Carlos

The report itself is not so much a look at wind energy pricing and actually a fairly interesting overview of energy supply options and problems to overcome in all the different generation options - if definitely starting off pro-nuclear and not looking at too much detail at any of the difficulties that has.... http://www.adamsmith.org/sites/default/files/research/files/renewableenergy2011.pdf One thing that seemed to be a bit lacking, for something that should examine decisions over 25-75 year time-scales, is more detail on how changing prices of different resources in the long term would affect the best choice though. The different impacts of low / medium / high increase in oil prices on the energy sector would have been interesting to compare for example.

If you look at the accident history of countries that made dipped headlights compuslary during daylight there is some evidence of more deaths and serious injuries among motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians - things that do not have those lights and maybe start to get a bit lost from drivers attention in a stream of lit up cars. The specifically designed DRLs are not as bright as a dipped headlight and intended to avoid that problem, but do mean, as posted above, that there will be times when the driver still needs to remember switch to dipped headlights.

If my googling is right then, for Unison anyhow, about 22.5% of the membership voted for a strike. Of course in a similar way 23.5% of the electorate voted for the Conservative party at the past general election.

As Spinner said, the cuts proposed for now look to be "restrained" with an eye towards election time.... the unfortunate thing is that regardless of who is elected and on what platform, they are going to face the same set of accounts post elections.....

I'd like to see the Council put together something that works like this site - http://my2050.decc.gov.uk/ Sliders to change budgets in each area of service as you prefer, with the effects of those changes shown and the overall savings updated. As Spinner says, I think that would make it clearer just how far cuts on the required scale would actually go and what effects they could have.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VXuRKnVyN1s/SUdJ-xwDnBI/AAAAAAAABu4/hrmWdkoZxNc/s1600/Picture+8.png

ABU DHABI // A dramatic fall in traffic accidents this week has been directly linked to the three-day disruption in BlackBerry services. http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/blackberry-cuts-made-roads-safer-police-say

If I remember right it's ground floor level is something like 3m higher than the museum's?

I think the articles themselves should absolutely stand or fall on their own content and the authors be judged on their own data and positions. But at the same time I'm happy enough for the publishers to present those articles and leave it up to the reader to form their own opinion of the content, without any guarantees. Another example of similar legalese from the "Nature" website We are not liable or responsible for the third party content on the Site. Third party content includes, for example, comments, blogs and articles posted by users, the content of advertisements, applications posted by users and content accessed through applications.

As soon as you "publish" other people's thoughts you would have to admit it is wise to get a little legal cover against possible action based on what they might say? The other option would be just to publish your own views, and not open things up to a variety of other opinions. There are websites that do that too.

And similarly - "the Shetlink administrators are not responsible for the content, accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information presented. "?

I think from memory the official UK predictions sit at about 90cm in 90 years? Which is of course does not sound too catastrophic and is far enough away that "somebody will figure something out if it ends up being true".....

I'm not sure there's a lot of information to comment on yet? What they are alleged to have done, whether they did it and what effect it might have had on the integrity of their work is still all uncertain? I think though we have 80 pages worth of comments here covering most possible types of bias/prejudice/human frailty from all sides, and folk are mostly "posted-out" on the topic in general? $50M is potentially not so big though - I'm not too senior at my work and still manage near $50M worth of assets.... it soon mounts up.

The crown estate would own the part of the loch bed that was below mean low water springs. I think?

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." But I think the thread that those do cover is that reduced Council spending will hit the areas outside Lerwick harder, as per person spend there is inevitably higher. There are different possibilities, but we need to look at increasing income as well as reducing expenditure.

Sorry, I knew there was an MoD compound and a BT compound, but thought the THRS acronym refered to the MoD part.

Very unlikely I'd have thought. Regular planning conditions only hold for 3 years (I think it is?) after completion. Anything long term you probably have to make them take out a bond or get some other legal agreement in place. If it was being built now then yeah, but not a 70s kind of concern. Plus the THRS part was MoD, not BT? So a whole 'nother ball game for that part likely.

Planning could do something if there is a new application, not so much for something that's been there from the 60s. Environmental health possibly.....

I'm not sure if the subtle aspects of that report are accurate or not? Stuart Hill thought he had precedent for the court having to prove it had jurisdiction over him? And the Sheriff said "nope that was the US, here you'd have to prove we don't?" Or is it not quite as concrete as that? Given that the history seems to have a lot of ambiguity / "lost in the mists of time" aspects, the issue of where the default lies in any "balance of probability" judgements may be important.....

And if you don't give the chips a chance to bed in, it's more council money to come back and do it again......

Where was that? The % cuts I've seen mentioned would translate to a reduction in full time equivalent posts of about 1/7th if spread evenly.

Unless they each take 50 years to build, and it's just that they have 5200-odd under construction at any time

Yeah, it'd likely always be up for debate, regardless. The architects would likely be happy enough to have another £1m lumped on the "exterior appearance" budget, but the end result would likely get just as wide a range of opinions.

They had a ramp that was too big for beginners as a temporary thing on the pipeyard ground. I think they should have done more "making the best of it" at the time there too, but there's no comparison between the 2.

Does it not kind of come back to the same usual problem though? Should more money have been spent on it to make it look better? What balance should you take when spending public money on the line between "purely functional" and "architectural icon". Add £1M to the price and make it pretty? There'd be some view express on that quick enough.......