Mag

I have no time for people who say one thing and do another either Colin, hence my long standing invitation to you to reconcile the apparent contradiction between Pastor Niemollers poem which you quote, and your own quite palpable intolerance towards disenfranchised people.
By all means be critical, but criticise with dignity. Poorly informed and juvenile rambling does damage not only to your own credibility, but also to the good and necessary work which is being done by very many sincere and devoted people who are trying to mitigate as best they can the effects of a truly appalling war in the Middle East.

Tavish Scott quote...
 
"The second option is that he listens to his constituents, real Shetland folk who will give him a fair hearing."
A quick reminder of the election result,
A Lib Dem Majority of 10,000 was reduced to 800, these are your constituents, they are real Shetland folk.
Of course he should have a fair hearing, do it the fairest way possible, Democratically, let the "Shetland he knows" deliver their verdict.

Local Shetland band QUANTANA are trying to get your local support by asking you to vote for them to play at the download festival in June. All you need to do is click on the link and click vote. Please tell all your friends and family. It only takes a few seconds to do. In the past few days they have made it to number 4!! An incredible feat in its own.. But more votes are needed.. You can vote once every 24hrs
To all that support Shetlands community and want to see this band do good, thank you
 
 
http://download.redbullstudios.com/band-2014/quantana/

Driver aware! Road users in road. You could see something but you did not know what it was until you got too close.
 
The trouble I always have is, really it is the pedestrian or cyclist that generally gets killed or injured regardless of fault. It is quite responsibility to be in control of a vehicle. Now that you are aware that there are pedestrians that use the road, best slow down a bit.

Thanks everyone. I am free(ish) now.

Well put. Small communities require services firstly to survive and certainly to prosper. Do people not read the news fact people buy houses and moved to areas only if the have decent services of which education would be at the top of that list

Yes Trowie, I couldn't agree more.
One more thing about these two schools - they actually cost less per pupil than a lot of similar schools that are not under threat. Maybe the council should find out how they do it and pass the information on to other schools.

There are no doubt many people on here who would stay that there should only be one school in Yell, the JHS in Mid Yell, and both Cullivoe primary and Burravoe primary should shut. Mid Yell primary dept has 42 pupils and two teachers.  Cullivoe has 26 pupils and Burravoe has 11 pupils. Travel time would be about 45 mins. which is over the maximum travel time recommended for a primary pupil.
 
Currently the SIC get Grant Aided Expenditure to help run it's rural schools.  This money, as someone has already mentioned, is not ring fenced so basically it is divided up amongst all the schools. The GAE is only for schools with less than 70 pupils and is between £2,500 and £2,900 per pupil depending on the remoteness of the school.
 
If Cullivoe and Burravoe shut it will create a primary dept with 79 pupils, which means the SIC no longer qualify for the GAE, so they lose this money they currently get from the Scottish Government for the two small schools.  Then they will have to employ an extra 2 teachers at Mid Yell because of pupil numbers. Then there's the fact that the new Mid Yell school is not big enough so a portakabin will have to be placed outside the school. Then there's the cost of extra transportation which does not come out of the education budget but is still a cost to the SIC because it comes out of the transport budget.
 
Any "savings" are soon eroded away which leads to the question what is the smallest figure of money which makes it worth while to shut a school?  I personally think that closing Cullivoe and Burravoe might actually cost the SIC money. When a school shuts the children do not disappear they still have to be taught and fed etc so there will be extra costs for the receiving school in resources.
 
As for not having enough money for pens and pencils etc, I have two bairns in secondary and parents are expected to pay for these items and I don't mind doing that.  Our parent council also does fund raising to pay for "extras" in our school  ie. French resources and recorders and music books.  People shouldn't just expect things to be handed to them in times of austerity, if we all share the costs for these items it really doesn't add up to be that much money per family.