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Carlos

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Everything posted by Carlos

  1. Carlos

    Ferries

    A better ferry service encourages centralization?
  2. As far as I'm aware it's only the salting of roads prior to snow that is proposed to be cut back? With ploughing and salting of snow covered roads continuing much as before?
  3. It can always be done, it's only engineering, but the cost it adds is likely a more important factor. Easier and cheaper to go to the Ness of Sound?
  4. There are 2 lane roads and junctions suitable for access to some houses, and then there are 2 lane roads and junctions suitable for a town by-pass.... http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=60.143438&lon=-1.182579&z=17.8&r=0&src=msa
  5. Story in this week's Shetland Times? Have a look on Google maps - you'd be demolishing houses for the tie in at at the south end and the north end tie end would be a fair bit of work too.
  6. Maybe just some basic context when objecting to specific cuts would help show how different things were valued by different people? Saying "I would prefer that my local school stayed open, EVEN IF that meant cutting its budget by 20%" or "I would prefer that my local school stayed open, EVEN IF that meant losing 3 ferry trips per day" would put a number on the value on particular services, without individuals having to come up with their own financial estimates on how spending/saving in one area would necessarily equate to spending/saving in another area.
  7. This one comes up fairly often, but I've not seen any breakdown by service provision. Is there something out there somewhere? Otherwise, with Ferries, Ports and Harbours, Social Care staff and so on, it's hard to tell if it like for like numbers.
  8. If the going market rate for some jobs was substantially above that paid by the SIC, should those salaries be increased? Or are we thinking about a one way equivalence? I hear ya but we're discussing about the present and not the past when private sector pay was quite higher than public sector pay. If anything, the situation is now reversed. I know it's not the general public perception of SIC wages, but I am thinking of a specific current example of local private/public sector jobs......
  9. If the going market rate for some jobs was substantially above that paid by the SIC, should those salaries be increased? Or are we thinking about a one way equivalence?
  10. I don't have any great insider knowledge, but from the Burradale website those 5 turbines can supply up to 18% of the 41MW Shetland demand. If we take them as running at an average of 50% of their rated output over the year then that's 9% of the 41MW. If there is no interconnector and we were going to store power in some form within Shetland then we would have to allow for the losses in that process. Percentages likely vary all over the place at that point depending on what you chose to do and what scale and how much you are prepared to spend, but overall you're likely at 50-67%? So your turbine capacity needs to be 1.5 to 2x greater, to power the form of power storage you're going to have. So say that puts Burradale's 5 turbines at 4.5% of the requirement for Shetland, meaning another 22 sites the same required, or about 110 turbines in total. Any ideas if that's about right? And a lot of BIG energy storage devices and changes to the transmision grid needed?
  11. http://www.havokproductions.ca/blogimages/donks/whitedonk.jpg
  12. I think if you drop in along any of the sales at the marts you'd be able to pick up a lamb quite cheap......
  13. Oops, yeah.From that side the "Planning Authority" is the Councilors in their committee meeting. [dangerous attempt to summarize the whole process in a readable post] The SIC Planning report recommended that the Council object to the application, to trigger a public inquiry, as there were a lot of issues where the information submitted was not considered to be in enough detail to give a full comment on. The Council at it's meeting voted not to object, so it is correct that the "Planning authority" did not object. The SIC Planning report was still submitted to the Energy Unit as information, but just with the status of kind of a professional comment on the application, as far as I understand it.
  14. Guidelines are there to help you cover your legal duties, but not following them does not automatically mean you have broken a law, you may have covered your legal duties by a means not laid out in the guidelines.
  15. The authority in this case is with the Energy Unit in Edinburgh - it's not a normal planning application overseen by the Council. The SIC Planning report were effectively comments submitted to the Energy Unit as input to its considerations, along with all the supporting/objecting letters and the later report/vote/comments from Councilors. If the Council vote had decided not to support the application then that would have forced a public hearing, but everything would still have been dealt with by the Energy Unit - permission for this development is not given/refused by the Council.
  16. If a model is useful or not also depends on the question you are trying to answer. "It gets colder in winter" is one model, a balloon with variable CO2 levels is another kind of model, a 10000 variable numerical model running on a super computer is different kind of model and statistical analysis of a million years of available climate data is another approach. They all have their uses.
  17. All models in all science are "wrong" to some degree or other, but the essential matter is, are they useful?
  18. They are imposing drastic cuts on Council revenue spending so they do not have to draw so much from their own capital reserves. The Charitable Trust money is a separate pot, outside the SIC finances.
  19. Link for the Judicial Review from back in 2007 http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2007csoh05.html
  20. As far as I have heard.... they are at the end of their life, you can't get spares any more, and the budget to replace them has not been given any money. Bit more than bulbs required
  21. Assuming that their hours actually finish at 5......
  22. Pulled from the SIC Council Tax info sheet - the 2011/12 revenue budgets by service SPENDING PER SERVICE Schools 39,947,000 Social Care 33,494,000 Housing 1,215,000 Community Development 4,488,000 Environment 9,486,000 Planning 1,504,000 Roads 5,817,000 Transport 16,352,000 Executive Services 8,526,000 Economic Development Unit 137,000 I think that it's clear that to make any real attempt at cutting 33,000,000 there will be serious effects on all budgets, leaving 2 or 3 arguments left - No need to cut that much, a slight weighting of cuts away from some particular areas, or make the cuts more gradually.
  23. "Lifeline service" => standardisation of service levels?
  24. Layouts, square meterages and toilet numbers? http://pa.shetland.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=ZZZZQQOAXE137
  25. Not sure on the context, but at first read it seems to be just a normal construction contract situation - a 1 year maintenance period with some issues that come up in that time being fixed at no cost (contractor liability) and some issues being extras paid for by the client, all balanced out in the retention paid at the end of the year? Could be different with the contract they are using though.
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