smeghead

If people hop in thier cars and are so ignorant to the weather, time of day, visibility, that they neglect to turn thier lights on (lights, not sidelights folks!). I wish them a speedy recovery when they get discharged from the Gilbert Bain, I also hope thier insurers refuse to pay out for the damage to thier cars and egos. Ignorance might be bliss, but it could be someones life your taking in your own hands by being so ignorant as to not put your headlights on. My car has automatic headlights, they generally come on in poor light / visibility, I always check they're on before I set off anyway. Even at work whilst driving I have the headlights on, not because im blind as a bat, but so other drivers are alerted to my presence on the road. As my driving instructor told me all those years ago "It's not your driving you need be concerned about, it's everyone else on the road"

So if I walk through a predominantly ethnic area and get called a 'whitey / insert other derogatory names here' and then I see a child of ethnic decent playing with a white doll/toy, I'd be prefectly within my civil rights to go to the police and have them remove all the 'whitey' propaganda from the local shops/windows/childrens toy baskets, as by alleged definition, it's racist? I'd get laughed the hell out of town. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, it exists everywhere, has done for millennia. But the fact you get people pro-actively out looking for issues to raise and claim are for racist intent, makes me think of them as nothing but a do-gooder with too much free time on thier hands. I never saw a problem with the gollywogs on the jars of marmalade, I dont see a problem with white/black/yellow/green/blue/purple kids toys, or with a countries national flag being displayed in someone's window. I don't see myself as racist either. If you want to look for a proper racist, go petition about the Gaddafi's, Saddam's , David Cameron's and George Bush's of this world. They in my book are but a few of the most racist people I've came across in my life. And don't forget, race isn't just about colour.

This is the kind of joined up thinking Shetland needs just now. Why not do it? Why not go the whole hog and build a micro-refinery and start shipping fuel to faroe,orkney and the western isles? Then the council wouldn't have to worry about high fuel costs, dwindling reserves and revenue streams. Oh wait, da councillors have already spent all the reserves on schemes that have never got off the ground!

Cheers for the update! I appreciate the fact that your pretty busy and wasnt expecting such a detailed update, it's a good thing you take the time to do so Many a person has wasted many an hour attempting navigation through BT's computerised telephone help system to get an answer about anything!

I was wondering if anyone has any more info on this other than the update on the 21st Dec on thier website. I notice that BT are going to be installing ADSL2+ later this year, does this mean that now Shetland has done the hard work, BT are gonna slip in behind them and finally use the capacity of the SHEFA2 interconnect that they have been leasing since the cable was installed? At least we should be able to benefit from the cheaper rate broadband packages that come with unbundled exchanges!

Most routers have a logging facility built into them, just gotta switch it on. Depending on the router, they'll save different amounts of information. Also open up a Command Prompt and type in 'netstat -a' this will show you all open connections on the pc your currently on. Hope that helps ye a bit.

This entire money saving excercise by the council is a farce. They've simply reshuffled the top ranks and put pretty much the same people in the same jobs under different titles, who also took/are in the process of taking the same managers in underneath them. (Why were these jobs not open to anyone to apply for? Closed shop I doot!) They have also been forced into new contracts (which were unwritten at the time, which appeared to include a cut in holidays, working week etc, to justify thier new *cough* lower *cough* salaries). This is why they want to look at single status again; as they cant have the junior staff + manual workers underneath them having more perks (holidays/overtime rates/etc) than themselves. It took them 10 years to get Single-Status written, agreed and signed off on, and now they want to revisit it, rip it up and start again. Way to spend yet more money. I wholly agree with cutting the top earners wages by 5-10k. I also don't understand why the councillors themselves get such a high rate + expenses ontop; Everyone else has to pay to get to work whether it be by foot/car/bus/etc but they get an expenses account to cover it and if they have to go south the council should be providing adequeate travel for them. They're on about hitting the very services they insisted must be protected at the beginning of these cost cutting measures, yet they give out £1 million in development grants to 2 unproven companies the week earlier, granted they may in the future be beneficial to the local economy, but in times where we're being forced into such austerity they still seem to want to throw money away. They splashed the cash on a non-starter bridge idea to Bressay (the amount of compensation LPA are after would have damn near paid for a bridge) and now they're harping on about building tunnels (est. £200mil+ cost) to the Isles as ferries are now "too expensive", and yet in 10+ years they havent managed to build a new high school (just think of the European grant money Shetland has missed out on in the past decade due to indecision) because they've been far too interested in solidifying themselves to investing Council/Trust/Public money into thier own extravagant ventures. /rant

What you wanna do is take one o the yell sound ferries down, and park it between the catch and bressay, then you have a portable fixed link. Simply move the ferry when harbour traffic needs through. The SIC would save millions!!

Im surprised the toon hall haven't hijacked the Mareel yet, to convert it into a multi storey garage for the occupants of said new building, it would be about the right cost for a SIC investment, overbudget and significantly delayed; and hijacked at the last minute for a multitude of uses other than what was originally intended for it.

BBC - High cost of petrol defended as oil price falls http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14508213 RMI Petrol - independent association of forecourts is now blaming exchange rates against the dollar for the high cost of fuel. When in fact they've been pretty much the same since 8th April and infact you get more US$ for your GB£ now. So why is the price still so high when the price of crude has dropped by 18%? Rip off britain, not helped by GB Oils charging over the odd's for supply to Shetland

Thanks for all these hoose websites, given me plenty of ideas. It's just a shame that unless your site is in a Zone 1 area of the local development plan the SIC's planning department think they have a right to dictate the style, shape, size, finish etc of your house. Which is madness when there's clearly a housing shortage, not just in Shetland but UK wide. We've been told umpteen times by planners to build a vernacular "skye homes" type building, which is not what we really want and that timber cladding wouldn't be suitable. In my opinion timber is 100% more sustainable than quarrying rock and the finish is superb. I thought they had a code for sustainable homes surely a timber framed/timber clad home is far more sustainable than a stone/block built home. I guess we'll have to keep banging our heads against the wall till they have a common sense breakthrough.

So if on average fuel (petrol/diesel) costs 54p/litre before any tax is added, why doesn't the SIC/SCT/SAT get together with BP/Total and build us a micro-refinery, and instead of creaming a percentage off the top for per barrel of throughput at Sullom, take the percentage in oil. Then make our own fuel locally, SIC/etc can claim this as a tax-free overhead and not have to pay duty on it, surely that would save the council shedloads of cash every year and we wouldn't be having a lot of these daft cutbacks. As well as supplying the people of Shetland with fuel at sensible prices. We'd also be able to export excess fuels to Orkney, Faroe & Scotland. Which in turn would enable us to say bye bye to the monopoly that is GB Oils.

The only way that the council is going to back track on any of these cuts is if the people of shetland start complaining to thier local councillor, as its the councillors who decided on what got cut, not the departments. As for the kerbside recycling, I think the council would be better with recycling points throughout the town + countryside. Then they'd just need to go round the recycling points, instead of everyones doorstep. After all, most folk go past thier local shop / community skip / council depots at some point during the week, why not site these facilities there.

Or the folk who own the area in question. Iirc, it doesnt belong to the council, so technically it isn't thier problem. Surely it'd be up to the owners (duty of care etc), or the patrons of the lounge who chuck thier bruck over the wall.

I dont know why we even let OPEC, of which we're not a member, set our oil prices. Between OPEC, market speculators etc, we're being shafted. Surely if 'we were to set our own prices in our own market, other markets would want to compete with it, and in turn thier prices would drop. I dont see why the price of oil rose in the UK because of an unsettled Middle East/Libya etc. Our oil is in our country, not in the middle of the north african desert. Why doesn't the UK, and other European oil producing countries have thier own oil regulator that sets prices instead of using the price set by a Middle Eastern and Latin American oil exporters club?

I'll not be voting for Tavish as historically he's sat on the fence in regard to every issue affecting Shetland until such a time as an election looms, then he screams from the rooftops about it in the hope he gets votes. Why have a MSP who barely even sets foot in his constituency until election time aside from the odd photo shoot infront of a fishing boat. A MSP who is so out of touch with local issues he doesnt even realise the effects on his constituents of fuel prices (remember he probably claims most of his on expenses, so fills up without a care in the world). A MSP who doesnt even have an opinion on the VE windfarm, which has argueably the biggest investment potential in Shetland in recent years (he's sat on the fence so long on this one it's long past the sagging stage) Why vote for a man who's political party does not know whether it's coming or going, who for one minute think they're Labour, and the next Tory? I thought the whole point of standing as an MSP was to fight for the things your constituents want and need, not to sit on the sidelines and wait for the people to make the decisions and then sit on the side of the percieved victor. I wont be voting LibDem as the entire party is a farce and Tavish is a political joke.

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro L500 laptop running Windows 7 32bit (came with w7 and xp pro incase w7 wasnt to our taste/use). Never had any problems that either W7 or Toshiba's tempro software hasn't offered a solution for, which is usually just windows updates and new hardware drivers.

Has anyone posting here about thier milk going off ever stopped to think that once it's been delivered in a temperature controlled van to the shops you bought it from, said shop then leaves it sitting in their (usually warm) store till they have time to put it away, rather than as soon as its delivered. The fact that the milk sits outside of a temperature controlled area (I.E. Fridge/Chill/etc) even for 5/10/15/+ minutes can affect its lifespan whether in a carton or plastic bottle.

Just to show how crooked GB Oils/Leasks/Gulf are, heres what happened on wednesday... Tuesday I drove by and noticed thier price had gone from 149.9 (For Diesel on Monday) to 150.9, so there's me thinking that they're at it again Wednesday 1pm, I was about to goto Scalloway and thought I'd best fill up, so not thinking I went to Leasks and only once I'd started filling the car up did I notice the price! 152.9 !! Then as I was leaving a Fuel Tanker turned up to fill them up. So they had been trading the entire morning and most probably the day before aswell at a higher price on fuel they got at a cheaper rate. And they say they arent profiteering or monopolising! I shall be going to Sutherlands in future, regardless of cost.!

Anyone know if theres any news on them opening up again soon? Haven't heard anything of late, or since they put a notice in thier window saying they'd be opening soon, which was pre-christmas time. Cheers

That's a relief ! We had a stone chip in the summer about the size of a 5p. Phoned Autoglass who did thier thing and a few days later Gairs phoned, wanted me to take the car in so they could look at it. Gairs said they could drill it and inject it but it would leave a mark like a fish scale on the windscreen and the guy was reluctant to do it as the chip was "borderline". (My brother had autoglass(south) fix his windscreen (bigger chip than ours) and it didnt leave any such mark) Or we could pay our £50 excess and get a replacement windscreen which they said and I qoute "£300 for a new windscreen plus time, or just pay the £50 excess and we'll replace it through your insurance". Okay, so they could have fixed it for free off my insurance, but they didnt want to. Instead they recommend claiming off my insurance, which they get paid more for replacing and then my insurance goes up. Go figure.. the windscreen still has a chip in it Might go give autoglass a ring

Glad you all got your tickets, now who's going to tidy up the mess you all left on da street? sleeping bags, empty beer cans, bottles, buscuits, litter, blankets etc. (** mod edit - comment removed **) Praise be to the street cleaners who diligently hung around awaiting your dispersal to tidy up after you. (** mod edit - comment removed **)

^ Here! Here! Agreed! Best post I've read in a while

I would have thought a post such as the Geopark Officer would have been run by Scottish Natural Heritage or Historic Scotland not the SIC. Im not doubting the quality or amount of work the person in the job does but I don't see how it has any relevance to the council. Orkney is a world heritage site and is collectively looked after by SNH and Historic Scotland not the council, although they do keep tabs on things. This is another one of these posts that generally nobody would have known about if it hadn't been for the council having to look at cutting services to save cash. I wonder just how many other posts like this are within the council.

In orkney it was gonna cost £20k for a public holiday but they have decided to award an extra days leave the staff which was costed at £12k which in the benefit of staff morale is a better idea, at least if people want to take if off they can or work it and save the day for some other time. Perhaps the reason for the SIC having such a huge difference in costings, besides being office and management heavy, is that they quoted a figure which is inclusive of lost revenue and public holiday pay rates. If they give them an extra days annual leave they'd sidestep the PH pay rates. Alas, yet again the toon hall cant see the trees' for the leaves.