JustMe

Well I am in middle England and I only get 3G indoors. Limited signal at that yet I get 4G at maximum strength at the bus stop. That said I can still make phone calls at home.

Yes I am sure some folk will go to the drop in sessions but until I moved south I would have been unable to go to mine. It is in the evening 12 miles or so from where I used to live and of course with no bus service. Seems to me that as well as the local sessions an all day session in central Lerwick on a Saturday would have been a sensible option as well as giving rural people without a convenient glass recycling point how to recycle glass if they do not have a car.

^^^ What about delays?. Do you pay on departure and if you do not get back on the expected return date will that mean a "parking ticket" and some horrible penalty?. People need to know about this.

For those who do not know RET stands for Road Equivalent Tariff and a version of that is meant to be in place on the Northlink ferries soon. Meanwhile I wonder what happens to people who book now at the current advertised rates. Will they get a refund or just end up having paid more because they booked early?. A quick look on the Northlink website did not answer this. I would certainly not put it past Serco to say that bookings made at the old rate pay that rate.

In defence of the bus owners and operators I must speak. First the owners who, unless they are on the bus personally, cannot do more than instruct their drivers not to allow underage drinking or indeed excessive drinking. Then the drivers. Bit of a clue in the name.......driver!. They look out of the windscreen when the bus is moving so they do not crash. Seems a good idea. Certainly it would be impossible to see if a passenger was discretely swigging from someone else's bottle. Perhaps the person who books the bus should be the one responsible for the behaviour of passengers and maybe they should consider employing some sort of security guard for the safety of their guests depending on what sort of party it was.

Yes local councils have to do some sort of recycling as part of the EU rules so I am hearing some of you thinking "well what about Brexit?". As far as I can tell the plan is to shift EU rules into UK law so the SIC will still have to have a recycling policy. My local council (I have gone South) has a weekly recycling collection.......ordinary domestic waste is fortnightly.........and after a few teething troubles it seems to work well enough. Yes it means people have to do a little work sorting out what can be recycled but it saves the council being penalised for low recycling rates and I guess saves the planet to some extent. My only gripe with the SIC plan is that glass is not collected. Long walk to the glass bank from where many people live,

Well it looks good and starting in a couple of areas to deal with teething problems sounds good. Council website has good information and I trust the information pack will contain the same information for those who do not have internet access at home. Well done Zero Waste Scotland and the SIC.

I agree with BigMouth about women only short lists being wrong. Short lists should contain the best people for the position they seek regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnic origin, age or which Spice Girl they prefer. Perhaps a rule to say that there should be one woman on a short list would be OK as there is a kind on imbalance in lots of elected bodies but no more than that.

Of course if you have the chance to cut peats then they still offer the cheapest solution of all........peats and maybe driftwood. Storage heaters have got better over the years and if a power cut happens when they are warm you still have heat for a good while. Talking of power cuts remember that other heating systems often need electricity to provide ignition for the boiler and to pump hot water to the radiators. Heat pumps?........I fear I know nothing about them except that they can save money.

Nobody should need to sleep on the streets in the UK. Everyone needs some sort of safe secure home unless they really want to sleep on the Staney Hill.

I would guess it would be back to R S Henderson

Link says ""For detailed route specific data click any of the graphs"" and it works........well there is then another link to the actual data.

Now in the run up to the New Year maybe we should all think that most of us could reach the end of 2018 without somewhere to sleep at night. Yes all the reasons I mentioned in my earlier posting and lots others. Been close to it myself a few times but thankfully a good friend and a welfare state that was more caring than it is today got me out of it. Even back then no address meant no job and no job almost meant no address. Vicious circle that I am sure is far worse today. And it might not be you!. Maybe a friend or a family member could run out of options and end up sleeping in a shop doorway and begging to get food. OK maybe begging to get drink or drugs as well. Only real addiction I had was to nicotine........or maybe just the social aspects of smoking......and thanks to NHS Shetland I got over that but I can honestly say that although I would probably not have killed to get my next smoke I would certainly have stole from my best friends (although they would have probably given me a smoke first). But I am sure that if I was living on the streets drink or drugs would have made life more bearable and that addiction to either (or both) would have soon followed. So lets stop knocking rough sleepers and start thinking that we really do need to offer all in need a solution to their problems. And all political parties need to do something about this. The SNP perhaps because they care as I hope do Labour and the Tories because beggars and rough sleepers make towns untidy. Well yes they do and no matter what the reason all parties need to act!.

Perhaps I should add that few of us are completely safe from ending up homeless. Break up of a relationship, breaking some silly rule with a council or housing association tenancy, failing to be able to pay rent or mortgage payments having lost a job or become sick and been let down by the welfare system. Even having ones home burn down and having forgot to renew the insurance.

We, be it Shetland, Scotland or the whole UK are relatively rich and it is just completely wrong that people should be sleeping out at any time of year. Sure summer is warmer but it can still rain. I want to see some sort of night shelter for everyone (and their dogs if needed) available to all who ask for it and without a ban on druggies and alcoholics who probably need help more than anyone. OK so a few might take advantage of a night shelter and I accept there is a logic in not making them too comfortable for casual users as long as there is a system so genuine users can progress to somewhere better. At the same if a "gentleman of the road" really wants to sleep out then they should not be stopped doing so.........in the right place. Not sure how this can count as political. Surely every single politician should accept that we, as a country, should care for the needy although I suspect the left may be a bit more caring than the right. But all parties should make providing shelter for the homeless part of their next manifesto.