they were not getting all the kindly donated items to sell in the Shetland Home Co, they would certainly be in the red. Coincidently, according to the OSCR link from before, in the previous three years they were running at a loss.
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Fly-on-the-Wall reacted to a post in a topic: Montys Bistro
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Thanks for that Ghostie..... I was only querying the substantial funding to participant/people numbers, not what they do with their own business income. I assume that much of their own income covers quite a large chunk of their wages bill.
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Charitable Trust, independent of Council
Fly-on-the-Wall replied to marlin13's topic in Shetland News
Looks to me like all the SCT Trustees have their own agenda for being on the Board. Like it or not they probably get their views across to the other members when they can't partake in a meeting. -
I've just downloaded the Financial Accounts and you're right Meggie, it does indeed make interesting reading. 'Cope currently employs 45 people (30 full-time equivalent), 8 of whom have disabilities. In addition we provide participant skill development placements for up to 31 people who assist with the enterprise activities as well as gaining important work skills for themselves' 'This in turn has resulted in a reduction of the number of participant placements on offer resulting in a reduction to 126 placements per week from our previous level of 150+' In the Financial Accounts they have 31 people doing 126 placements/sessions Let me get this right - 30 full-time equivalent staff of which 8 have disabilities (at least these guys are getting paid properly for all the hard work they do), this leaves 22 fte staff to provide the skill development placements for up to 31 people. So does COPE class a session as 1 day and the people only attend 4 days a week - 4 sessions/(days) a week x 31 people = 124 sessions. The participant wages bill is only £8468 equating to £162 per week for 31 people this means they only get about £5 a week for all the work they provide COPE. Coincidently, the Enterprise Ready Fund statement said they provided 163 sessions, when and where were these additional 37 sessions conjured up. Looks suspiciously like COPE Catering is not the only ones doing the cooking. I'm beginning to feel these vulnerable people are being exploited by COPE rather than being trained or getting the skilled development to 'move onto secure employment within the other local businesses within the islands' which COPE says it does. Although when you visit the Shetland Home Company some of the placements are just wandering around looking lost and needing something to do, so perhaps COPE are selective with the people that actually get the training. COPE received nearly half a million from Shetland Development Trust (£200,000), Shetland Charitable Trust (£154967) and Shetland Islands Council (£142600) in their accounts to March 2014 to provide these sessions. These placements are helping to run their many businesses and are surely contributing to the turnover received by the company. COPE needs to become more transparent so we see we are getting value for the £500,000. I also note that COPE receive no funding from Orkney Islands Council, is Shetland subsidising the Orkney Soap Shop placements too? I assume Orkney have placements as they are part of COPE Ltd and their business should function in same way as all the Shetland ones.
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Fly-on-the-Wall reacted to a post in a topic: Shetland Home Company
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Meggie reacted to a post in a topic: Shetland Home Company
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oddtablet reacted to a post in a topic: Shetland Home Company
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It states 10 - 15 additional placements - surely this means new placements and not maintaining their existing ones (which they already get funding for). What you need to find out is what COPE classes as a session, a couple of hours, a morning or a day. Taking on 10 new placements of only a couple of hours each week does not amount to much for all the funding received. On my visits to the COPE businesses I have not yet seen any new placements, all the placements have been there for years, so they're not even managing to move them on to 'secure employment with the local community'. Perhaps they don't really want to move them on!!!! You would think that any new placements would be seen in their outlets in order to justify that the grant had been spent accordingly. All the new faces at COPE are staff and there seems to have been quite a few of them over the last year.
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Really Shona, you know what the situation is. This is a biased opinion of a friend is it not.
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Fly-on-the-Wall reacted to a post in a topic: Shetland Home Company
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oddtablet reacted to a post in a topic: Shetland Home Company
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Think you'll find that SCT Trustee James Smith is no longer the Chair of COPE Ltd, it's just a case of SCT not updating their website. If my sources are correct then Neil Jamieson is the Chairman for COPE. Interestingly the lovely Peter Malcolmson has been appointed a new Trustee for SCT - I assume he'll declare a conflict of interest when discussing future funding for COPE.