George.

It is my carefully considered opinion that SSE need to convince me that they are capable of running the supply of electricity in Shetland before I would consider them fit to run a huge wind farm.  At least two long and two short power cuts for me this year (just one weather related) and the vast number of cuts I suffered last year convince me that they are not fit and proper people to run the wind farm.  But please note this is not a criticism of the guys that go out in all weathers to repair faults.  Just the infrastructure that means there are so many faults.

Not all that many years ago somebody had a plan to create a "super quarry" in the North Mainland, now I'm not arguing that it wouldn't have been a blot on the landscape and, as locals said in their objections, a damned nusiance for dust and the additional heavy traffic it would create on the roads. However, to the best of my recollection it was an investment that wasn't asking to suck up a worrying pile of public funds as a start up investment, it would have been earning almost from the get go, it would have provided permanent local employment and the negative aesthetics, dust and traffic nusiance would have being very localised.
 
In their wisdom, and to the delight of the detractors, our great leaders of the day threw it out, again to the best of my recollection, on the above loss of visual amenity and nusiance grounds for those folk in its immediate locality.
 
Fast forward a few years, and we now have a plan that will heavily impact on visual amenity on a vastly greater area, as long term as a quarry, will tie up and put at risk a worrying figure of public funds, will provide little different permanent local employment than the quarry would have, will generate a significant additional amount of heavy, and heavy nusiance traffic for several years, and won't return a penny for at least the next five years, and our elder statesmen and women now not only seem to think its the preferable option to the quarry proposal, by if not actively backing it, allowing it to trundle on without a murmur.
 
How can that which was so bad for so few only a few years ago, now when increased greatly in size and cost, and had a few more negative aspects added, be supposed to have become so acceptable to so many?
 
Oh yes, the quarry wasn't conceived by the SIC, so to them it was "nothing". This beast was, and of course the SIC must look after its baby at all costs, as corporate pride dictates that the council machine must never be wrong, to the point corporate insanity kicks in. As we saw with the (non) Bressa Brig.
 
I'm with the previous posters, I'd rather have nuclear, at least with that the output is reasonably consistent and predictable so might just about manage to cover its own ass and turn a few quid profit.

Back to the subject, and to give the BNP voters and other racists a chance to have a rest...
 
Carrying Knives
 
As a child we all carried pocket knives, usually old and battered folding knives handed on by our fathers or grandfathers when they thought we were sensible enough. There would be a thick blade and probably a tool for getting stones out of horses hooves. We would get a quick lesson in how to use it safely and off we would go.
 
All the lads had bikes in those days and most of our spare time was spent out on our bikes, usually cycling to the woods to play. We might make a track to cycle around the woods or get our knives out and cut a few branches to make a den. Chop up an apple to share between us and perhaps one of us would have an illicit fag to share around. If it started raining we would shelter in the den as best as possible and have a competition wittling sticks into some amusing shapes. There were accidents, someone would slice a gash in their finger, but they just pressed on it with their dirty fingers until it stopped bleeding and got on with it; nobody died. The only thing that we had to remember was getting home in time for tea. We had socialised with our mates, got some fresh air into our lungs and a bit of exercise. Using the knives gave us a boost to tool handling skills and hand eye co-ordination. All in all a good day out. Of course I am not suggesting it was a land of milk and honey. We all had TB and rickets, but we were happy!
 
I worked in a company a couple of decades ago. The "ooh look, he's carrying a knife" culture was already in force by then. Almost every entry in the company's accident book was regarding a Stanley knife injury. On a routine visit of a health and safety executive employee the accident book was inspected, and the inevitable question was asked, "why is this company having so many knife accidents". The answer was that despite the health and safety briefing (we never had those as kids) people cut themselves because they used knives so infrequently.
 
I always carry a knife. It's usually a multi-bladed Swiss Army knife on most occasions. The blades are about 2 inches in length, which make them only so useful. If you want to cut a piece of fruit in half with a diameter of more than 4 inches, there isn't going to be an easy way of doing it, but for many other tasks the blades and tools come in useful. Scissors for trimming off loose threads, screwdrivers, orange peeler, wire trimmer and bottle opener for that lunchtime bottle of cider on a rare hot day, but obviously not outdoors in Lerwick. If we all did it the legal system could be brought crashing down!
 
In an office environment it is surprising how often you see people struggling to unwrap a packet of photocopier paper. Long gone are the days of the paper being wrapped in a large sheet of paper with the seams glued. We have now advanced onto the paper being wrapped in plastic and heat-sealed. Seing a colleague struggling with one of these packets I offer my assistance, if accepted I whip out my knife and slice through the heat-sealing and pass the packet back to them. Otherwise extremely intelligent colleagues have been known to look shocked and ask why on earth I am carrying a knife. They usually look downcast when I tell them it is to open packets of photocopier paper that no-one seems able to get into.
 
I have a collection of knives that I divide into two categories: -
 
* Legal to carry without a reason - having a folding, non-locking blade where the cutting edge of the blade does not exceed 3 inches.
* Legal to carry with a reason - having a folding blade that exceeds 3 inches that has or does not have a locking mechanism, or a fixed blade.
 
Where you need a reason for carrying a knife, due to the blade length, the locking mechanism or the fact that the blade is fixed, those reasons could be many and varied. A carpet fitter on their way to work, at work or on his way home would have a perfect reason for carrying a Stanley knife. If they were to go to the pub straight from work then they would be foolish to carry a knife, because Plod could argue there was no reason for the knife being carried; leave it in the van. A person camping and wanting to gather wood for fires as they move from site to site would have good reason for carrying a fixed blade knife. An electrician or other tradesperson would have good reason for carrying a Leatherman tool with locking blades to, from or at work, but again, not in the pub after work. The Scot dressed in his kilt could quite legally carry his sgian dubh.
 
I would recommend everyone to carry a knife, at all times, that is legal to carry without reason, except in places where drink is involved, or in sensitive places like airports etc. If you car spins out of control and you end up upside down in a ditch and unable to release your seatbelt, you might be glad of the penknife in your pocket that allows you to slice through the seatbelt. You might also come across the scene of an accident where someone is in the same position, but without the foresight to carry a knife. You have the opportunity to save them with a knife in your pocket. Life is usually much more routine that this though, and you are likely to find much more routine uses of your knife, such as opening packets of photocopier paper or impregnable packaging containing everything from biscuits to crisps and cameras.
 
In this age of everything being subject to too much health and safety interference (have you risk assessed using that pencil?) it amazes me that the unlocked blade that is likely to close up on your fingers will be in the knife that you don't need a reason to carry, yet the pointy headed people will want to know why you are carrying the much safer locking knife.
 
There is a lot of misinformation about knives. It is sad to see it being spread in the Shetland News. I wonder what motivates those who perpetuate this misinformation?
 
Inevitably there always will be the muppet who waves around a knife or any other tool in a threatening manner, and those that do deserve what comes their way.
 
If a copper wants to confiscate your knife then there is little point resisting they will have the law on their side, or so they imagine. If your knife doesn't need a reason to be carried, and you haven't been waving it around like a prat, then let the copper know that the knife is UK legal carry. One thing that the Law doesn't like it someone who knows it better than them so your knife will be going in the copper's pocket. Make sure you get a receipt for it, fully detailing the knife, then at the earliest opportunity go and have a word with the desk sergeant, in the few hours a day that police stations are open, and ask for the knife to be returned to you. Being one of greater wisdom than the Law's representative that you met on the street earlier, he will probably return it without problem, otherwise you will need to line a solicitor's pocket with a bit more money, or let a miscarriage of justice continue, or even represent yourself (section 139 in England and Wales, section 40 in Scotland).
 
Knife amnesties are another one of those opportunites to take perfectly legal knives out of circulation. Take my advice and don't join in. What you have now may be worth a small fortune now or perhaps in the future, due in part to the popularity of knife amnesties.
 
The final irony is that the servants of Sherrifs continue to be weaponised with telescopic batons, pepper sprays, tasers and firearms!

i think we will be hearing about the cable in the near future.they are interdependent so at some point it will need to be built. so im expecting news shortly. of course its been a done deal from the start. welcome to the honest world of shetland politics. its been the same since the first oil deal. we sold our soul to big business. ask why we are not recieving any oil money. no one  has asked about the gas deal just remember who agreed that one. if SS want to fight on find a way to take control of the charity trust. get it to be a real charity. not a bank for the SIC. look at alaska for what we should be doing     

Why? Life would be very boring if everybody had the same opinion. I can respect that some folk think the whole VE scheme is the best thing since sliced bread, and I have no wish to attempt to convince them otherwise. I don't believe it is a good idea, probably never will, and just expect my opinion to be given the equal respect I give those who hold the opposing view.
 
I don't see what good it would do if everybody changed their minds to one view, or what harm it will do if everybody holds different ones. After all, I daresay MP's whatever their persuasion and whatever party won the last election, all get along just fine when they hit the Commons bar.

Well said. I totally agree!!!

If you stiffle all arguments, and delete any posts that someone might find unpleasant.. Well you are left with a forum that no one bothers to post on. I personally think that forums are better for a bit of argy bargy, after all real life is full of disagreements and bickering, trying to over control this very human trait is a huge mistake. Mods take note

Sadly, he's right.
 
My school generation was 70-80s and we all spoke/speak Shetland.
 
Now, there's not a Shetland word in the Lerwick bairns' heads - it's all pure English.
 
Sadly, the little that is being done is too little too late and if the School System is still against it then there's no hope.
 
On a personal level I have serious reservations about what Shetlandforwirds are doing(Poetry, Prose & Drama??).
 
In other words, the little that is being done, is being done in a skewed and questionable way. 
 
I see no point in promoting the spelling of words such as "faece/face, "sand/saand or "word/wird" while ignoring actual words like Sol Brigda(Basking Shark), Smirl(Merlin) etc, etc.
 
For some strange reason, Shetlandforwirds uphold John J Graham's "The Shetland Dictionary" as the oracle for Shetland dialect and words while ignoring a far superior and more correct book called "Shetland Words" by A & A Christie-Johnston.

The issue is that there is money in the pot, but the Charitable Trust will no doubt remove what remains of the "Christmas Bonus" saving themselves some cash to spend on some pet project.
 
What they have not done is suggested how they will continue to support those who are particularly in need. It looks like the CT are just washing their hands of this area of support. As they say "it's just too much work for them" the poor soles.
 
Well I suppose what should we expect from a bunch of people,who most, have not been democratically elected by the general public. I wonder what's the reason they are on the, CT as it's obviously not for the benefit of the less well off.
 
When you look at the list of Trustees, most will likely have good council pensions and don't know what it's like to have very little and have to go without in order to keep their homes warm or feed their bellies.
 
If it's too much work for you, then move over and let a few people with some midder wit get in there and sort it out. In my opinion if you remove this, you should be very ashamed of yourselves.

It's a combination of the two. For every advert displayed (referred to as an 'impression') advertisers pay a tiny amount, usually small fractions of a penny. When an advert is clicked, they pay out more, sometimes as much as a penny! The bulk of the advertising revenue on Shetlink comes from impressions though.
 
However, the banner ads on their own wouldn't cover running costs as we try to keep the banners to a minimum (and we don't use popups or allow gambling or adult content which are by far the biggest payers) - the shortfall is made up by donations and the 'high value' paid for classifieds categories such as accommodation for sale/rent.
 
 

It is indeed the case that 'the internet' has to be paid for at some point and there's only two main practical models that have emerged - advertising revenue and paid for subscription services, but advertising is the dominant model. Shetlink is quite an expensive website to run due to the storage requirements (for example, the database contains many 1000s of forum posts going back almost 9 years) and the bandwidth required to serve up many 1000s of page views each day.
 
 

Whilst 'targeted' advertising can be a bit disconcerting (such as when an advert appears on one website related to content you've viewed on another website) it is perhaps not as 'big brother' as could be assumed. Targeted advertising happens because your browser stores information on your own computer about sites you've visited (in small files called 'cookies' that contain non-personally identifiable information), rather than the data being held on a central server somewhere. The ads are targeted by using the data held in the cookies.
 
If you're seeing targeted adverts on Shetlink it's because the sites you've visited have allowed the advertisers to have access to their cookies - Shetlink doesn't 'know' which sites you've visited and we have no information regarding who sees which adverts. And we don't collect much in the way of visitor data beyond some top level statistics - certainly nothing personal or identifiable. We're quite good like that
 
Cookies are generally helpful peerie fellows that enable some functions such as allowing you to be automatically logged in each time you visit a website, remembering which pages in the website you've visited, posts since your last visit to a forum, shopping cart functions, your Amazon Wishlist etc. You may have noticed in recent years that many websites will let you know that the website uses 'cookies' and you can elect to refuse them if you are concerned about privacy. You can see which cookies are stored by your browser, and delete or refuse them, in the preferences/settings of your browser.
 
Shetlink's policy on cookies is in the T&Cs.
 
 
To cut a long story short, the admin team are grateful for visitors accepting the necessity of adverts - it's the most straightforward (and free!) way to support Shetlink.

My tuppence worth;
 
Since the demise of the Keynesian post-war consensus there has ceased to be any solid social-democratic argument for the continued existence of the unitary British state.
 
Therefore, after much deliberation, I decided to vote Yes. Having been hitherto quite ambivalent towards the matter.
 
Social justice isn't being served within the current constitutional framework.

I'm all for reduction in street lighting, especially throughout the night, but as I said I think that Lerwick could do with a lot less lights in various places.
 
As for reduction in rates, the bands were set both in town and out with prior to the reductions in schools, gritting, skips, street lighting etc that in the main affect country areas. Hence the country areas are getting a raw deal.

The "Managers" and their personal legions of paper shuffling minions who serve no purpose but inflate their "Manager's" ego and prop up their little personal empire house of cards, need seriously hauling over the coals right across the council, then 99% of them promptly fired, and not replaced.

It would appear that the government get an extra month's car tax if a car is sold. The seller only gets whole unused months refunded while the buyer has to pay from the start of the month.

That's Jake and a few other LulzSec folks interviewed on stage at the Royal Court Theatre. An interesting watch!
 
Embedded Youtube clips are playing up ATM so here's the direct link.
 

Thanks everyone. I am free(ish) now.

Bus timetable has definitely improved but there are still no buses available north of Lerwick and to the west on a Sunday. There are buses between Scalloway and Lerwick and also between Lerwick and Sumburgh on a Sunday but everyone else continues to be ignored. Why?

The 'A' part of ADSL means 'asynchronous'.  That is why there is a huge difference between Download and Upload speeds.  Your upload is not 'useless'.  That's the way it's been 'engineered'.
 
Download speed seems OK and upload speed seems almost a normal(?)for an 8Mb service.  Maximum upload would be around 0.38Mb/s.  0.29Mb/s suggests that there might be something interfering.
 
Your ping is pretty poor.  1/10 of a second is way to long.
 
Lots of if's and but's control your connection stats. 
Could be time of day congestion, lousy ISP, distance from exchange, quality of line etc. etc. etc.
 
A better speed test is available at www.thinkbroadband.com and, to eliminate 'queer' results, you should run the speed test at roughly the same time every day for a week.  That way, will be get a better picture of your 'average'
 
Do not run a speed test throughout the evening and expect to get 'good' results.

Well I have relatives who would say that Sea Shepherd is saving creatures from a bloody and unnecessary death at the hands of those nasty Faeroe based killers.  And that if the law still allows a grind then the law is wrong. 

You're right, the yolks have darkened in colour, and a bit larger within the egg too. There's a lot to be said for these flies!!!

A very generous couple with the right ideas and not afraid to do what they feel will help to get the result we are working towards.
 
Has anyone spoken to them about the poverty that I'm suffering from? I'm sure that they would be terribly concerned!!!

Quite right. Pity that Globe's have gone but lucky that Mainlands are still with us. They sell good meat. Not the pure and utter rubbish that Tesco and the Co-op both pawn out to us poor, unsuspecting punters. 

That's the thing. I'd conjecture early adopters of 'mining' operations were in a better position; more blockchains, less people mining. Though the hardware now has jumped leaps and bounds in it's potential since companies are investing in the development of chips designed for the exact purpose of 'mining'.
 
With that said, one has to weigh up the cost of said equipment alongside the electricity consumed to how many blocks one will actually manage to crack. One way around this is as jambo6 points out is to join in a collective to pool resources in cracking blockchains and sharing the bounty. No absolute guarantee and income spread between x number of people.
 
It is interesting as an aside to watch/read governments attempt to regulate this new community opensource peer-to-peer currency. As is rightly pointed out it currently isn't 'controlled' nor 'governed' by any government and is backed entirely on a mathematical formula against market fluctuations; including right down to peaks/troughs of commodities required to create the hardware from which the 'mining' takes place.
 
@daveh, there is every possibility of starting ones own currency as long as there are adopters that recognise it and accept it as a form of payment. The Brixton Pound is a real world example.

Lord Forsyth was not very pleased with the scottish government!
 
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean:
 
When I was a Secretary of State—and for as long as I have known—the principle has been that when a judge reaches a conclusion as to the state of the law, that is the law until such time as it is subject to an appeal. What happened next is an absolute scandal. The Scottish Government then decided that they disagreed with the judge in her opinion and that they would go ahead anyway.
 
So their renewable energy ambitions trounce the law of the land. That is very undesirable and unprecedented —as far as I know;
 
This is an undesirable development, by both the Scottish Government and my noble friends. The proper procedure here would be to at least wait for the appeal. It is certainly quite wrong for the Scottish Government to continue in this way. If you look at it from the point of view of the objectors, they have gone to a judicial review, won their case—and everyone knows how difficult it is to win a case on judicial review—and the Scottish Government are just saying that they are going to ignore that. 

So, I've just returned to the isles after a month or so away and, frankly, I'm somewhat perturbed by the massive accommodation barge that has appeared in my absence! I'm told it will remain docked at the pier in the center of Lerwick for the next few years.

No doubt this caused considerable controversy while I was away, but I haven't noticed any mention of it on this particular forum...

Ironically it's parked opposite the Thule, which I recall had some hassle regarding it's luminous 'T' sign contravening council regulations which, presumably, were put in place to curtail any developments that were seen as being somehow not aesthetically pleasing.

So, any thoughts? I assume there's nothing we can actually do about it, but I for one think it's a pretty crappy state of affairs when a company can just turn up and plonk an eyesore in front of one of the most picturesque harbors in Scotland and nobody seems to give a damn.

No doubt some emotionally detached keyboard warriors will disagree. As a resident of Lerwick, however, I think it's a real shame.