amno

Aye but how do you actuall do that? just grow a pair isnt realy an answer how do you even know someones a junkie unless they are actualy asking for help? And its no just a shetland thing junkies and wasters in Aberdeen Glasgow Dundee EDinburgh etc etc get some not bad houses theres 2 heroin users living next to my granny in a 3 bed end of terrace in one of the better areas near a school so it happens in central scotland aswell

Well i certainly agree with you about the brand new houses thats for sure, also why do they need to live in lerwick if there not working? Unfortunately what would need to happen would be a complete overhaul of the housing system acros the board and even then it wouldnt work because; The council can only act with regards to KNOWN drug users so anyone whos good at hiding it will be treated as anyone else would, id imagin you may come up against some rule that says youre treating these people unfairly if the council has one policy for "decent hard working folk" and another for "scummy junkies" which at the moment it doesnt anyway, they would simply be classed as unemployed and to discover the presence of drugs is a police matter anyway and not a council one. One idea would be the council can adopt ascreening policy the same as many employers do ie you must declare any criminal convictions against you in the last 10 years thats sort of thing which would affect youre application?

Do you think thats what goes on? ohnestly? A council cant move any tennent to an area outside of its borders. Do folk here actualy think this problem is all down to incommers and without them the problem would be tiny or non existent???

well you see you cant stop housing these wasters because its a legal requirement unfortunatlely, to take youre attatude of throw them all on the street is going to the level of a third world country, the problem is that junkies/alcoholics are deemed to be incapable of handling themselves so without social housing they would end up on the streets begging the young hard working typed with 2 jobs have shown that they are more than capable of providing for themselves so they wont get a house without a massive bit of luck, I dont think the problem of heroin riddled unemployed coming to shetland for a house is as bad as it sometimes seems, when im on the mainland i frequently come accross people who have never even heard of shetland or know where it is never mind sitting with there name on a housing list. you dont get any more dole money here than you do in glasgow they wont know anyone here or have anything to do so why bother? I dont know why anyone would want to inject that sh1te into themselves but i know that calling them all the b.....ds and talking tough doesnt make a blind bit of difference

well thats just it, is 14 miles acceptable, without any official guidlines to base it on what do you do? some people (not me) may argue that if people can go from all over yell to mid yell for high school then younger ones could travel on likely the same buses there for primary school,

Well i am glad its bucking the trend of falling rolls in the same way that sandness has a number of pre school age bairns in its catchment, Crofter i dont think we should move everyone to bigger places no and i dont think this is an ideal situation, (some authorities and buisneses use bad economic situations to force through things which in good times would have no chance) but shetland is in the big bad world the 2 small primarys in yell and unst have been deemed too small and close enough to alternative schools that they cannot feasably be kept open. my spelling would no doubt be alot better if i had attended one youre fine schools here in shetland

ok well that is a bit of an exaggeration but it is significantly more (il see what figures there are to be found on the interweb), and they have outlined alternatives in mid yell and baltasound which i dont think is unreasonable they are still small schools at the end of the day, it could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them what with the greater facilities.

thats just the problem shetlandlass alot of people are not interested in this and are simply saying do not close my local school! scalloway is 7 miles from lerwick and theres only 100 odd pupils it is as they say in the trade "not cost effective" the money in the pot is surely everyones money so how can you justify a handfull of pupils in areas where there are alternatives ie yell and unst to cost 10 times that of a pupil in lerwick, what makes them so special???

well whatever happens if you split from the uk/ scotland youl need to alligne youreself with someone else otherwise theyl be no body to blame everything thats wrong in the world on!!!

oh well, i stand corrected

Well the education comitee is there to look at education and not the comunity how a small village will function with or without a school is none of there concern, im not realy suprised that councilers have had an earfull of abuse from the public ive seen with my own eyes how some poeple here can throw the toys out the pram when they're not getting everything there own way. as to the point about incomers bleeding the place dry ones who can afford to buy a house tend not to need that much from the state anyway and would you like to back up youre claim with some figures ie how many incommers are here and how many sit and do sweet FA whilst taking money from the social? its very easy to blame things on a boogy man and much harder to get to the root cause of a problem

hmm see there is a few good points youve made i wouldnt realy have thought of that myself, i doubt any one realy knows what the magical number is, i suppose the councils way of looking at that these it is these schools are very much under capacity and its better to run with one at 80 % than 2 or 3 at 30 % Is it true that some parants in all areas are opting to send there bairns to schools which would not be the default one for there area?

Does anyone who went to any of these small schools want to share there experience of it im genuinly interested to know for example, if theres 11 in a school are they just in the one classroom together? how does the teacher cater for the needs of all the different age groups? do the primary 7s get left to study while the teacher/ assistent has to help a primary 1 whos just p1shed ther pants or got a pencil stuck up there nose! my own experience for better or worse was at a large primary and secondary in the central belt there was over 500 at our primary and we were in a class of 32 all of us the same age which is obviously much higher than here but, say one morning we would do maths, we were split into 3 groups depending on ability the teacher then had to split her time among the 3 groups, allowing the bright ones to get ahead whilst also giving the required help for those who didnt find it quite as easy, so in the samll rural schools here how does the teacher balance the day to include all the age and ability groups present? a genuine question not a criticism

Thats the problem you just hit the nail right on the head! it happens in other places sometimes invlolving greater distances and the council will be well aware of this to bring it up in any argument, sometimes though for example when a counciler suggested that if there was a road accident invloving bairns from burravoe on a bus to mid yell that the comitee should consider themselves responsable, that to me just smacks of clutching at straws and can only be a detriment to any genuine arguement for keeping the school open Above all tho school closures are a symptom of the bigger problem in shetland which is more and more centralisation, in all ohnesty though, when youve got one settlement with a population many times that of any of its rivals then its more or less unavoidable, it started long ago and i cant see any way of it changing

a fair point but still its not impossible does any one ken if theres such a thing as a goverment rule/guidline on what is an acceptable distance to take a primary aged pupil to school? and if so what is it?

when you say super primary how big do you imagin? are we talking tingwall hamnavoe and wiesdale? it wouldnt be all that big maybe comparable to one of the lerwick ones?

whilst people are desperatly trying to get off topic il throw in my tupence worth on the school closures, (im new to shetlink by the way) I didnt go to school here so ive no experience of any of the schools in the isles but the closures are clearly a sensitive issue, for every closure which has been suggested there has always been a campaign to save said school and whilst sometimes it is wrong to close down a school other times it is absolutly the right thing to do you cant justify a secondary school in skerries when islands with bigger populations have to go to the anderson from s1 also 2 primary schools in unst is a bit OTT considering the population and as someone has said before they are moving to schools which are far far smaller than the national average. youve got to think theres more to school than just pupil to teacher time theres also the big part of learning to interact with others form friendships increase social skills etc etc which is harder if theres only 11 bairns to a school. as for scalloway it is daft doing it before the new anderson is ready but once (how longs a piece of string) the fit for purpose school is built in lerwick it realy has to be done, shetland has been in a fortunate financial position over the last few decades but be it changes to education or fixed links to the isles the anger which has poured is sometimes a bit, well, selfish. its been recognised that the current situation is not sustainable and you cant just simply keep going till theres no money left you cant please all of the people all of the time! String me up if you must!