Residents of Scalpay have say on community buy-out

While it’s not the sort  of full sale of an island we have noted on past occasions, it is notable that the residents of a village on an island have the opportunity to have a say in a community buyout.

Residents of a Hebridean village are being given the chance to have their say on whether to take over the running of their own village.

Scalpay landlord Fred Taylor has offered to give his 300 tenants control of their own land free of charge.

He says he has no plans to sell the land to anyone else and would retain the island if its residents decide not to take it from him.

Island residents to have say on community buy-out

Mr Taylor, who inherited the island from his father ten years ago, says the residents could set up their own community trust or join the larger neighbouring community estate managed by the North Harris Trust.

The Scalpay Community Land Steering Group is in discussions with Western Isles Council to hold a public ballot early in June.

via Island residents to have say on community buy-out | Highlands & Islands | STV News.

Earlier beginnings

The story began about a year ago (2011), when it was reported that the Islanders may get their island for free.

Free island visits courtesy of Highland councillor (maybe)

© Zak

Form an orderly line for your free island travel voucher – behind me, of course…

The leader of Highland Council has said everyone living in Scotland should get a voucher providing free travel to a Scottish island.

Michael Foxley has made the suggestion to VisitScotland chairman Mike Cantlay and Tourism Minister Fergus Ewing.

He said the scheme would help mark Scotland’s Islands, a celebration of island culture that ends in April.

He added that although ferry firms would lose out on fees, passengers would spend money during the trips.

Mr Foxley said the vouchers scheme could start with secondary school pupils.

He said: “Although there is a theoretical loss of income to the ferry companies neither Calmac nor NorthLink Ferries should actually lose out as people would still buy food and drink on board and the potential for repeat trips would be encouraged.

“There would also be benefits to mainland ports as people will require food, drink and accommodation.”

The council leader said he was still waiting for feedback from the Scottish government on the idea.

via BBC News – Highland Council leader suggests free island visits.

I won’t be holding my breath in anticipation of a gentle thud on the doormat, as the postie slips my free island travel voucher through the letterbox though.

More interesting is Mr Foxley’s comment about the ferry companies having a “theoretical loss of income”, which seems rather strange.

Isn’t CalMac is State-subsidised, and operates at a loss as a ‘Lifeline Service’ to the islands?

This means that the Scottish Government pays an annual subsidy to the operator, to mitigate the loss and bring it to break-even operation, since it is not a profit making venture.

Normally, I would have gone on to say that if Highland Council leader Michael Foxley wanted free travel vouchers handed out to everyone in Scotland, then it was also Highland Council leader Michael Foxley’s job to find the money to pay for those vouchers, but since the carrier is would a State-subsided (and effectively owned) ferry operator, then it will receive the “theoretical loss of income” when its subsidy is calculated.

I wonder if he had that in mind when saying “theoretical”, or was revealing that he had not done his homework when he suggested ” ferry firms would lose out on fees”?

Still not holding my breath waiting for my voucher.

Island airport voted world’s most stunning landing spot

You never know where the next compliment is going to land, and it must be something of a surprise for the tiny, and part time, airport on Barra to have come on top in a poll of the world’s most stunning landing spots:

A tiny Scottish airport on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean has been voted the world’s most stunning landing spot.

Barra Airport in the Outer Hebrides came top of a global poll of pilots and travellers.

It beat tourist hotspots such as St Barts, the Maldives and Gibraltar to be named the most scenic place to land in a plane.

Barra’s Cockle Strand on the northern tip of the island serves as a runway when the tide is out. It is unique as the only beach in Europe that doubles up as an airport.

Established in the mid 1930s, it’s long been a favourite landing spot of Prince Charles, who worked on the islands as a boy.

Michael Galbraith, station manager for Barra Airport, said that being voted number one was “a wonderful accolade” for the airport. He said: “To be up against some of the most beautiful parts of the world such as the Maldives and St Barts is testament to Scotland’s stunning scenery.

“The landing on the beach is certainly one of the most unusual in the world. When competing against large scale airports, it goes to show that when it comes to a stunning landing, small can definitely be more beautiful.”

More than 1000 people voted in the poll by private jet hire booking network PrivateFly.com. Barra received just over 22% of the vote, the most overall.

via Island airport voted world’s most stunning landing spot | Highlands & Islands | STV News.

Barra Airport

The top three destinations in the poll were:

1. Barra airport (Scotland, UK)

2. London City Airport (London, UK)

3. Jackson Hole Airport (Wyoming, USA).

Two years on, the Wee Cumbrae con is still in denial

Little Cumbrae House © Eddie Dowds

We mentioned the sale of the Little Cumbrae, or as we prefer locally, the Wee Cumbrae, back in 2009:

Little Cumbrae seems to be sold at last

I avoided the temptation then to refer to Baba Ramdev, and use words like conman near his name, but two years on, the Wee Cumbrae remains much as it was two years ago, with none of the great developments the buyer foresaw, after the penniless guru was flown over to celebrate the purchase.

He is described as not even having a bank account – of course not, when you are cooking the books you have make sure there are no financial records around to incriminate you when the bubble bursts.

This article gave a great build up to the Wee Cumbrae yoga project, and some worshipful praise for Ramdev – carefully failing to mention any of the investigations the authorities have running regarding him and his organisation:

Exclusive: She donated an island to Baba Ramdev – Rediff.com News

I find it really sad the way the apparently otherwise sensible and wealthy people are taken in by these types. It may be rampant in America, where the TV evangelists can be excused in a way, given the mental state of much of their audience, but that excuse doesn’t really work for Scotland.

The yoga guru was recently ‘forced’ to abandon a declared ‘Hunger strike to death’.

BBC News – India: Protests against crackdown on Baba Ramdev

I have to say that this would seem to show he doesn’t have much willpower, or conviction (of the non-criminal type in this case) or it was a con. After all, it doesn’t take much effort to stop eating, and unless the authorities start force-feeding you with tubes, then your chances of a successful and fatal conclusion are pretty certain.

A great way to gain publicity and sympathy amongst followers though, without having to deliver on the original promise, and claim you were prevented from doing so by the corrupt authorities.

Small wonder the word ‘artist‘ is sometime seen in close association with the word ‘con‘.

Incredibly, after £2.5 million for the island, the buyers are still looking throw away a further six-figure sum in order to develop this “penniless fellow’s” yoga retreat.

They previously made the point that Baba Ramdev does not even posses a bank account – he doesn’t need one!

Yoga followers fail to take up position on Scots island – Scotland on Sunday

Yesterday Poddar insisted that the organisation was still attempting to raise money to continue with its plans for the island. “We want to make sure everything is in place before we open to the public so we are trying to raise funds so we can do that,” she said.

“With the planning and an architect, health and safety restrictions and fire issues, we’re looking at a six-figure sum that we need to raise.”

“We are very much still online to develop Little Cumbrae. Ultimately we do want to build a retreat centre there where people can come and practise yoga and get better.”

She said that members of the public were still welcome to visit the island to appreciate its natural beauty, but that retreats would not be open to the public until next summer at the earliest.

Now the island of Taransay is up for sale

Island sales seem to be becoming popular, at least in the past few years. I think we’ve had the Wee Cumbrae, and a group of the Mull of Kintyre comprising Sanda, Sheep, and Glunimore Islands. And, there have been others where the island community has had the option of taking the island over – without an actual sale – from the owner.

Taransay, in the Western Isles, is a small island (described as being made up of two islands linked by a sand bar), which lies off the isle of Harris, has gone on the market with an asking price of £2 million or above.

The agent says it offers traditional buildings providing comfortable accommodation, coupled with sporting, farming and holiday letting enterprises

In 2000, it was used as the site of a television series called Castaway.

It is described as the home of Celtic pagans in 300AD, and as the site of several fierce battles, including the Massacre of Taransay in 1544, which took place when the Morrisons of Lewis invaded.

BBC News – Castaway island Taransay put up for sale

CKD Galbraith | Property Details

Taransay South Harris HS3 3HR

Guide Price £2,000,000

South Harris about 1 mile. About 3,474 acres. A significant and outstandingly beautiful island in the Outer Hebrides famed as the setting of the television series Castaway. Sporting, farming and holiday letting enterprises. Farmhouse. Chalet. Bothy. IACS registered farm. Stalking. Fishing.

Famed?

Past sales have been interesting – see the current life of the Wee Cumbrae for an example – so we can only hope the media keeps its eye on this one, and we learn the result, if it finds a buyer.

If you can’t stretch to £2 million, you could still get lucky – Another Scottish island is sold

Update – It’s sold already!

Well, Taransay didn’t stay on the market for long, and sold within days of going on the market.

However, in this case, for the moment, the buyer, and the price, are being kept secret:

…

has been sold for an undisclosed sum.

Taransay, which lies off Harris, had an asking price of £2m or above.

Selling agents CKD Galbraith have not named the new owners but said they already owned property on Harris.

…

CKD Galbraith said the island’s owners knew the purchasers and the island was passing into “safe hands”.

The firm’s John Bound added: “There will no doubt be a number of disappointed parties who would have liked to bid but it is fitting that Taransay is now in the new ownership of somebody closely acquainted to the area who will preserve the current management of the island.”

BBC News – Castaway island of Taransay sold to landowning family

Islanders may get their island for free

I spotted a story some weeks ago, which caught my eye because it concerned the offer of an island for free.

Of course, there was a catch, and the reality of the offer was that it applied only to the current residents of the island of Scalpay.

There have been a few stories of islands changing hands in recent years, both as sales to new owners, and by being taken over by their residents, and it will be interesting to see where this offer goes.

I had held off mentioning this since its original inclusion in the news, but since then, I have failed to dig up any further coverage, so can only include it as a mention, but without a conclusion as yet, or even indication of how it may progress.

The current owner has said that if the residents wanted the island, he was prepared to hand it over at no cost to the community, and further suggested that  a community trust could be set up to take over ownership, or that they could join the neighbouring North Harris.

There was an earlier story about Scalpay a couple of years ago, which covered the fact that there were no children under the age of seven on the island, and that the island’s primary school was due to be closed. In its early days, Scalpay had been home to a successful fishing community.

BBC News – Residents offered their island for free

Another Scottish island is sold

Hopefully less controversial than the recent sale of the Little Cumbrae became, Rubh’a Chruidh has just been sold to a Scottish businessman.

The island is tiny, covering only some four acres, lies just off the northeastern shore of the larger island of Kerrara, and looks into Oban harbour.

Sold to haulage contractor David Hamilton from Larkhall for £426,000.

He and his wife had been looking for a property overlooking the sea in the Oban area,and jumped in their helicopter to view the island as soon as they spotted the advert. Unfortunately, although an offer was made and accepted two days later, it took more than a year to complete the sale, following the death of the incumbent, who had lived there for 14 years.

The new ownership will see changes to the island, as plans have been lodged for a new home for the couple, and a new pontoon has already been reported for their boat.

For those who are not familiar with the area, and don’t recognise the name, you can View this map on Multimap.com to help get your bearings.

Rubh'a Chruidh island bungalow as seen from the passing ferry © Peter Barr

Island or house?

The island certainly looks like better value than a Victorian sandstone mansion along the road from me, and which has been on the market for at least two years, and probably more. That’s how long ago it was when I first saw a For Sale sign in the garden, but it had been obvious that it was deserted, and only being visited by someone who was collecting the junk mail every so often. Given the sate of the housing market then and now, I nearly dropped the phone when an inquiry revealed an asking price of £430,000 – given “The Recession”, I’d have expected something around £100,000 less, and guessed the owners were holding out for an upturn in the market.

A “Sold” sign went up a few weeks ago, and there were some comings and goings, but things went quiet, and when my monthly report from the estate agent arrived, that particular house was not listed as a recent sale. I did look closely,  as I had been keen to see the final price.

Not surprisingly, the “For Sale” re-appeared a few days ago – I’m not surprised, and would guess that the buyer had second thoughts, and pulled out after spending a few days in the property, and deciding that it may have been overpriced in the current market.

The house has never sold well, having once been abandoned and left to become derelict many years ago, and even had a tree growing inside it at one point – for long enought to make it out through the roof. That said, when it was bought (and I expected to see it being torn down) it was completely restored, even with a slate roof, rather than modern tiles.

Little Cumbrae seems to be sold at last

Little Cumbrae House © Eddie Dowds

Surprisingly yet to be mentioned in this blog, way back in 2005 the small island of the Little Cumbrae (probably known better locally as the Wee Cumbrae) was placed on the market, with an asking price of around £2.5 million. The offer first appeared online on a site called Private Islands Onlines, which contained a fairly detailed description of the island, its history, and its current disposition. The url of the offer has changed since that first appearance, and may change again, or even be removed altogether (assuming the reported sale is completed), but can be still be tracked down: Little Cumbrae Island, Scotland, Europe, and is worth looking up as it makes for an interesting and informative read.

Little Cumbrae lies to the north of Arran (and is next to the Great Cumbrae – better know locally as the Isle of Cumbrae, or just the Cumbrae), and the boat trip from Largs takes about 10 minutes, but helicopters and hovercraft can be somewhat quicker.

Digging around for some information relating to the sale, it seems that three rival bids were turned down back in 2006.

The Evening Times reported the story, boosting the asking price up to £3 million, and claiming a £1 million saving for Glasgow care home magnate (their description, not mine) Sam Poddar and his wife Sunita, reported to have paid a “bargain price” of just £2 million for the island, which covers 684 acres, and they report contains a nine-bedroom Victorian mansion, four cottages and a 250-year-old lighthouse.

I don’t know how many bedrooms Little Cumbrae house has, but only two cottages were advertised in the original sale, and there are two lighthouses on the island, one dating from 1757, and its replacement from 1793.

I found a second ad (and it might vanish too of course, now that the sale has been made) from Humbert Leisure, with the following details:

• Island of some 277 hectares (684 acres) in the Firth of Clyde
• Large 12 bedroom mansion house, boathouse and jetty, 2 cottages
• 13th century keep, lighthouse complex with 3 vacant houses
• Potential for uses including lodge development, marina and hotel/restaurant – stp
• Idyllic, secluded location with dramatic views

For Sale Freehold/Feuhold

Joint sole selling agents Knight Frank, Edinburgh.

Download the detailed sales brochure as a pdf file (while it’s still available) – it contains numerous details and photographs

Guide price £2.5 million

Still looks more like the original offering than the Evening Times’ thoughts (so we’ll go with the 684 acres stories).

Humberts Leisure director Peter Smith said: “There are not many opportunities to buy a Scottish island and there has been a great deal of interest. Even taking potential purchasers for viewings was challenging, especially crossing the Clyde in adverse weather conditions.  The solitude and uniqueness of Little Cumbrae definitely appealed to the purchaser.”

John Coleman, Knight Frank said: “A Scottish Island is the ultimate trophy property. Islands which are as accessible and habitable as Little Cumbrae, while retaining their privacy, are particularly rare and as a result attract interest from the wealthy overseas market even in difficult times like these.”

The new owners have said that they have no plans to develop the the island commercially, and intended to look into ways of safely opening it for public access, having acquired it from Worcester developer Steve Worrallo, owner since 2002,  and who had planned to turn it into a millionaire’s playground.

And, one more gem. According to one agent,: “An island in the Firth of Clyde has been sold on the open market for the first time in 40 years.”

John Coleman, Knight Frank adds: ‘A Scottish Island is the ultimate trophy property. Islands which are as accessible and habitable as Little Cumbrae, while retaining their privacy, are particularly rare and as a result attract interest from the wealthy overseas market even in difficult times like these.’

Little Cumbrae’s guide price: £2.5m

Little Cumbrae sits just off the Ayrshire coast and is nearly two miles long by just under a mile wide.  Its location within the Gulf Stream means there is a wide range of plant species and its rocky cliffs and undisturbed uplands are home to more than 50 species of birds.  The Victorian mansion, Little Cumbrae House, has spectacular views of the Firth of Clyde and the Ayrshire coast and has gardens planned by Gertrude Jekyll, who designed more than 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and America and collaborated with architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.* Country properties for sale

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LHC operation confirmed

While it’s not the actual experiment that the doom-mongers are predicting will herald the end of the Earth, that’s still to come, it was the first confirmation that the beam was circulating as planned around the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) when it was activated today.

The successful circuit will be followed by a second experiment to prove that the beam circulates correctly in the opposite direction, in preparation for the final (that’s a really bad choice of word, isn’t it?) experiment which will see the two beams operated simultaneously, and directed to collide in the area of the detectors which will record the resulting evidence of the collision, and maybe of the Higgs boson.

Two tiny flashes have marked the successful first circuit of the 27 kilometre tunnel at Cern, where scientists are trying to recreate the moment after the Big Bang.

Watch the first test.

I’ve never been sure if the folk that are predicting the end of Earth mean the Earth the rest of us live on, or a Flat-earth, possibly balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle.

Anyway, I’m off to fire-up Radio 4, and Torchwood: Lost Souls. By Joseph Lidster. Is something lurking in the underground tunnel at CERN?

Will Scotland (and England) be spared as the Earth ends?

Being part of an island nation, Scotland (still attached to England of course) might just float away, and survive the beginning of the end of the earth next week, currently scheduled to take place on Wednesday, September 10, 2008.

That’s the date currently set for the Large Hadron Collider to begin operation. The LHC is exactly what its name suggests – a large collider of hadrons. Strictly, LHC refers to the collider; a machine that deserves to be labelled ‘large’, it not only weighs more than 38,000 tonnes, but runs for 27 kilometres (16.5 mi) in a circular tunnel 100 metres beneath the Swiss/French border at Geneva. You may have seen it featured in a couple of programmes aired by the BBC this week, as part of their Big Bang special.

You might also want to hurry up and read Why the fascination with the end of the world?, which is a fairly comprehensive summary of all the naysayers and their prophecies of doom, and will be available at least until Wednesday. I suspect it may still be available after Wednesday, as none of the prophecies about the ende of the world that it describes seemed to be anything more than the ramblings of the demented, or really smart people that worked out how to sell a book, attract donations, or just plain con people out of their money.

Large Hadron Collider startup

Everything is now ready for the first injection of proton beams into the LHC on the 10th September 2008.

This major milestone in the LHC project will be covered live by international broadcasters. UK media organisations will be at CERN and at a simultaneous media event in London.

CERN will webcast the startup (the link is on the CERN “first beam” page).

BBC Radio 4 will devote a day of programming to the LHC, including covering first injection of beams live on the Today programme. See the BBC website for programming, background etc.

In the weeks preceeding the start up, this web page and the CERN and STFC websites will carry information on the plans for coverage of the event.

Press Release announcing start up date.

Dr Tara Shears talks about some of the scientific questions that the LHC project will help us answer, on the www.labreporter.com website.

Woe, Woe, and thrice Woe – The end of the earth is nigh (again)

But a handful of scientists believe that the experiment could create a shower of unstable black holes that could ‘eat’ the planet from within, and they are launching last-ditch efforts to halt it in the courts.

One of them, Professor Otto Rossler, a retired German chemist, said he feared the experiment may create a devastating quasar – a mass of energy fuelled by black holes – inside the Earth.

‘Nothing will happen for at least four years,’ he said. ‘Then someone will spot a light ray coming out of the Indian Ocean during the night and no one will be able to explain it.

‘A few weeks later, we will see a similar beam of particles coming out of the soil on the other side of the planet. Then we will know there is a little quasar inside the planet.’

Prof Rossler said that as the spinning-top-like quasar devoured the world from within, the two jets emanating from it would grow and catastrophes such as earthquakes and tsunamis would occur at the points they emerged from the Earth.

‘The weather will change completely, wiping out life, and very soon the whole planet will be eaten in a magnificent scenario – if you could watch it from the moon. A Biblical Armageddon. Even cloud and fire will form, as it says in the Bible.’

He said that attempts were still being made in the European Court of Human Rights to halt the experiment on the grounds that it violated the right to life. The court has, however, already rejected calls for a temporary delay in the project, and it is unlikely to come to a speedy decision about whether the CERN experiment should be halted for good.

Meanwhile Dr Walter Wagner, an American scientist who has been warning about the dangers of particle accelerators for 20 years, is awaiting a ruling on a lawsuit he filed a fortnight ago in his home state of Hawaii.

He fears the experiments might unwittingly create something he calls a ‘strangelet’ that could result in a fusion reaction that might ultimately turn the Earth into a supernova, or an exploding star.

But Dr Evans, the leader of the project, who has devoted 14 years of his life to building the vast particle accelerator, is dismissive of the doom-mongers.

The A-Bomb was supposed to do this too

Your scribe won’t be dropping his trousers and kissing selected parts of his anatomy goodbye on Wednesday, but he will be despairing of how easily the nuts ans pseudo-scientists can gain the ear of the establishment and be given a hearing. It’s even sadder if they were once professionals that should know better.

When the Manhattan Project was nearing completion during World War II, there was a group predicting that the first detonation of an atomic bomb would destroy the Earth, setting fire to it in a series of uncontrollable atomic reactions triggered by the bomb, which would eventually consume the planet. This was, to a degree, understandable at the time. Nothing like this had ever been done before, there was no natural counterpart to refer to, and if you ignore quantum physics (and the small, but possibly significant aspect that the Earth is not made of something like uranium 235, a fissionable material), then the chances of that first bomb setting up and uncontrollable chain reaction do indeed start to have the ring of truth.

While I may have studied quantum physics for a couple of years, the stuff of LHC operation is way over my head, but I suspect that the same poor science forms the same basis for the doom-mongers of the LHC to make their crazed claims. Most noticeable in their mutterings is the long time-scale involved in their predictions – very handy for them since it means that if they are wrong, and nothing happens, everyone will have forgotten about them (so we won’t see them lined up against a handy wall), and if they’re right, we’ll all be too busy trying to survive, and won’t care about them as they wander about waving signs saying “We told you so!”

I also suspect – if they are actually correct – that the timescale involved in the ceation of a “spinning-top-like quasar” in the centre of the Earth would be somewhat more rapid than they suggest, and if did come to pass, the Earth would be devoured on the timescale of an atomic reaction (which is, after all, what they are predicting) not an oceanic hurricane or weather front.

For my part, I’ll simply be keeping an eye on the LHC for the next decade or two (or three or…) to see if it comes up with any evidence of the Higgs boson or BEH Mechanism, popularised as the “God Particle”, a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics; the only Standard Model particle not yet observed.