JGHR

Working for a living perhaps?

Perhaps it isn't a simple 'lifestyle choice' for everyone though Bob. Perhaps the outer isles is home to some of those in the community, as it has been to their ancestors for as many generations as can be counted.

Exactly right. The annual voar redd up for example has its roots in an initiative started by the Unst Community council circa early 1980s. If you have community council with members and staff who are prepared to take initiative and drive ideas forward they can make things happen on fairly limited budgets.

Hydrogen is a good idea and we will most certainly see much more commercial use of it in the future. As AT points out its difficult stuff to transport and store by compression or liquefaction. The amount of energy required in the compression and liquefaction process is approximately 40% of the lower heat value of the hydrogen gas, so using these techniques the overall energy efficiency becomes very low. The third storage method currently in use is absorption into a metal hydride solid. This method provides better overall energy efficiency but the resulting solid material is very heavy using the presently available materials, this of course makes transportation expensive. One way to solve the storage/transportation problem is to ‘burn’ the hydrogen fuel on the same site as you produce it thereby removing the need for transport or storage. This of course requires additional investment in the form of a hydrogen power station and the need for an interconnector cable is still there. I’m fairly sure that if you ask Alstom, or Solar or any other turbine manufacturer they will sell you a gas turbine which will burn hydrogen just fine and the cost need not be prohibitive. Indeed when compared to the overall proposed figures of the VE project I suspect the cost of a turbine will be relatively small. I don’t think that you will see anyone burning hydrogen in gas turbines anytime soon however. Any hydrogen based generation system is much more likely to use fuel cell technology due to the vastly improved efficiencies. Hydrogen is no more or less dangerous than any other flammable gas that is in regular use today, propane, methane, butane, acetylene etc. It has a lower ignition energy than all but acetylene or carbon disulphide and a very wide explosive range, but it has a high ignition temperature so with sensible precautions it does not pose any greater risk. Indeed because it is lighter than air any leak will rise and rapidly disperse, while heavier than air substances such as propane, butane, petrol vapour etc will accumulate in low lying areas and present an explosion risk for an extended period of time making them more dangerous in that respect.

Blame the EU. Around about 2000/2001 the EU introduced a clean air directive which required the member states to tighten up the amount of nasty emissions from the cars on their roads. Brussels gave the member states until 2005 i think to meet the new directive. What this meant was that from 2005 the diesel you put in your car could not contain more than 150ppm of sulpher. This in turn meant that the oil refineries had to install expensive new treatment facilities to reduce the sulpher content of their diesel fuel to meet the new EU limits. Someone had to pay for that expensive investment and as usual its the end user, ie you, at the bowser. Its from about 2005 IIRC that the cost of diesel started exceeding the cost of petrol and that, along with good old fashioned market forces as muckle joannie points out, is what has driven the cost up.

In Australia the indigenous population is allowed to hunt snakes, wallaroos, turtles, parrots, and any endangered species as and when they want because it is their 'native right' My father, grandfather, great grandfather and likely all that came before them have always gone in the troot burn at this time of year. Do I have a ‘native right’ to continue this tradition? If I don’t should I? And if I do how would it stand up in a court of law?

I suppose what I am having trouble with is the assertion that 'others' as in some organisation without connection to Shetland, will build the wind farm if VE dont, and therefore the opportunity will be lost to bring benefit to the coonty coffers and subsequently Shetland as a whole. I dont see how this could happen if the land owners say no, and if the land owners are the coonty its less likely that they can be bought out for vast fortunes by the unscrupulous ‘other’ party. Whoever that might be.

I am heard oh slokin trist, although i widdna say dat mysel. Wid it still be appropriate tae use slok for an electric light? I certainly widdna, but if it wis a tilly or idder lamp dan i mibee wid. Also, is a fire slokkit if he burns 'imsel oot reddir as gets smoared we weet paets or by bairns proagin 'im we da poker or interferin we da damper?

Slok - du's slokkit da fire, what is da origin oh slok? I wanted tae use an equivalent wird in a report i wis writin an da best I could come up we for a translation wis smother. I'm only ever used slok in da fire context, i widdna say fur example, 'boy tak yun bag aaf oh dy heid afore du sloks dysel'

Now I have no objection to folk making obscene amounts of money from harebrained schemes, especially so if it means the coonty have more money available to hand out to other folk for their own harebrained ideas, nor have I any particular like or dislike for heathery bruggs, whaups or floors, but some of the stuff i hear from VE doesn’t add up. If VE are refused permission to build the wind farm how will it be possible for 'outsiders' to come to Shetland and gain permission to build the thing against the will of the landowner, crofter and any other body with a legal right to occupy the ground, and then scurry off sooth again with all the money and benefits? What is the legal mechanism that would allow that to happen? If the above were indeed possible why does anyone think that SSE are bothering to faf around with the coonty and the Burradale crofters? Would it not make far more commercial sense for them (SSE) just to come up on the boat whenever it takes their fancy, build the wind farm and not worry about sharing any of the vast profits with the local yokels? Of course it would, and if they thought that this project was as sure a fire money spinner as we are led to believe and they were able to do without local input then that is exactly what they would be doing.

What were dey thinking, three upstaunders at d'sam time!! No good can come of it. http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/2010/August/news/Kirk%20moderator%20joins%20Aith%20lifeboat.htm

But surely if folk see them and slow down they, the Police, have achieved their objective have they not? That is of course if their objective is indeed to make the roads safer by encouraging people to drive within the speed limit. If however their objective is to fine as many people as possible for speeding, well I guess they are better off out of sight. In Brisbane they advertise on the radio where the speed radars are, so of course people drive slower at those locations and a useful objective is met.

An owld felted ruf maks the best fire wid, a splendid smell frae da felt and boals oh black reek and sparks, failing dat, becis dey are likly few and far atween nooadays, hydro poles mak a fine smell when you burn dem but da fumes frae da creasote can make you a bit heedlight

I mind a fish and chip van that came to Unst too on a Sunday afternoon, I winder if it was the same wan. Most have been in the mid seventies just after the ferries came I suppose, dont know who had it though. I also mind, Clivocast Dairy milk delivered daily in waxed cartons, the empties made splendid fire lighters,the scallop shell dump in Mid Yell, the scrappy on the way into Lerwick, when doing 60 was going fast, bordering on madness infact, when bairns didna need seatbelts in the backseat, infact it was OK for the barins to go in the boot if you had an estate, or to stand up in the front seat, they would likely hang you for that nooadays, when you needed a hammer to flatch a beer can, and when a penny wis dat big you couldna close your naev aboot 'im.

If I still lived in Shetland every one of those changes would directly affect me personally and I would still be happy to see them made. However since I live in Brisbane Australia nothing the SIC does makes a blind bit of difference to me personally.

I agree service level must be reduced or in some cases removed altogether, here's my list of austerity measures Get rid of the essy kerts and community skips and close down rova head dump/ recycling centre. Open up all the local dumps again(Vidlin Bixter Watlee, wherever else they were) and permit folk to dump stuff ower the banks like we used to do. There is no better sunday afternoon oot for a young boy than hockin among all the bruck at the dump. Sport and Leisure Department? Shut it down, the PT teachers can surely manage that. I have no idea if bairns at the school get a menu to choose their denner frae, but if they do, get rid of it. Why do they need a choice? One main course of totties and meat, and some kind of pudding with custard should be perfectly sufficient. Stop sending the ferry men to endless training courses for meaningless tickets at the NAFC, just employ men who can already manage a boat, god keens, dey are plenty of dem. They could cram far more cars onto the ferries than they do and reduce the number of sailings by half. When the ferries first came I mind the ferry men used to physically shunt the back end of your car sideweys across the deck to squeeze you on. Nethin bad ever came oh it. Nooadays they can hardly risk to put the cars two abreast. Infact while we're at it make the ferry service run from 8am til 5pm only. If that all sounds a bit extreme well its how it used to be and it wisna actually that bad.

Dunno about hundreds of thousands but I expect it would save a few if David Cameron thought that removing the British troops would prevent another being dropped on Manchester the following week

The street vendors will have to evolve to survive in the new Tescos environment. Another local business which may feel the Tesco pinch is JWG Wholesale, if that is what they are called nowadays. When I was home last summer I stayed at a guest house with attached restaurant in Lerwick and the proprietor told me he does all his shopping at Tesco because its cheaper than the wholesellers. A pulling up of socks across the board in the Lerwick market place will be no bad thing IMHO.

This is a good question, does anyone know this statistic? I would be interested to see it. Also has anyone researched if parents would be prepared to contribute to the running costs of the schools they are passionate about keeping open? I suspect the pupil numbers would not be high enough to make a wholly fee funded school viable but if parents were prepared to contribute a percentage of the running costs the cash strapped council could maybe scrape up the rest. If something is worth having, its worth paying for I always think.

I suspect that SSE are not quite as confident about this projects commercial viability as the VE spin doctors would have us believe. SSE are a large corporate enterprise, their first and foremost priority, in common with all corporations, is generating returns for their shareholders, not for the people of Shetland. IF SSE thought this project was a sure fire money sinner why would they bother taking the SIC and the Burradale outfit into partnership? They wouldn’t, unless they had another good reason for doing so. SSE have the money and the expertise to execute this project without VE so why do they need them as partners? Perhaps because they see that it lessens their commercial exposure to a level they are comfortable with, or maybe because they cannot just front up in Shetland and start building windmills whenever they want, despite what VE spin tells you.

I hae in my mind dat i'm read 'im, I can hardly mind though, 1993 is a start ago noo.

Yea, if you waanted tae ax someen t' gae you a lenn o' sumtheen, you might ging an aalie aboot 'im... Laek 'cuily aboot' dan? Bit maybe no hardly sae intimate.... I tink you aullie up an cullie aboot, 'du better see if du can aullie 'im up'. Mibee frae da eengleesh wird ally 'geng du an cullie aboot 'er'