Malachy

While I agree that halaal and kosher slaughtering methods unneccesarily prolong death for the animal, I think it's a bit unfair to single out jews and muslims on this. I think there are many jews and muslims who would be utterly horrified by that video, just as many christians would be horrified if they saw how animals died in some 'normal' slaughterhouses. It's the industrialisation of death that is shocking, more so than the method of killing. In actual fact, both halaal and kosher demand that respect is shown to the animal, and clearly that is not the case in the video. Closer to home, I suspect you'd find that many home killed animals in Shetland will be done without the use of a humane killer, and in the past all animals would have been killed that way. So I do agree that there should be no religious justification for prolonging an animal's suffering. But animals don't just suffer by the hands of jews and muslims.

^^^ Can Stuart not give you a plot on Forvik? Surely that's where his army should be based.

Surely that's just good manners? I always let the windows park first.

Yes, it sounds like they're aware of the problem, so hopefully they'll be able to sort it out.

I have been having the same problem as BigMouth - increasing numbers of Marketplace sellers refusing to send books or cds to Shetland. I contacted Amazon and got this reply, which might be helpful:

Would these be Gentec Venturi houses by any chance? Have you got a graph to prove it?

It is very useful to look back further, yes, you're right. Indeed, climate scientists have done exactly that, and they have identified a point in the planet's history when the Earth warmed at roughly the same pace it is warming now. In fact, not quite as fast, but almost. That was 250,000 years ago, and the result of that warming was that, in a fairly short space of time, 95% of species in the sea became extinct and around 75% of land species. It's known as the Permian-Triassic Extinction. It's a very interesting example.

Here's the end of the piece you linked to: Am I missing something? I thought you were trying to say globaly warming wasn't happening.

It is correct to say that temperatures have been both warmer and cooler at various times in the planet's history, though by much less than people imagine (the little Ice Age was only about 1 degree cooler on average for example). One of the most significant concerns about the current changes however is the speed at which they are taking place. The rise over the past century or so would normally take much, much longer. The result of this is that animal species, plant species, whole ecosystems, rather than adapting to the changes, simply collapse. The first signs of this are already visible in Shetland with the collapse of the breeding seabird populations. Rather than adjusting their diet gradually, the birds are simply starving. That is worth worrying about, because despite what many people seem to think, we do actually rely on our environment functioning correctly in order for our species to survive.

My post was meant to be satirical, clearly. I was simply suggesting that, since we each have well over a million ancestors who were alive in the 16th century, where they were born or died really has very little significance. It's a distinct possibility that even those of us who weren't born here ourselves could have an ancestor who was. That may well be the case, but on the other hand there is a significant number of posters on these forums who, while they may be happy to be mongrels themselves, are not at all willing to accept that those without immediate Shetland ancestry can become Shetlanders. It seem more than a little hypocritical. And when there are people deregistering themselves from Shetlink because of the attitude shown towards folk not born here, I think perhaps that attitude ought to be examined.

Is that one ancestor or all? Surely if it's only one ancestor then you can't guarantee your racial purity. You could be any kind of mongrel, not a proper Shetlander. The 15th Century... so, 500 years... lets say four generations per century for simplicity's sake, so 20 generations....so... Please provide the birthplace of the following: 2 parents 4 grandparents 8 great-grandparents 16 great-great grandparents 32 great-great-great grandparents ....etc,...up to 1,048,576 great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. Only then can you call yourself a proper, pure Shetlander! Or are you perhaps being a bit selective in your thinking?

Nigel, do you not think it might make more sense to visit Shetland and find out if it's actually the place for you, and think about what kind of business ideas might actually work and be useful here, rather than designing some kind of electronic hobbit version of New Lanark from your home in Southall and imposing it on the poor folk of Fetlar? There are lots of places in Britain where building a new town would be more realistic and useful than it would here. Your ideas sound, frankly, silly.

Why does a subject like this always encourage some folk to write absolute tripe? There's some significant points that seem to be getting lost here: Firstly, council housing is social housing, and it must be allocated according to social need. You can't have a simple queue system for council housing because that would defeat the entire purpose. If someone who has lost their job and been evicted and finds themselves sleeping in a bus shelter, I defy you to explain why they should not be placed higher on the list than someone in Sandwick who fancies a council house in town so they can go out on the piss more easily. Equally, if you can afford to rent privately but would rather rent from the council because it's cheaper, your need is frankly not very great. Secondly, this issue about folk getting off the north boat and being handed the keys to a house is rubbish. As someone mentioned earlier, the best they are likely to get is homeless accommodation, temporarily. Whether they are housed permanently after that will depend, as with everybody else, on need. Thirdly, as some folk have mentioned but others are ignoring, Shetland is still part of the UK. If I moved to Glasgow, or Kent or Orkney, I could get on the housing list there; if someone from those places moved here, they can get on our list. It's reciprocal and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Nor should they wish to. We cannot expect to get the benefits of being part of the UK without having to offer those benefits to other citizens. All this talk of 'Shetlanders First' just sounds like the BNP.

Er, in what sense? Have a look at the council. The percentage of 'incomers' on the council is certainly considerably lower than the actual percentage in the population. Surely that means that, to be truly representative, there should be more 'incomers' becoming councillors? Or do you mean that somebody else runs Shetland - Stuart Hill maybe? Or, er, I don't know. Or is what you're saying just false?

Just to inject a note of reality into proceedings here. This argument about other planets warming is a bit of a red herring. For obvious reasons, measuring temperatures on other planets is a somewhat less exact science than measuring it on Earth - much of it seems to rely on guesses and assumptions - so it can't be given nearly the significance that climate science on this planet can. Also, only six planets/moons of those observed are thought to be warming. Others, like Uranus, are cooling. Of the six thought to be warming, sun spot activity is actually not the consensus opinion on their warming among scientist (only among climate change sceptics). Each body has its own reason for its climatic changes. The following is taken from a website whose authority I cannot vouch for, not being a climate scientist or astronomer, (but then the evidence presented by others on the sceptic side can hardly be vouched for either). Anyway: * Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo and there is little empirical evidence that Mars is showing long term warming. [only one scientist I can find has actually linked Martian warming to sunspots, but lots of bloggers have] * Neptune's orbit is 164 years so current brightening is a seasonal response (Neptune's southern hemisphere is heading into summer). * Triton's warming is due to the moon approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years. * Jupiter's storms are fueled by the planet's own internal heat (the sun's energy is 4% the level of solar energy at Earth). When several storms merge into one large storm (eg - Red Spot Jr), the planet loses its ability to mix heat, causing warming at the equator and cooling at the poles. * Pluto's warming consists of two observations 14 years apart noting a difference in atmospheric thickness which implies warming - scientists are unable to explain why yet. But considering Pluto's orbit is equivalent to 248 Earth years, this says nothing about climate change. It's like saying Earth is warming when comparing winter to summer. Plus Pluto is more than 30 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is. If the Sun were warming up enough to affect Pluto at that vast distance, it would blowtorch the Earth.

Yes, but I'm not sure that it should make a difference whether his family can afford to repay the money or not. If he'd taken the money because he desperately needed it, and didn't have a well off family that could bail him out once he was caught then he would be going to prison, but as the money is available to him now, he has a chance of not going. I'm not sure I approve of the logic.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this story yet: http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2008/10/08/man-who-embezzled-public-purse-escapes-jail/ Is it my imagination or does this story confirm the theory that rich people can avoid jail more easily than poor people?

Your scored -6 on Moral Order and 6 on Moral Rules. The following categories best match your score (multiple responses are possible): 1. System: Socialism 2. Ideology: International Socialism 3. Party: No match. 4. Presidents: Jimmy Carter 5. 04' Election: David Cobb 6. 08' Election: Dennis Kucinich I didn't know International Socialism still exists! Since this is an American test, I suspect that if you say you believe in universal health care you are considered a socialist. Some of the questions were pretty ambiguous though - not sure how they draw the lines. I had to ask for hints on a couple. And I did not understand what these Moral Order and Moral Rules distinctions meant at all, even after reading the detailed explanation. And they've got bad grammar (see above), but apart from that I like it.

I see he's not got any more instructive in his demonstrations: water + thing in water + cables + power = proof.

The boreholes are essentially the same thing as the normal ground heat pumps. If you don't happen to have enough space in your garden for all the trenches that are required for the pump then you get a borehole dug instead. It does the same job.

What exactly is owned by the in and the out? Surely you mean ins and outs? (Sorry) The problem in newspapers is that things have to be done very quickly, so mistakes are inevitable (I often spot things in Shetland Life after its printed, and believe me I cringe more than anyone else). With a book it should be much better, but still people are never perfect so things slip through. And I very much doubt that proofreading is a well paid job. They're probably earning peanuts.

It's not often you'll hear me defend a Labour politician, but I think some of the attacks on GB are not very accurate. For a start, he hardly 'clawed his way to the top' - he was chancellor for about 10 years, and for all of that time has been the most obvious and prominent successor to TB. Also, as far as his economic handling goes, the British economy did incredibly well while he was at the treasury. Now it's falling apart along with most of the rest of the world. Rather than showing how incompetent he is, I think it just gives a frightening demonstration of exactly how little power the British government actually have over the British economy when things start to go wrong internationally. There is nothing any politician could do to solve the problems that are unfolding at the moment unless they wanted to entirely remove us from the international financial markets, which I don't hear any of them suggesting.

...Along similar lines... http://mob225.photobucket.com/albums/dd219/Tranzfuzer//Babybluesguitar.jpg I've changed hands in the intervening years.

There's a housing forum, comprising five elected islanders and one National Trust representative. They meet to discuss applications and make their recommendation to the NTS. Sometimes it will be pretty obvious what is needed - ie, if we're short of someone on the boat, or a care worker etc. But at times when there's no specific job needing filled then it's a case of reading applications and making a judgement based on the skills they bring, etc. (And if they're applying for a croft, then their experience and ideas). If someone has lived on an island before, or lives in Shetland, that would be taken into account. People are also strongly encouraged to visit the island and meet with the forum to discuss life here. The criteria are certainly not set in stone, and potentially there could be disagreements within the forum, but I think often the right choice will be fairly clear. A young local couple would be very unlikely not to be considered suitable, unless, say, they put on their application that they were planning to come and live off the dole or set up a safari park or something.

Review of the new LGM EP: http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2008/09/05/shetland-life-music-more-from-the-machine/