FREEDOM!!!!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:It was completely accidental- the reporter was in the foreground and oblivous to the police van and its suspicous occupants getting out and they seemed oblivous to the camera being there.

So there is no other explanation than Police State Evilness. Ha! I get it now!

Well what they were up to is a matter of debate-but they were clearly not just some protestors being let go as they were not escorted and opened the doors themselves- they could just have been going to do surveillance- problem when the police start getting sneaky is the issue of trust arises. In the UK at least a police officer is supposed to wear a visible badge at all times so their number can be recorded and you can report them- assuming you can remember the number as they whack you over the head! Police who dont have the court papers to remove their badges but who do anyway rouses suspicion (and ths was one of the things the commission into the death at the riots highlighted- that covering or removing the identifying badge was common practice for police on the front lines).

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Well what they were up to is a matter of debate-but they were clearly not just some protestors being let go as they were not escorted and opened the doors themselves- they could just have been going to do surveillance- problem when the police start getting sneaky is the issue of trust arises. In the UK at least a police officer is supposed to wear a visible badge at all times so their number can be recorded and you can report them- assuming you can remember the number as they whack you over the head! Police who dont have the court papers to remove their badges but who do anyway rouses suspicion (and ths was one of the things the commission into the death at the riots highlighted- that covering or removing the identifying badge was common practice for police on the front lines).

What if, and this while we're 'assuming' things and/or 'suspecting' things, there were violent - say - Anarchists believed to be 'hiding' amidst the genuine peaceful protesters, these Anarchists having planned several violent illegal attacks on people that they don't agree with, or on public or private property, in an ongoing effort to undermine Democracy without scruple, citing 'higher' ideals Adolf would be proud of. With no real facts to assist, this is my assumption. Mind, why the police would be dressed up in such striking outfits is surprising. Oh I have a new idea. Maybe they were going to join up with like-clad Anarchists who may or may not have been planning to throw marbles under police horses so as to cause chaos and turn a peaceful protest into a violent one... Sneaky, yes, but violent extremists can be sneaky too, I've heard... Then again, maybe.... Oh I can think up all sorts of stuff. This is fun, though I s'pose it's no laughing matter.

Salmond and the BBC are at logger heads over the BBC's imparitiality- or lack of it as Salmond sees it.

"The First Minister was then banned from BBC studios during the pre-match build-up for Scotland's rugby clash with England at Murrayfield Mr Salmond said: "There are real concerns about editorial decisions taken by BBC journalists being over-ruled by bureaucrats on political grounds. That is unacceptable, and I will certainly be raising the issue with Lord Patten."
The routine talks were arranged weeks ago so BBC Trust chief Lord Patten could discuss Beeb jobs and production in Scotland.
But the First Minister now intends to present Lord Patten with a dossier of network coverage which, he says, breaches the its legal commitment to impartiality. Last month Newsnight anchorman Jeremy Paxman branded the First Minister as being "like Robert Mugabe" in an ill-tempered interview."- The Sun.

It's the whole idea of rugby that I find most offensive.

Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond and the Secretary of State for Sctoland met today to sort out the differences between Holyrood's view on the referendum and Westministers. But only mixed messages emerged-

The first minister said no agreement on "substantive issues" had been reached and that discussions would continue.
He said there remained two main areas of disagreement between the two governments - over the number of questions to be asked and whether 16 and 17 year-olds would be allowed to vote in the ballot.
He said issues over the timing of the referendum and the role of the Electoral Commission in organising the vote had been "more or less settled".
Alex Salmond says "modest progress" was made during the talks
The SNP wants the vote to take place in autumn 2014, while the UK government had previously said it wanted it to take place earlier.
Mr Moore said the Scottish government had indicated to him that it was considering holding the referendum in September or October 2014.
Mr Salmond said: "In terms of the timing my sense is that the timing is more or less accepted."

However......

However, the Scottish secretary said the timing remained one of the issues which both governments disagreed on.
Mr Moore said: "My view is that it needs to be sooner rather than later. I think when you consider that, under their timetable, we've got the best part of three years before we make this momentous decision, I think people across Scotland believe that actually the sooner we can do that, the better.
"There are some technical issues about laws and how you pass all that, that we to sort out. But we can do that, I think, much more quickly and get this referendum earlier, and that will be good for Scotland and good for business in Scotland."

All of which prompted the Scottish labour leader to note ; "It doesn't bode well for Scotland's referendum that the first minister and the Scottish secretary can't even agree what they agreed at their meeting."

Potentialy an important day for Scotland today. Today it could be said is the day when Salmonds dream of Scotland as a renewable energy powerhouse takes arguably its first steps in the real world.

'Wave energy converters which can power more than 1,000 homes have been approved in Orkney by Energy Minister Fergus Ewing.
Aquamarine Power's Oyster project is at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC).
The two new devices will be connected to the National Grid.
Mr Ewing said: "I am delighted to grant consent to these devices, the first nearshore wave array in Scotland to feed in to the National Grid."- BBC news

After years of develpment, wrangling, and some folk saying it was all a pipedream and a mad idea actual clean power is being generated and used by the people. Hopefully just the start of something bigger.

I'm quite interested in how this will work out for you.

There is talk of such a development off our coast. The battle lines have already been drawn. The local commercial fishermen believe it will destroy key fish and crab habitat. They have no reason to trust the Big Energy industry's assurance otherwise, and the local environmental groups are supporting the fishermen (strange bedfellows). It promises to get very interesting!

What were the issues you all faced in getting this approved?

Here is the industry viewpoint on the opposition to these developments in Scotland.

One example is the large number of Shetland residents who have opposed the Viking Energy proposal (a wind farm compromising 150 turbines) and a campaign group – Sustainable Shetland – has been set up to try and stop the plans going ahead.
But people like Gordon MacDougall, Chief Operating Officer of RES UK and Ireland thinks this problem is possible to overcome: “I think Scotland as a whole has got a mature viewpoint [on wind power], and I think what you tend to see is less fear of the unknown than in some other countries. Also, councils (and certainly the Scottish Government) have a very strong commitment to renewables, and their approach to consenting is quite positive”.
He adds that RES' approach is to work with communities to find a solution, and try and appeal beyond what he sees as “a vocal minority that can be very small, but often well funded”, to the wider community.
Jenny Hogan of Scottish Renewables believes the problem can be solved by helping adults welcome changes by educating them on renewable energy; “the schools are beginning to help young people understand the need for sustainable energy, but there is more that could be done to change the hearts and minds of adults.”

The protest group Sustaninable Shetland- menytioned above- say this about the wind farm project-
Loss of cultural heritage landscape. The site will be visible across much of Shetland. From nearly one end of the islands to the other. At night the site will more resemble airport runways than rural hills.
Lost and damaged habitats. Plant, animal and bird and fish species within and beyond the site negatively impacted.
Peat is a carbon sink. Peat takes thousands of years to form, and actively stores and absorbs climate damaging CO2. Damaging peat on this scale releases large quantities of CO2. It is madness to damage ancient peat deposits for a so-called environmental project.
This project will create an adverse impact on the landscape of almost all of Shetland. A generation will grow up knowing nothing better than hilltops covered with wind turbines.
About 65 miles of new roads (some up to 30 feet / 10m wide) through peat and blanket bog.


Wave power is much less of an issue, they can be part of shoreline defences and so made to look part of the shoreline.
In general in Scotland there is not a large public voice against these things- most people recognise it will be needed for our power and future economy and I think another factor worth remembering which might explain the lack of resistance to such things is that most of Scotlands population live in cities, the remainder in towns within narrow areas and a small remainder in surrounding rural villages- most of Scotland, particularly the Highlands is completely empty- the deforestation of bygone eras has left stark, beautiful but very barren landscapes with limited plant and wildlife. So for most people these developments are never seen. And our coast is 9,911km in length- thats a lot of places to put stuff almost no-one will ever see. People are always more relaxed (usually wrongly) about stuff they cant see, out of sight out of mind and all that.

Pettytyrant101 wrote: People are always more relaxed (usually wrongly) about stuff they cant see, out of sight out of mind and all that.

All too True. And on that point please allow me a tangent rant.

The fundamental flaw of democracy is that without an overriding sense of social responsibility, larger groups will always use the "greater good" to exploit smaller groups. You see taxes distributed toward the least influential, but the majority of resources they buy tends somehow to end up in the largest 2 or 3 cities, while the urban problems are discretely moved out of sight into whatever area has the fewest votes to object.

So to be specific, in our state the majority of individual taxes come from property tax, which is disproportionately rural, because that's how the cities want it. What can we say? They've got the votes.

The schools, roads, museums, sports stadiums, hospitals etc. that these taxes fund go very disproportionately to 2 major urban areas because that's where the most people will benefit. (Makes sense, right? Besides, they've got the votes. )

But then it comes to the time to look for a location for a solid-waste landfill, or a prison, or a nuclear plant, or wind farm, which nobody wants in their back yard. Then they vote it into OUR backyard and tell themselves we should be grateful to them! It's the obvious place to put them where they impact the least people. And besides, they've got the votes.

So rural life in a democracy without a conscience equals more taxes, less resources, and more crap. A resource to be exploited until it's gone and nothing more.

In the dozens of stories I heard of the Highland Clearances, nobody ever forgot to mention that it was Lowland Lairds along with the English that profited from the rape of the Highlands by sheep. At the time I was there the dirty words were "fish-farms", which were destroying the local fisheries with their disease and waste for the profit of non-residents (we've fought this one too), and "peat mining". So it doesn't surprise me that power generation is the next exploitation of the Highlands. It makes sense. They'll never have the votes to stop it.

But I'd just like to point out that in a sensible, responsible society, power generation and waste disposal would be located as close to the point of use as possible. A lot of the wasteful habits that are feeding global warming and exhausting natural resources come from this "out of sight, out of mind" civil engineering. People need to see the costs of their actions if they're going to have any chance of making good decisions.

OK

End of Rant

Sadly the truth of humanity is that while we may mouth sweet nothings about our inter-connectness, and the circle of life, and the worth of being less individually selfish, we nonetheless are very keen on our mod cons and individualism and power to do what we want to do when we want to do it, including being well fed with interesting foods and drinks from anywhere in the world any time. Other things we just can't do without include all the bounties of technology and anything else good and comforting we have nowadays. In other words, our innate short sighted selfishness will always win out against larger ideas about the greater good. So long as people who hunger for 'economic growth' know how to expolit this key fact of life, things collectively will never be good and reasonable and 'environment' preserving. The planet's fucked in other words, and so therefore are we. Except for those of us, of course, who have had the forethought to build a spacecraft-arc-thingee from frozen carrot skins, which in itself is a very (modern) rural response to a modern-mechanized-resource-driven problem.

Orwell wrote: Except for those of us, of course, who have had the forethought to build a spacecraft-arc-thingee from frozen carrot skins, which in itself is a very (modern) rural response to a modern-mechanized-resource-driven problem.

Agreed 100%. Long live the Carrot Revolution!


(Amarie, I hope you don't mind, but I've planted some starts from your dancing carrots. I'm not sure what they're good for, but the little critters sure are cute )

Our community actually has 4 large wind turbines on the hill above the farms that produce more power than our our whole region consumes over the course of a year. They were put there by a community action group that uses the proceeds to provide subsidized energy for local low income families. Even our most crabbity curmudgeons like them.

But if a giant corporation decides they want to put a thousand more up there and sell the energy on the commodity market, they're going to have to explain to us why they can't put them on their own hills.

And then on top of everything, Captain H, we have certain nutters going around thinking they can build a spacecraft out of neeps.

We can only lead by example, Admiral.

To bring this back to some sort of topic not involving carrots (thats just silly) but fish (which is perfectly sensible) there have been a lot of studies here into fish farming as we do a lot of it.

This comes from an article on the ecologist website - http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/448258/big_fish_farms_not_necessarily_most_polluting.html

Researchers from Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen studied data from 50 salmon and cod farms collected by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).
Contrary to popular belief, they found that location rather than the size of the fish farm was a more significant factor in predicting its environmental impact.
The aquaculture industry has trebled in size since 1995, with half of all fish eaten now farm-reared. Scotland has seen rapid growth since the 1980s and now has around 450 licensed farms, almost all producing salmon.
the rapid spread of fish farming around the world has led to concern about its negative impact on marine ecosystems as well as problems including disease, mixing of wild and farmed stocks and chemical use.
Fish farms generate organic wastes in the form of uneaten food and fish faeces. These sink to the seabed and can have detrimental effects on the organisms that live there if they are allowed to accumulate.
Using data that fish farms are legally required to provide to SEPA, Oceanlab researchers were able to assess how the environmental impact of fish farming might be reduced.
'There is a lobby group that just doesn't want big farms, but going by the data we've seen larger farms do not necessarily mean larger impacts,' said Dr Martin Solan, 'Bigger farms tend not to be located in more sensitive areas; there tend to be stronger dispersal tides and they usually have better management techniques such as technology controlling feeding rates and reducing waste,' he added.
Dr Solan said their findings could help the global farmed fish industry expand while reducing some of its impacts on the marine ecosystem.
'It is clear that fish farming provides one solution to the increasing global demand for food, but the real challenge is how to feed the world with fish without destroying our coastal environment.
'Our findings provide reassurance that Scotland’s fish farming industry has found a way to achieve expansion in a responsible manner. I have no doubt that other countries around the world will follow Scotland’s lead,' he said.

Some more info from a interview with Dr Kenny Black, Scottish Association for Marine Science


Kenny - Right. I think these are two of the key areas. If we’re going to look at salmon particularly, some of these things don't apply to other species, but for salmon which is important to the UK, particularly in Scotland, these are very contentious issues.

Taking sea lice first. There is evidence to show that sea lice from the farmed fish interact with wild fish and of course, vice versa, and that wild fish probably suffer as a consequence of that in terms of population. It’s usually quite hard to disentangle specific cause and effect, for example, for declining salmon population because there's probably lots of interacting things, for example climate change is a big driver probably of salmon population numbers. For sea trouts which are more coastal species, probably the sea lice issue is more important one.

So a lot of effort is going on at the moment to try to reduce lice numbers on farms, and manage farms in such ways that they limit their interaction, but I think we’re quite a long way from cracking that one myself.

Ben - If you have a concentration of fish, does that also affect the sort of the local food web and that normally, there wouldn’t be so many fish here, they wouldn’t be adding as many nutrients back into the water, they wouldn’t be eating as much of the food that's there? Can it have that sort of environmental impact as well?

Kenny - Well they don't eat any natural food that's there, or very little natural food. They almost entirely eat what they've been fed. So, the output therefore are dissolved nutrients excreted and wasted feeds in particulate matter, faecal matter. So you'll have a potential for an impact in terms of increasing the amount of nutrient in the sea water which might be thought to lead to increased primary production and you will see profound effects on the seabed.

Just going back to the nutrients though, in terms of overall budgets if you're looking at nutrient run off from agriculture, that massively outweighs nutrient contribution from aquaculture. So, although there’s a potential for some effect, at the moment, the levels of farming don't really realistically make that very likely. And also, for enclosed systems, there are government guidelines which have been calculated to try to reduce the possibility that fish farming will contribute to any change in the phytoplankton community, for example.

On the seabed, though, the story is different. We know a large amount now about the effects that fish farming has on the seabed, the changes to the benthic communities there and the profound biogeochemical changes that you get from essentially dumping a huge amount of organic matter onto a very small patch of seabed. Just to finish that point though – and I could talk all day about the profound changes because that's one of the things I'm interested in - it is a limited amount of seabed. It’s generally restricted to a very small area around the farms, and it doesn’t spread a huge distance.

Kenny - There's a lot of work going on in growing algae generally. At the moment, macroalgae are the other biggest single class of organisms that are cultured, China produces, I think it’s something like 14 million tons per year of cultured macroalgae. They have farms that you can see from space. However, these algae are not particularly rich in fatty acid. You get the fatty acids from microalgae. They're now being grown in large amounts, huge amounts of money are being poured into culturing microalgae, particularly as sources of biofuel.

You will see that the biodiesel that we put in our cars I think 8% comes from a plant source, usually terrestrial oil seed derived, but there's a huge potential for using microalgae. Now these microalgae can also be harvested for their oil or other purposes, and you're right to say that you could then use them as components of animal feeds.

Ben - So actually doing this would also help reduce our reliance on the rainforest and so on, that are being cut down for things like palm oil, and other oil producing plants that may feed in to biofuel.

Kenny - Absolutely. The key thing with aquaculture is, it will never really mature and become a really big contributor until it separates itself from the terrestrial system entirely. The terrestrial food production system has big problems over the next 30, 40 years, in terms of feeding the world’s growing population. These problems are to do with land area, to do with nutrients and fertiliser, very highly energy intensive, and of course, to do with freshwater supply. So if you can make aquaculture essentially close its production cycle and grow its food in the sea, then you obviate a large amount of these problems.

Maybe time to start farming the sea David!

The algae option is interesting, but I'm afraid I avoid farmed fish wherever possible. I know too much about them and I just cant stomach it.

Aside from the concentration of feces, far greater than you would ever be able to discharge from a municipality, there is the disease problem when a population is that concentrated. To control this, the fish food is laced with prophylactic antibiotics which end up in the flesh and in the water in (to me) unacceptable concentrations, encouraging resistant strains of bacteria and fungii. There's really nothing to recommend it unless you're personally getting rich off of it.

There are also the ethical issues with any animal being factory farmed, but that's a completely different question. I'll be happy when they have perfected the cloning of muscle tissue to the point where they can make the lox and the bacon without having to make the pig and the salmon. A much more efficient and cost effective way to make a quality product.

Yes but most of the things you accuse fish farming of David could also be said of traditional farming- and the sustainablity of traditional farming on a scale necessary to provide all the produce there is global demand for would desimnate the environment- we need other solutions and whilst cloning or growing meat in a test tube is still not a viable commercial option we have to look at the alternatives and how best they can be implimented. The demand is not going to go away.

If that were the true reason for fish farming, the purpose would be 100 times better served by processing the meal in the fish food into a low cost human grade food. How much farmed fish is going to feeding the truly hungry? Most of it is going to restaurant contracts at much higher profit margins than the hungry who could have used that protein meal could have afforded to pay.

The truth is, it will always be more profitable to feed the rich than the poor, so the market will always seek the inefficient high-profit products in preference to the most efficient use of the materials.

Its true the main two main resons for farming salmon in Scotland (and almost all the fish farmers are salmon farms) is they are easy to grow and are ocnsidered an expensive food. So you can get a lot of them that are worth a lot.
On the otherhand the fish farms have provided a lot of rural jobs where there were none and at least here if not elsewhere they are heavily regulated and monitored by the environment agencies, as is the sea around them. The aim is sustainability.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
On the otherhand the fish farms have provided a lot of rural jobs where there were none and at least here if not elsewhere they are heavily regulated and monitored by the environment agencies, as is the sea around them. The aim is sustainability.

If the jobs are wanted, that's one thing, but this is exactly the argument that has been used to put a maximum security prison and a nuclear plant (never completed because of protests) in our back yard where they were not wanted. 20 years ago I was hearing a lot of complaining in the Highlands about being exploited, but maybe they've grown to like them as years have past.

Regulation is certainly important. We've had commercial aquaculture here for about 40 years, but the industry has grown a lot faster in British Columbia where the regulations are a lot looser. Yes, there are more expensive practices that will reduce the use of antibiotics (though a lot of places like Chile rarely practice them), but the fecal material and excess food still tend to elevate N levels and cause an algae bloom which reduces oxygen levels. Also there is some evidence that these pens of fish repel and confuse migratory wild fish, which makes it important to site them away from anywhere with wild fish.

By far the best kind of aquaculture is in ponds that are completely isolated from natural water bodies, with all discharges being filtered, treated and monitored. This can work amazingly well for fish such as giant carp, with no significant impact on the environment.

Water quality is a serious issue to us farmers, and aquaculture in open water is one of the dirtier forms of farming, if only because there's no practical way to contain your waste.

Right on the coast seems to be the Scottish favourite, with strong tidal currents and away from the salmon breeding routes. Waste from fish crap could be more of a problem in the future if fish farming continues to expand but according to the above report at the moment the amount of unwanted stuff added to the water from fish farming is small change to what traditional farming techniques already put into the water.


On a different note entirely and going from salmon to Salmond, PM Cameron is in Scotland today to give a speech in Edinburgh on why Scotland should stay in the Union. He is then meeting Salmond.
Even the meeting has been the focus of political maoveoring with many Tories thnking it should have taken place in London and that Cameron going to see Salmond gives the impression Salmond is an equal whereas Westminister sees the position of First Minister as below that of PM.
But I think Cameron was wise not to refuse to come here and not to summon Salmond to London, that would have given the SNP a boost I reckon.

On a different note entirely and going from salmon to Salmond,

Nice segue

Well Cameron came, he changed tact, he made a terrible mistake. Oh dear.

Not sure where to start. First he decided to be concillatory- a good idea and one that should have worked if he had not choosen to do it by visiting a porrdige factory (he may as well have dressed up in full Highland gear!) then contradicted almost everything that Westminister has being saying so far by declaring that of course Scotland could stand on its own economically but he thinks we are better as part of the Union and appealed to common ties and history (a fair enough point) but then he offered Scotland more devolved powers (although wouldn't say what powers, or when) if we vote no in the Independence Referendum!
It also didn't help that after the last Scottish elections the Scottish Tory leader resigned and a new one was recently elected- and her very public position here has been no to independence and no to more devolved powers- no further has been her mantra so nice of her PM and party leader to completely undermine her on his first visit. Wonder if he even consulted her because Salmond will be merciless with her next time they clash in the Chamber.

To give an idea of how this has gone down this is the opening of todays editorial in the Scottish Sun newspaper- a UNIONIST paper whose employer is Murdoch and suporter of all things Tory and business.

'Be good little Scots, don't do anything silly like voting for independence, and maybe you'll get a nice suprise.
That, in a nutshell, was the message of the Prime Minister.
He must think the heads of everyone north of the border button up the back.
It was a jam tomorrow promise without any actual jam.'


You can imagine if thats the view a supposedly 'friendly' paper to Cameron and the Union is taking how its generally gone down.