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 the end if someone young, under 18, dies from drinking it is their own responsibility as they should know the law by that age, their parents who brought them up and if on a birthday bus, then the owners and driver of said bus for tolerating drinking behaviour on route to wherever and then there will be untold consequences. The bus owners tolerate it and should be dealt with if illegal.

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.

Not pertaining to to the isles deliveries more within the isle, Who is taking up the slack now that North Isles Deliveries has stopped delivering for Streamline ?

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.

Actually the Highway Code more or less says that flashing lights is just meant to show that the vehicle is there and not to mean that the driver is going to give way.  And indeed a flashing indicator means just one thing.........the bulb works.  This I can vouch for having spent many years driving a vehicle where the indicators would only self cancel on one side.

Not the first jet service as Atlantic Airways operated jets on the Shetland--London service.  And not the first time there has been competition........remember Business Air?.  Maybe not the last as Eastern Airways might yet decide to operate public flights to Sumburgh.

Just a slight point........Flybe are not withdrawing from Shetland since Flybe have never flown to Shetland.  All the Flybe branded flights have been provided by Loganair and more recently by Eastern Airways.  I am sure some of the people based at the airport will argue if I am wrong but as far as I know not a single Flybe plane has ever landed at Sumburgh.

Has May been DUPed,will it be back to the ballot box soon !

Well if we end up with another general election sooner rather than later I hope we can get another referendum on leaving the EU at the same time. 

I see Streamline offer DPD & MyHermes drop off.  If you try and book a DPD parcel on their site it doesn't allow from Shetland, MyHermes appears to be the same but does give the option of a 50p collection

 

Anyone use either of these services to send parcels South?

Several years back I was able to book a collection from Yell with Hermes although of course it was R S Henderson that actually collected,

 

 

 

There is also the little issue of Fax machines.. 

 

How many people use a fax machine now?

 

Not as many as previously, and whilst there are apps available to send/receive faxes via e-mail, not everyone has e-mail.

 

 

I wonder what sort of percentage of people now have no access to email?

 

Well very few since it is perfectly possible to have an on-line life using public libraries without the need to even own a mobile phone or a tablet let alone a computer.  But at the same time there are certainly some older people who never became even mildly computer literate.

Where I now live the small Co-op had a major refurbishment recently and to be fair I am amazed how many extra interesting products they have managed to display in the same space.  All right so they are not as cheap (well mostly not as cheap) as Heron Foods down the road but the quality is good.

 

There are two costs to shipping recycled materials south from Shetland.  The first is the monetary cost which is unavoidable especially as the rules on how much waste must be recycled get stricter.  The second cost is the carbon footprint and I am inclined to think that if space in otherwise empty containers is used that will be fairly minimal if the container and the ship are going south anyway.  Yes a touch of creative accounting but one I believe is right.

 

Do you think that those self same regulations you refer to would allow "waste" to be shipped in random containers heading south? I would suspect, going by what we've been informed of them so far, such transfers will require dedicated containers, which will not only cost to ship out, but cost to ship back empty as well. I would be delighted to be proven wrong and your suggestion proven right, but.....

 

Well I kind of assume that recycled materials could not be shipped in containers used for foodstuffs and so on but there have to be some containers that could be used for recycling heading south.  Or indeed not even containers.  Ships bring building products or coal one way could surely take what has to go for recycling the other way. 

Of course it would be good if some recycling could be processed in Shetland.  Like what happened to the idea of paper being turned into animal bedding?.

I have a grey wheelie bin for general waste collected fortnightly.  Garden waste bin (grey with brown lid) collected on alternate weeks.  Food waste (green box), paper waste (blue box), Glass and cardboard ( green box but different to the food waste box) and tins + plastic bottles (brick coloured box) all collected weekly.  Council claims that the move to weekly collections has greatly increased the recycling rate.  Clothes, batteries and small electrical appliances are also collected.

There are two costs to shipping recycled materials south from Shetland.  The first is the monetary cost which is unavoidable especially as the rules on how much waste must be recycled get stricter.  The second cost is the carbon footprint and I am inclined to think that if space in otherwise empty containers is used that will be fairly minimal if the container and the ship are going south anyway.  Yes a touch of creative accounting but one I believe is right.

any chance it was the turkestan loaf?

Turkestan loaf was certainly available in the 90s and perhaps even into the noughties.  One of my favourite breads.