hjasga

My above comment had nothing to do with the toilets, so I'm unsure why you've directed the second part of your post at me. I commented on the toilets situation in a thread that existed before you started your own: I think the Bigton example is an excellent one. A community taking responsibility for itself rather than expecting to be handed something.

"Currently Shetland Islands Council is the only council in Scotland to provide 52 free bin bags to all homes at a cost of almost £25,000." Cheerio, then. Folk are always complaining about the needless excesses we have relative to other authorities, this is clearly one. Have some emergency supplies at Market House for folk who genuinely need it, I'm sure the rest of us will get by.

Responsibility for the Bigton toilets has been taken on by the community-owned shop, I've heard - huge credit to them if that is true. Closing the Burra Meal toilets will look ridiculous come summer. They could at least have them open over the school holidays, sure they will have some school cleaners on the books with not much to do.

I've seen that article linked several times now. I'm not sure if it's meant to be satire but it certainly seems to be made up. Searching the various names involved doesn't return much else, and you'd think more than an independent blogger would pick up on a story of that significance.

I don't know the full history behind this thread, but assuming it is based on the thread about the Yell kirk break in, the pettiness there seemed to come entirely from you, owre-weel. SP's comments didn't seem at all offensive or trolling, so your "Yawn!" seemed entirely unnecessary.

On a similar note, the vast majority of Trainspotting was actually filmed in Glasgow. It's only really the opening chase scene on Princes Street/Calton Road that's in Edinburgh itself.

The story is fiction, Ravenswick is fiction but Lerwick is real. Why change a perfectly adequate real place by adding fake CCTV and a bus station open in the middle of the night if it adds nothing to the plot?. Well unless it will come clear in future episodes as to why it was done. Why even add a murder? Let's just film a night out in the Thule... The plot seems very weak to me, but the CCTV and open-late-night bus station seemed to be fairly integral to it, to me. Shetland is merely inspiration for the series, it's quite evidently not a documentary. This pointless nitpicking just makes you look a bit mad.

"Inaccuracies"! To my knowledge it's supposed to be fiction.

Aren't Revenue Support Grants calculated based on the extent of recurring costs? Meaning that, to a certain extent, reduction of recurring costs also means reduction of the grant? And do staffing costs not make up the largest proportion of recurring costs within all/most local authorities? All genuine questions as I do not know exactly how this works.

I imagine companies like Siemens aren't too keen to share the expertise required. Given how unreliable these things seem to be, it makes more sense for them to have the maintenance contracts than to provide relatively unprofitable training. It's a circuit board, once installed, I'm sure they could carry a spare so the faulty one can be sent south if required. It has to be cheaper than having to pay groups of folk to come up here to constantly fix the lights. The cost of bringing these companies up here is likely to be considerably more than training someone local. Your not a seat polisher by any chance are you? "Training someone locally" depends on a trainer being available and willing to do that. If the expertise to repair these devices is held within the manufacturing company it's not uncommon for them to want to hold the maintenance contracts. I'm also fairly certain based on recent news stories that these lights are no longer in production and that spares are increasingly hard to come by. And, no, I am neither a "seat polisher" nor even a council employee.

I imagine companies like Siemens aren't too keen to share the expertise required. Given how unreliable these things seem to be, it makes more sense for them to have the maintenance contracts than to provide relatively unprofitable training. Who would be responsible for assessing that and delivering the clear out? Sounds like creating additional work to me...

To my recollection, the letter in question spoke of ongoing costs for somebody's private cats. There was no mention of the privately run Gott Cats, nor of the staffing costs that affect the figure you quote, so it's a fairly disingenuous letter if that is the case. I have no reason to doubt the figures quoted during the Skerries consultation. People have to remember that the figures that have been questioned are additional costs on top of the existing provision. Adding three pupils to an existing group of around sixty makes very little difference. I would expect figures for the future consultations on the larger isles schools to be higher. If they are not, I will join the skeptics in asking questions of them. As it is, I very much doubt the addition of Skerries pupils will have much effect at all on the existing hostel provision.

Did we all see the editor's choice letter in the paper this week? I still laugh every time I think about it. £7 a day to keep a cat, nigh on £400 a month to keep two of them! No wonder people dispute every proposed saving if this is what they think things cost...

This thread is a fairly sad example of the nasty undertones Shetlink can have. The new recruits at Radio Shetland are doing a fine job - to my knowledge both are youngsters just starting out, to call them "awful" is pathetic.

Colin, Shetland Youth Voice is predominantly voluntary. Young people stand to represent their area, as a councillor might, but they're not paid anything. There will be some level of support from within the council, but mostly administrative and for advertising whenever elections come around - I highly doubt there is any paid job solely relating to the organisation.

Who is Prof Latham?

They're billing it as asking young people, but it seems to be purely "asking young people in formal education". I haven't seen any effort to engage 16-25 year olds out in the workplace.

It doesn't seem that strange to me; it's a simple numbers game. Harrow has upwards of 800 pupils, so £28k each in that case goes a lot further than the ~£30k per pupil for the 20 at Baltasound, or the ~£60k per pupil for the 2 at Skerries. There are always going to be fixed costs that can only be cut back so far without removing provision entirely.

I certainly wouldn't be advocating closure of ALL schools in Yell. My view is that a local primary school is far more important than a local secondary school. Whilst an hour long bus journey is a long time for anybody, I'd rather have secondary pupils do that than primary pupils getting up to the maximum allowable for them (I think 35 minutes at the moment?). Given some of those children will be as young as four it's not unreasonable to suggest some will still be having "accidents" occasionally, which I'm sure will delight the drivers. Our primary schools are run far more efficiently than our secondaries, so I personally wouldn't want to see them jeopardised in order to maintain the secondary school estate. As for learning materials, you make a fair point about pens and pencils already being provided at the parents' expense, however the potential cuts to operating budgets would be far more significant than that. There would be no new text books, no supplies of jotters let alone craft materials, I'm not even sure how schools would pay for things like prelim exam papers. Parents, parent councils and other groups can do their bit to raise money - and it's fantastic when they do - but that will only get harder as the sums required grow.

Head Teacher sharing can make sense in certain circumstances. For example, I think the Baltasound JHS head is also head of Fetlar Primary School, which is sensible both in terms of geography and the size of the schools involved. However, I imagine it would depend heavily on circumstance. There's a lot of sharing in teachers for Baltasound JHS, mostly with Mid Yell but also Brae and even further afield. Again, that seems like an ideal scenario for it and you'd think the only major problems (other than perhaps staff morale) would be timetabling of both the ferries and the schools themselves.

It is Scottish Law that a school closure cannot be recommended purely on the basis of finances. The local authority has to show some educational benefit in their closure proposal.

This post, the second paragraph in particular, is great. I agree wholeheartedly.

This is a very lazy analogy and really not comparable.

What of the effects on poverty-stricken families without school closures? What happens when the education budget won't stretch far enough to provide pens and jotters? Current proposals show that without reducing the school estate we are going to see massive changes in the education system that will effect everybody, not just those who have chosen to live in remote areas.

You can criticise the actions of the department all you like, but once you start singling out individuals - even those most senior - and questioning their integrity, I think you have to take a step back and realise you might be getting a little too personal. At the end of the day these are still people, and I don't believe anybody could genuinely suggest they're not trying to do what they think is best. I haven't seen the comments from the individual you mention, you seem to be in debate with yourself on that one. What nonsense. There was a technical error and as soon as it was brought to attention they postponed the decision to give more time to investigate. Not sure what your 101% refers to, most likely in a professional report figures are simply rounded.