Nigel Bridgman-Elliot

> cut pollution by changing from plastic to paper. Assuming it does ! Related link: https://waste-management-world.com/a/danish-epa-plastic-bags-have-lowest-environmental-impact > Danish EPA: Plastic Bags have Lowest Environmental Impact I'm reminded about this kind of solution that could be deployed locally: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-new-device-recycles-plastic-bottles-into-3d-printing-material > This New Device Recycles Plastic Bottles Into 3D-Printing Material I do have a slight interest in the subject as one day I'd like to manufactor vehicles, and it would be nice to have a ready supply of low cost raw materials on my doorstep..

> Personally I'm undecided between laziness and incompetence. Don't forget today's fashionable meme, the Russians did it.. Actually.. that reminds me of a book someone was mentioning in that regard.. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ion-Mihai-Pacepa-Disinformation-Undermining/dp/B00NBG3MM8 > Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism > by Ion Mihai Pacepa Reviews for above: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18145085-disinformation

Don't we got an awful lot of stuff to make fertilizers and plastics from out of that handy fossil fuel stuff ? Related links: http://naturalgasnow.org/fertilizer-made-natural-gas-lifting-world/ > Fertilizer Made with Natural Gas Is Lifting Our World I wonder what other resources we'd use to make that and plastics from instead to be more environmentally sustainable ? Or maybe we'll go to using old fashioned metal to replace plastics. Then things won't snap so easily..

> Anything that's on our doorstep, we're not allowed to have. I believe that is to make sure we never declare independence !

How much do they charge on the ferry for a horse I wonder..

If you put the image of any particular puppy for sale into this image search engine and find it appears all over the place, get suspcious ! https://images.google.com

I wonder how much it would cost for a car park ? Lets say, a very simple one, no tarmac enough room for say, two dozen cars, a way in, a way out. Ground would probably need a little levelling, some extra lose small stones for the surface layer, perhaps a simple drainage ditch around the outside, and some big heavy stones to stop folk driving into the ditches by accident. I was thinking less than £1,000 offhand, so, more than that ?

> Well... surveys, legal costs, roads and planning paperwork, earthworks, subgrades, tar, fencing and drainage too. Great picture by the way, very informative. So.. its a cycle track next to an existing road then.. I wouldn't have thought there would be much to survey looking at the site. Is there much in the way of legal costs ? I would have spent a bit more on earthworks and had to made without that dip in it. A tiny bit of road and planning paperwork perhaps.. Drainage looks to be, as simple and as cheap as it gets. Fencing is also, cheap looking. (One could have reused the old fencing if one wanted to save cash..) It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the costs, as I'm used to seeing folk build roads with nothing more than a bulldozer and a few hours of time. I'm reminded of an organisation I know that wanted to build a greenhouse, got a grant of some £85,000 and managed to get as far as building the base for a greenhouse, and that was it ! They never wanted to talk about the finer points of their budgetting. Meanwhile another group managed a whole greenhouse for something like £12,000, similar size. As at some point in the future I may well find myself needing to build a long driveway, it interests me to understand the breakdown in costs associated with that, and how I might save X or Y by doing various parts of the work myself. Obviously some parts will require paying for, such as planning requirements. Related link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2836835/Businessman-hailed-hero-opening-private-toll-road-set-close-claims-won-t-make-penny-council-finds-660-000-fund-repairs-end-road-closure.html > forced him to spend £25,000 gaining retrospective planning permission. An awful lot of money just to get planning permission for a road ! To they charge by the square metre ?

> I believe it's almost impossible to grow fish in the garden Interestingly I was reading the other month about how onland fish farming is more profitable than at sea ! Related links: https://www.fastcompany.com/3068608/replacing-farms-with-fish-farms-the-odd-solution-to-both-hunger-and-cli > Replacing Farms With Fish Farms: The Odd Solution To Both Hunger And Climate Change https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/04/07/298333029/the-future-of-clean-green-fish-farming-could-be-indoor-factories > The Future Of Clean, Green Fish Farming Could Be Indoor Factories I was also reading how forests are twice as profitable as sheep farming..

> Hardcore. FX [ Looks around at an island made entirely out of hardcore, as if the moon was made of cheese, with it littering the countryside in practically every field. ] Isn't stone about £35 a ton delivered ?

_ > there's a bit more to it than just spreading tar through someone's field What else is needed ?

We already have about 3 months worth of food stocked up as it is. (Building more kitchen cupboards as we speak..) During the Y2K situation I stocked up with a years supply of food and water, plus sewage facalities to deal with what came out the other end ! Practically everyone else I knew had ran away to their overseas property to wait it out.. I suppose technically I now live in an overseas property. One already has to run a stockpile approach to shopping at Tesco as you can go there several weeks in a row and still find the shelves empty of the item you want. (Or months in the case of Cola..) I think its rather a shame that foodbank access for many is now via referral, as I've met folk who really deserved a helping hand and yet couldn't get a referral ! As such in the past, I've given folk food parcels myself. I'm not a great fan of JIT (Just In Time.), I much prefer the old days of big warehouses ! > UK only produces 60% of its food consumption I thought I read someplace we was down to 40% now.. Related links: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/06/more-than-half-of-uks-food-sourced-from-abroad-study-finds > More than half of the UK’s food and feed now comes from overseas https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8021327/Britain-least-self-sufficient-in-food-since-1968.html > how much of the food eaten in Britain is grown here – is 58.9 per cent. That was in 2010, given that our population has gone up since then, but the amount of land for farming has gone down, I'd guess that figure is a bit lower now. > fishermen will be able to catch so much more fish they'll be able to feed us. I notice for some strange reason it seems quite difficult to get cheap fish here, even though we produce a huge amount, why is that ? > why not dig up your garden (if you have one) and start growing your own ? I was hoping to do that when I moved up here, but then I found out its quite difficult to get almost anywhere with a garden bigger than a postage stamp. (Thanks I hear to the crofting laws making it impossible to have anything other than a postage stamp garden.. I guess a left over from the Scottish Clearances to stop us poor folk being difficult by producing our own food..) Though I prefer greenhouses and hydroponics myself. Wasn't they going to reuse that old greenhouse complex in Tingwall ? We appear to have lots of land sitting around doing not a great deal up here, could we not build one of these: https://hydromag.co.uk/industry-insider/thanet-earth/ > A business can NOT just import food without some > sort of agreement between the two governments > no matter how big they are. > > What are the customs arrangements? Considering how good the UK has been at smuggling stuff for many centuries, I can quite imagine we'll be fine with our privateer navy. Related link: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/dec/27/crime-smuggling-alcohol-tobacco On the plus side, if food becomes more expensive, it will help solve the obesity problem in the country. Not to fear though, as I hear from various places, they are willing to sell us food, for example I was chatting to a farmer I know in Uruguay who said the following which may be of interest to some: ------------------- Our speciality is grass fed beef (mostly Herefords and Angus.) Being grass fed, the beef tends to be lean with little in the way of marbling. However, in 2011 the EU passed a directive decreeing that our grass fed beef animals had to be confined on feed lots and fed cereals for at last 90 days before slaughter in order to satisfy unspecified Eurimperial health regs. We sell prime beef internationally for just under one third of CAP prices and on average, world food prices are a bit under half CAP prices. Pre CAP the UK had a most excellent system called Guaranteed Prices. The UK food market was freely available (with the proviso of quality controls) to the entire world and UK farmers agreed minimum prices with MAFF annually on most items (but on a 2 yearly basis for beef.) If the world price exceeded the guaranteed price, the farmers sold their produce and HMG paid farmers nothing but if world price fell to less than the guaranteed price, the farmer would sell his produce, send his receipts to MAFF and get a cheque for the deficit. The system was simple, cheap to run and resulted in cheap food for consumers. ------------------- > as soon as its done they re-jig the place to do an order > of the same product for someone somewhere else to > entirely different specs and standards. > Food is not really much different. That reminds me of a food factory in Cumbria that would first package its food for M&S, and if it failed their quality standards, would repack it for another less concerned customer.. > unable to find workers when we eventually leave the EU. > (if we do ?) no doctors ,nurses or strawberry pickers ect. I remember when I lived in Kent some years ago that local people was fine picking potatoes for example, but nowadays folk don't like hard work I notice. Perhaps if we lowered the benefit rates, suddenly people would find an economic reason to work in such jobs. > also our benefit policies are poorly though out with > regards to encouraging anyone to work. FX [ Nods in complete agreement. ] > As soon as you inform the benefit agency you have got work > ,payment stops although it might be a month until the > first wage packet. How can someone on the breadline > survive a month without money. Worse than that is when the job ends, if you are unlucky, you won't get any benefits for 6 months, and it can take them a year to sort it all out before you get any money at all ! I would far something like Universal Basic Income, so that taking paid work for however long is a simple and uncomplicated procedure, I'm pretty sure it could help boost this countries economany to the next level. > Really do not know how the "immigrants workers " survive Family, friends, people of the same religion/etc. they help each other out. Some cultures also have foodbanks, but you don't need a referral to use one ! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-31557192 ---------- Today, thousands of free Langar meals are served every day in Sikh temples throughout the UK. The Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Southall, thought to be the biggest Sikh temple outside of India, says it alone serves 5,000 meals on weekdays and 10,000 meals on weekends. ---------- Also, you can fit a lot of folk into one cheaply rented room. (I know as I used to live in a such a place in London for over a decade, and yes you can fit 50 people into a 3 bedroom terraced house..)

> the £53,000 project. I have a vague memory somewhere of people commenting about how expensive that appeared for some tarmac. > ReCreate Scalloway What's that about ? FX [ Wonders if someone will do a ReCreate Unst posters that involve rebuilding the railway network on the island..] > details for all Community Councils are cunningly hidden under the 'Minutes' link at the left side Ah ha ! It's like an adventure game isn't it, click on and explore all the links to find the hidden easter eggs.. > hold an event on one day whereby 'locals' were meant to go along and vote for a 'local' project. Ah, so that is how the voting is decided then !? > Another initiative involved online voting ... only it wasn't working properly Quite difficult to get things like that to work well I've noticed. I would have thought postal votes would be a a simple uncomplicated way for all folk to vote. I wonder, can you proxy vote, eg. someone else can vote on your behalf ? Reminds me of voting for a strike, 1,000 workers, 3 turn up to vote, 2 vote for a strike, majoriy vote wins ! > a biased and unfair scheme What would be a better way to do things ? I guess it was done to stop the first come first served approach.

_ > I can see how they're not being helped in the slighest, and often hindered from achieving anything, by lack of cooperation from those the next step up the totem. Reminds me of my time in the civil service. It was very difficult to get anything done. I notice when I looked here: https://www.shetland.gov.uk/communitycouncils/Links.asp I was expecting to find links like this: https://www.facebook.com/ScallowayCC > Scalloway Community Council https://www.facebook.com/Unst-Community-Council-466849940162061/ > Unst Community Council Does anyone have links to all the other ones up here ? It's a shame they aren't all prefixed like "Shetland - Scalloway Community Council' for example, as that would make them easier to find. I notice from the council website it says: > Community Development Fund > > Please note that the budget for this scheme is limited and the application process is competitive. I wonder what the actual development fund amount is then ? > grants toward the new Hoswick to Stove cycle path Oh good, some meat and potato content, excellent to see. (How much did that cost out of interest ?) I wonder, has anyone ever used grant money to have carparks or roads to carparks built ? Just I notice as I travel around, few places to park to enjoy the countryside. (Or shops..)

You might want to edit your amazon link to remove your alcoholic ID reference if you want to be darker. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Darknet-Beginners-Staying-Penetration-testing-ebook/dp/B008AP8TAK

A good example of what happens if you have a roof with stickity out bits and it catches the wind.

Currently reading: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Neural-Network-Recipes-diskette/dp/0124790402 Practical Neural Network Recipes in C++ – 11 May 1993 by Timothy Masters https://www.amazon.co.uk/Competing-Edge-Strategy-Structured-Chaos/dp/0875847544 Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos – 20 May 1998 by Shona L. Brown, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt https://www.amazon.co.uk/Celebrating-Failure-Taking-Mistakes-Thinking/dp/1601630646 Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes, and Thinking Big – 15 Jul 2009 by Ralph Heath https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dilbert-Way-Weasel-Scott-Adams/dp/0752215590 Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel – 3 Oct 2003 by Scott Adams https://www.amazon.co.uk/sphincter-Rule-Civilised-Workplace-Surviving/dp/0749954035 The No A s s h o l e Rule: Building a Civilised Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't – 2 Dec 2010 by Robert Sutton

> All this was done at a cost that was less than the SIC could produce a report (on whether the work was necessary) for. To me that sounds like very good value for money and funding should be increased towards that group of people. Though, it puzzles me why councillors aren't doing that task, perhaps because they don't have the power to do so ? I wonder why funding was cut then to Community Councils ?

> Sandwick Community Council and the work they do for our community. Any examples there ? I'd like to see more carparks built for example, for tourists, and access roads to beaches that currently do not have roads. (Only needs to be a dirty cheap dirt/stone track.) As such, curious about how one might go about making that happen.

If elected, do you get any powers ?

A bit too far for me to cycle from where I am at the moment in the Agarnaith Rangers Camp..

> There must be a far more regular and mundane 'explanation'. I'm sure if there is one, someone will no doubt mention it in public so we are all kept up to speed on the issue. I think they call it PR or something like that. We might even be able to help out, if somehow they are being overcharged for something that one of us happens to know where they can get it cheaper, as I know how overstreached purchasing departments in the civil service/etc. can be, they need every helping hand they can get to cut costs.

> deposit return system Having experienced that elsewhere, it worked wonderfully well, even with empty crisp packets ! Make it pay enough and folk will go around making sure there is no rubbish left ! We might even have to start locking up our bins..

I was just reading about this elsewhere and someone posted a useful link, as such copied here: https://sciencing.com/calculate-wind-load-large-flat-surface-12079539.html > How to Calculate Wind Load on a Large Flat Surface

On Unst this shows extra support straps / brackets holding the roof onto the side of the building, these I rather like. http://www.bridgman-elliot.com/BF4TM5.jpg