NTS cuts leave cats exempt from rules

Following the recent announcement that the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) is to close some properties in its care, and will be drastically cutting staff numbers, we’ve received news that this will not apply to cats operating within the NTS.

Further, since there will be insufficient numbers of human staff to enforce rules regarding “Keep off the furniture” – which the feline staff consider does not apply to them anyway – future infringements of the rules by NTS cats will no longer be recorded on their employment history as a disciplinary matter.

The cats have welcomed the move, and have stated that they will ensure all padded chairs, seats, beds etc are occupied in order to avoid any misunderstandings by members of the public, who have been known to sit on the exhibits.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Find your MP’s expenses

Well, with our site’s name, you just knew we’d have to provide this link.

A Google spreadsheet of all MP’s expense claims 07-08

I don’t want to know, The Guardian published from official records, not me.

Museum seeks former RAF East Fortune personnel

The National Museum of Flight at East Fortune has two new displays for 2009.

Fortunes of War

Fortunes of  War aims to explore the history of the airfield across two world wars, with an emphasis on the jobs, duties and personal stories of the men and women who served there. It will illustrate the airfield’s history through the 20th century using a mix of recorded interviews, maps, models, historic objects, aircraft wings, uniforms and equipment.

One of the main features of centres on the memories of staff and personnel who were posted to the airfield, in World War I when it served as Royal Naval Air Station, and then in World War II when it became an RAF station. Museum staff have already been in contact with those who served there, and are keen to contact anyone who spent time there.

Any former service personnel from RAF East Fortune wishing to get in touch with the museum can make contact through the web site given above, or contact Ian Brown on 0131 247 4201.

Fantastic Flight

Fantastic Flight is an exhibition designed to demonstrate the wonder of flight, and will be located in the former World War II workshops of the airfield. It will use a combination of historic objects and interactive exhibits to allow visitors to interact with such things as the forces of flight including gravity, lift, thrust and drag and find out whether they have the necessary skills to be a pilot – observational skills, hearing, colour-vision, peripheral vision, hand-eye coordination and reaction times. The exhibits will include a wind-tunnel, air cannon and a pedal powered propeller. Visitors will be able to try their hand on an  R34 airship simulator and gain an impression what it might have been like to fly one of these great machines.

Opening times and charges vary throughout the years, although the new features are included in the standard admission charge, and the web site given above should be checked before travelling.

Dunkeld Bridge and Thomas Telford

Dunkeld Bridge © Russel Wills

This weekend saw the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Dunkeld Bridge across the the River Tay between Dunkeld and Birnam. Thomas Telford is becoming better known as a Scottish engineer these days, so the bridge celebrations can only help. Saturday saw a parade  led by the Atholl Highlanders, Europe’s only remaining private army, under the Duke of Atholl.

Notably, the cost of the bridge was to be shared by the government of the day, and the Duke of Atholl, and like all government projects it went way over budget/estimate, and the people had to pick up the cost. Like today’s sometimes controversial toll bridges – now all a thing of the past – it replaced a ferry which had formerly provided the river crossing.

The bridge is 685 feet (over 200 m) long, carried over the river by seven spans just over 26 feet across and 90 feet high at the centre. The southern arch is described as having served as the local gaol.

Originally estimated at £15,000, the final cost of the bridge turned out to be closer to £40,000. The government refused to come up with any more money and stood by its original contribution of half the original estimate, contributing only £7,500 to the total. The Duke was obliged to come up with more than £20,000 on top of his original contribution of £7,500, meaning that the bridge crossing carried a highly unpopular toll, to make up the loss. This toll was highly unpopular with the locals, and it seems the toll gates could occasionally be found cast into the river, and there was the occasional riot – when the railway arrived, the bridge had to be crossed to each the local station. Troops were once sent to maintain order in 1868. The tolls ended in May 1879.

In time, the importance and value of the bridge led to its acceptance, as it was such a significant improvement in the route which connected the Highland with the Lowlands. Telford’s design has proven itself, and while it was created in an era where horses and carts would have been the heaviest load seen to cross it, 200 years later, it can carry 40 tonne lorries without complaint.

Barry Mill to fight NTS closure announcement

Barry Mill, Carnoustie © Gwen and James Anderson

We recently noted the announcement of the planned closure of NTS (National Trust for Scotland) properties and staff cuts intended to reduce operating costs.

At least one of the properties marked for closure has demonstrated that it will not go quietly. Barry Mill is one of only a few working mills left in Scotland

A public meeting was held in Carnoustie this week (March 25)  with over 70 people in attendance. Peter Elis, property manager and miller, spoke to the meeting about the importance of the mill to Scotland’s heritage.

As a result of the meeting, the Friends of Barry Mill has been created to take immediate action towards finding a financial solution to safeguard Barry Mill’s future.

Three local councillors – Ralph Palmer, Helen Oswald and Peter Murphy – have pledged their support for the mill and undertaken to make an immediate call on NTS for a stay of execution. This call has subsequently been backed unanimously by Angus Councillors.

Thanks to bothygollach.

“Who Am I? Day” held in Oban

Oban War and Peace Museum (Courtesy of the museum)

On Thursday, March 26, 2008, the Oban War an Peace Museum held a Who Am I? Day in the town’s Regent Hotel.

The Regent Hotel is just along the Corran Esplanade, a short way from the Oban War and Peace Museum itself, which is located within the old Oban Times Building near the pier head.

Over the years, many photographs have been donated to the museum, but many lack any supporting information, and the identities of many of the people seen in them are unknown. During the day, many of the photographs were on show to the public, and covered the years from 1983 into the 1970s, with subjects ranging from the Armed Services of World War II through to old School photographs.

The doors were open from 11:00 am in the morning, and the event ran until 4:00 pm in the afternoon, with volunteers on hand hand to help with any queries. All were made welcome, with free admission to the event.

Successful result

At the end of the day, the even was deemed a success, with some 52 previously unknown names associated with subjects in the photographs, and whole new collection of stories and anecdotes to go along with them as well.

Museum Opening hours

• March, April, October, November – 10:00 am to 4:00 pm daily including Sundays
• May, June, July, August, September – 10:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday to Saturday, Sundays 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
• July, August, September – 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm subject to volunteer availabilit

Admission to the museum is free.

Museum Contact details

Oban War and Peace Museum
Old Oban Times Building
Corran Esplanade
Oban
Argyll PA34 5PX

Telephone: 01631 570007

email: info@obanmuseum.org.uk

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The socially unaceptable wind power agenda

Looking back at the content of this blog, you’ll see that your scribe has exercised his engineering knowledge and and decided for himself that the mindless march of wind power, and wind farms, has less to do with actually producing power than scoring political points with a highly visible response to renewables. If the aim was to produce meaningful amounts of power, more effort would have been put behind efforts to produce hydro power, rather than wind power, from the start. In the simplest analysis, water has 1,000 times the density of air, and that relates directly how much energy a given volume carries, and the size of the equipment needed to extract it. But hydro power is largely invisible, with the hardware buried (or should that be sunk) out of sight, unlike wind turbines, which are anything but out of sight – something that has come to haunt new installation.

Those who have wind farms imposed on them did something unexpected, and after seeing the first wind turbines grow to larger and larger, they discovered they could protest and have them halted, call for inquiries into planning, and even have them cancelled.

Apparently taking a lead from the same spin doctors that decided speeding should be given the same social stigma as drink-driving, climate change secretary Ed Milliband has has declared than opposition to wind farms should become as socially unacceptable as failing to wear a seatbelt, and called for the government to be stronger in facing down local opposition to wind farms.

At a screening of the climate change documentary The Age of Stupid, Milliband said. “The government needs to be saying, ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area – like not wearing your seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing,’”

We recently listed the public inquiries held between 2004 and 2009 (Wind farm wars) in Scotland, and across the country it seems that there are plans to build around 4,000 turbines which are being opposed by 200 organised groups.

One of the objections and problems with all the wind farms being proposed in the north of Scotland is the lack of a suitable interconnector for these wind farms to be connected to in order for the copious amount of power they generate (when the wind blows) to be transferred into the national grid, and there are more opposition groups fuelled by the pylons and power cables that this will need. Basically, wind power is an expensive and inefficient method of producing power, and in Germany, which has become home to the largest number of wind farms in Europe, the cost of linking its wind farms into the national gird is in in excess of €1 billion. Critics have said it would be cheaper to properly insulate old properties or to renew existing power stations – but then you wouln’t have all the grants etc that go with new build and development.

Whether or not they were pressured into toning down past opposition, or if the original claims of bird decimation were overstated, an RSPB-commissioned report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) has called on the government to ensure quicker decisions on wind farms, while winning support from local communities.

Despite repeated claims that wind farms are not subsidised, which is true in the strictest definition of the term, there are other way to provide financial incentives and benefits, and energy regulator Ofgem has been critical of the government for the unfair way in which consumer’s energy bills are being used to subsidise renewable energy.

And then I read this…

But there’s big money to be made – particularly if you’re Nigel Doughty, the venture capitalist, who donated £250,000 to Labour in the run-up to the 2005 general election. His investment company owns LM Glasfiber, the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, and has won many major contracts in Britain.

No, surely there’s no connection being implied…

In a way, I don’t really care about these issue, and only mention them in passing, and to illustrate how murky this subject has become.

Instead of getting on with the knitting as it were, and working towards the best mix of renewable energies to meet that oft-quoted EU target of producing a fifth of all energy through renewables by 2020, it seems that we still better at fighting about how to achieve it, how the best buck can be fiddled, and who can score the most political point.

And all the time, the cost of energy goes up, and the poorest, the elderly, and those on fixed or restricted incomes get colder.

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Google Street View – take care with concerns

As I mentioned in an earlier post, since Google’s Street View consists of public photos taken in public places, the only people who have anything to fear at those involved in something sneaky, and this has proven to be the case with the news that one image removed showed a a man emerging from Soho sex shop, and another throwing his guts up outside a London pub.

This reminds me of the problem with people taking photographs in public nowadays, with just taking a photograph becoming a legal issue after a man was fined for taking a similar picture of a woman outside a bar in Edinburgh, and the possibility that just taking your next photograph could be a crime.

No tales yet of images and registration numbers of cars that show the odd office affair in progress, but those sneaking a cigarette outside the work seem to popular captures in the background. Reminds of one of the displays about the Clyde shipyards which can be seen in Kelvingrove museum. This contains an account of one foreman who had no interest in hiring any man that turned up at the yard smoking a pipe – and rejected them on the basis that compared to a non-smoker, the pipe smoker would spend his working day preparing his tobacco, reaming out his pipe, packing it with tobacco, and trying to light it. Somewhere in between that, he might actually do some work – until his pipe went out and he started the process all over again in an attempt to restart it.

As you should be aware by now, there is a link at bottom left of every Street View scene which allows anyone to “Report a concern”.

There doesn’t seem to be any onus of proof on the part of the reporter, and Google don’t seem to do any background checks. I find that more worrying than any supposed issues of privacy.

I gave the service a try to see if it worked, and how long it took – it does, and it’s quick.

I’d been wandering around various Street View areas, and happened to spot one of my own cars. Closing in on the view, I noticed that unlike other cars in the same street, the registration number had not been fuzzied, so I thought I’d give the reporting option a try and ask for the number to fuzzied.

Within a few hours a response had been received acknowledging the report, but with no indication as to any action taken.

The next day, I was still wondering if Google would confirm action, or request any further details, but when nothing arrived I decded to have a look at the street concerned, and all looked as it had before, until I arrived at the frame concerned. Rather than fuzzy the plate – as I had requested – Google had simply removed the whole scene, and where it had once shown the surrounding area there was just a an empty black hole, with the comforting words “This image is no longer available“.

While it proves the system works, to a degree, I rather wish I hadn’t raised the report now, as the whole scene has now been lost. It may only be one in millions, but all I’d asked for was a bit of fuzz on a registration plate, not removal of the whole scene, which may have been wanted by the local people who lived there, and to whom I apologise. I’d be a bit miffed if my house suddenly disappeared from the system for no apparent reason.

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