The award category we’re looking at today is almost always found at the one of 3 points of the spectrum Continue reading
Tag Archives: Dundee
Bob Geldof and Oban’s Pagan way to will relief of poverty overseas
Any Pagan way is somehow an attractive notion. The Pagan way of many of Scotland’s solicitors Continue reading
In Homecoming 2009, Irene Tilley from Helensburgh asks for information to help her come home
Irene Tilley is now 67 and has been living in Dundee for three years after a married life in various postings with her soldier husband and many years in Kent.
She was brought up at 52 East Clyde Street in Helensburgh, near the school and beside the plumber’s business that is still there. She herself went on to the Hermitage School – now Hermitage Academy and was wonderstruck by its new buildings on her last visit to the town. Her grandfather, who fought in the first World War, was a tailor in the town with a shop in Sinclair Street.
Irene has cousins in Helensburg, one of whom, Helen, was in the Wrens and she has several other cousins in the area – stretching into Dumbarton.
Irene wants to come home now. She has itchy feet to get back to her own place and there couldn’t be a better year to think this way. She got in touch with us this morning and asked us for help. She wants to know what the current situation is with 52 Clyde Street, as she has a sentinental attachment to that building. She’d also be delighted to get information on any other suitable place a pensioner like herself could afford to rent – and she would go as far as Dumbarton, although Helensburgh’s the place that tugs the heartstrings.
If anyone can help her she would love to hear from them and has asked us to publish her contact details. Her phone is: 01382 642258. Her address is: 13 McGonagall Square, Dundee DD2 1AJ
There may also be people who knew her during her earlier life in the town and she would obviously be delighted if anyone from then made contact with her – especially in this year of homecoming.
Ignore media reports – For Argyll and Alan Reid MP have ensured that there will be no analogue radio switchoff in Argyll or the Highlands
Some of today’s national media are reporting on the coming switch to digital radio, involving switching off the currrent analogue signal across the country. This immediately kills off AM and FM radio, leaving listeners with no choice but to buy a Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) radio Continue reading
Argyll to get funding to maintain construction industry and housing development during recession
The Scottish Government recently announced that it had set aside £17million from its total projected spend of £120million to reinvigorate the Scottish economy in these recessionary days.
Deputy First Minister, NIcola Sturgeon has just announced the successful bidders for parts of this £17million allocation. The money will be spent by housing associations on unsold homes and land and on getting housing developments off the ground.
The government announced in August that it was bringing forward £100million from money it had set aside for 2010/11 in its £1.5billion affordable housing programme. Its intention is to kick start stalled housing developments. Since the August announcement, that money to be brought forward has been increased to £120million, with a pledge to spend £40million of it this financial year and £80million next year.
Argyll and Bute will share £3.7million with the Western Isles, Aberdeen, Angus, North Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire. This is to be used by housing associations to buy up land for developments.
Argyll and Bute will also share £3 million with Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross, Borders, West Lothian, East Ayrshire and East Dunbartonshire. This allocation is to be spent on kick starting actual building.
£10.1million will fund the purchase of homes from private developers in Orkney, Dundee, Clackmannanshire, Stirling, East Lothian, Midlothian, Edinburgh, North Lanarkshire and Glasgow.
Graeme Brown, Director of Shelter Scotland, is anxious to discover how many of the resulting new homes will be for rent and is urging the government to spend the rest of the promised cash as soon as possible.
Campbeltown’s Vestas plant may become world leader in £50m Welcon offshore turbine development
In a deal not yet completed but described by Danish firm Welcon as ‘very likely’, the plant currently operated by the departing Vestas will be taken over by Welcon.
Its plan is to upgrade the plant and move to the production of offshore wind turbines, boosting jobs in the area from the current 96 to 300-400 within two years.
It is understood that the company will also upgrade Campbeltown harbour and the local road network. Well, let’s be realistic – it’s unlikely to be the company doing all of this. There has to be a very substantial Scottish Government subsidy to enable such sweeping development and of course there is.
Argyll’s MSP, Jim Mather, Minister for Enterprise, has been working on this solution, well below the media radar, since Vestas announced their departure. Rather than berate the company he has used their contacts to build this exhilarating outcome. It not only saves local jobs and prevents skills being lost to Argyll but takes the entire enterprise to a new and unanticipated level.
What is encouraging about this deal and about what must be a serious Government investment, is that it is clearly based on a vision of the strategic value of Campbeltown’s position and potential transport infrastructure in the expanding world of renewable energy technology.
Within easy distance of the Sound of Islay and the North Channel, a cutting edge and innovative plant at Campbeltown cannot but prosper, with the possibility of moving into tidal turbine production as a future-proofed option.
The sheltered harbour in Campbeltown Loch is a transport advantage which will be powerfully enhanced by upgrading.
The mysteriously long runway at Machrihanish Airport could come in to its own in air transport of offshore turbines all over the world. The runway is more than capable of taking the biggest transport planes like the Boeing Globemaster, the Airbus 400M or the ageing Antonov. And the plant is actually in the same land complex as the airport. Room to think big.
Whatever the Scottish Government investment in this initiative, it is one for the future. Welcon may well follow Vestas in taking off in pursuit of subsidies elsewhere once the period they commit to at Campbeltown comes to an end. But the market profile, the skils and the infrastructure will be there to move with the times. This is an industry with a certain future and it is an industry in which Scotland is recognised as leading the way.
Welcon has reached an agreement with Vestas. It is in talks with Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) and Scottish Deveopment International (SDI) which are described as crucuial and at an advanced stage.
Jesper Ohlenschlaeger, CEO of Skykon, Welcon’s parent company is saying that the company hopes to reach a final agreement next month. The company, a major manufacturer of turbines, has been unsuccessful before in attempting to set up its first UK operation in Dundee so its first UK plant may now be at Campbeltown.
Welcon’s plan is to change the current maufacturing of onshore turbines, generating 2-3MW, to offshore turbines generating 5-7MW but Ohlenshlaeger sees units generating 10MW as being the market standard in a couple of year’s time.
Unsurprisingly there are no details of the figures involved. Welcon are not saying what they are paying Vestas (it won’t – or it should’nt – be much since Vestas gave their reason for moving as an obsolete plant manufacturing obsolete turbine designs). Similarly they are not saying what the overall investment figure is except that it will be ‘double-digit’ millions – a figure thought to be at least £50million and almost certainly much more than that.
Ohlenschlaeger did tell The Sunday Herald that public sector investment would be a minority shareholding, which, if it is the case, would be a change for HIE. Also if it is the case, it will mean a serious investment from the company which is an encouraging statement of intent.
The certain thing is that the Scottish Government’s investment in this development is a significant and much-needed commitment to the development of Argyll’s economy.
Revolutionary green taxi built and powered entirely in Scotland
In the next couple of weeks Allied Vehicles in Glasgow will see the first of their new generation of electrically-powered taxis roll off their production line. The company has just had a revolutionary battery pack for the vehicles delivered from Axeon Holdings in Dundee. Paul Nelson, Allied Vehicles Managing Director, is proud that ‘the entire electric project has been designed and built in Scotland’.
The new taxi will have a range of 100 miles on a single charge and a top speed of 60mph. While it costs – at around £39,450 – about £4,000 more than a normal taxi, its running costs are far less and there is no pollution.
European and UK Local Authority buyers are already keenly interested although London and Liverpool have an unusual problem with the new vehicle. Their bye-laws were originally drawn up for horse drawn carriages and the taxi has a turning circle a little larger than that – hardly an unsurmountable problem these days, with green energy so important.
Allied Vehicles, through its subsidiary, Cab Direct, is Europe’s largest manufacturer of specialist vehicles – wheelchair accessible cars, minibuses and MPVs. It has placed an order worth £17.3 million with Axeon for a minimum of 1,000 of their new batteries and will use them across the spectrum of its vehicles.
This deal confirms Axeon’s status as Europe’s leading pioneer of lithium-ion batteries. Most of us are familiar with these in cameras, mobile phones and power tools but Axeon has developed them into power packs for vehicles.
Beijing’s Mains of Fintry Pipe Band gets emails from all over the world
Dundee’s Mains of Fintry Pipe Band – the only European band to be invited to play at the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics (soon to be confirmed as having had the world’s first television audience of over one billion), have been attracting warm, congratulatory emails from all over the world. We reproduce some of them here – and if you visit their site you’ll also see hand-made cards from a lot of local children. There isn’t a Scot – or a would-be Scot – anywhere in the world whose heart didn’t lift to hearing the skirl of their pipes playing Scotland the Brave above all of the noise of the athlete’s parade. This really was one for the history books. By the way, the Mid Argyll Pipe Band – in their eightieth birthday year – just wasn’t available on the day. They were playing the Mid Argyll Show. Priorities.
*****
Congratulations from the U.S.A. on the Olympic performance! Hope it leads to more big things for the band.
Paul Shell
pipe major (retired)
Oklahoma City Highlanders
Dear Pipe Major,
Upon hearing the refrain of Scotland The Brave while watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I admit I was most astonished to hear, in the background, a pipe band strike up. During a commercial break, I went to my computer to investigate what would bring a Pipe Band to such a prestigious event. Expecting to find Shotts and Dykehead or the likes of Simon Fraser, imagine how startled I was to find that it was your band holding forth, and the circumstances of your appearance.
As a member of a small local piping contingent, I am very pleased that your group has had the privilege of representing the world wide piping community at the Olympics. Congratulations, and well done, indeed!
All the best,
James MacKay, Piper
Temple Terrace Highlanders
Temple Terrace, Florida USA
To: pipemajor@mofpb.co.uk
Subject: beijing
heard you at opening ceremony , well done . Sec. Kelso PB.
Pipe major,
Please pass on my congratulations to your entire band well done.
You have done Scotland proud and to have been picked from all the European counties to represent Europe tell you how highly Scotland is rated on a musical and cultural level once again well done.
John Watt Maryhill Glasgow Scotland
Hi
Just a note to say well done to everyone involved in the Olympics show. You really did us proud! To keep playing in that heat was a feat in itself. I could hardly believe it when I heard ‘Scotland the Brave’ belting out – I thought Alex Salmond had pulled off a spectacular coup and got us our own team in the Olympics! Oh well, next time… Well done again.
Best wishes
Brenda
Dear Pipe Major
Congratulations to you and your magnificent band for making us all feel so proud at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing. It was such a wonderful surprise for us watching to see you all there.
I think you should rename your band the Mains of Fintry Olympic Pipe Band!
Jane Roy
Edinburgh
I was amazed to hear a pipe band playing at the Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies. It took some Googling to find out who you were.
At our most recent parade, you were all the talk. We wish you well and congratulations on being selected and especially in doing such a fine job at the opening. It is inspiring to know you don’t have to be Shotts and Dykehead or Simon Fraser University to be recognized.
Robert Tomkinson
Drum Sergeant
Lethbridge Legion Pipe Band
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
To Richard and the band.
Heard a very welcome sound of a pipe band playing at the opening ceremony, and noticed the unique entry into ‘ Rose of Allandale “, immediately suggested to my drummer daughter ” Mains of Fintry “, confirmed seconds later by the announcer.
Great stuff, the band sounded really good with well known tunes. Well done, it would have been very hot, but not a sound of any faltering. Would have loved to be there with you..
Once again well done. Great to hear the band again.
Best regards.
Brian Jacobi.
New Zealand.
Mr. Smith,
My name is Gillian Brownlee. I’m a bagpiper from Louisiana, USA. I heard your band on the Olympics last night, and I thought I’d send my congratulations! I’m a part of a small, local band here, and I can only imagine how wonderful it was to play for the opening ceremony.
So once again, congratulations!
~Gillian Brownlee
Kilts of Many Colours Pipes and Drums
Mandeville, Louisiana, United States of America
Dear Mains of Fintry Pipe Band,
I am sure your inbox will be heaving with many emails of congratulations on your superb efforts in Beijing. I would just like to add my own personal congratulations.
I stood with my two sons, jaw hitting the floor and tears streaming down my face. I have never felt so proud to be Scottish and Dundonian. I am sure I grew in height by a couple of inches.
Well done all of you! I hope that you get all the funding you require and may your team pipe on for all time.
Steve
To all band members and ‘support staff’
Congratulations on your superb performance at Beijing! It was a wonderful surprise to see you all playing your hearts out and looking magnificent in your ‘Number Ones’. I have just returned to Falkirk from a holiday in Bangkok and know how hot it is out there at this time of year. How you managed to wear such heavy uniforms and blow or drum as well is remarkable!!
You must be so proud – I know I was……
Slainthe,
Ron Brooks
Hi
Having settled down yesterday to watch what i assumed would be a relatively boring opening ceremony for the beijing olympics, I have to admit I was blown away by the surprise of hearing the skirl o the pipes from your band, I had expected this to be one of the more famous bands playing.
The hairs on the back of my neck were on end and you have done scotland proud,I hope your band get the deserved recognition for your performance and continue to prosper for many years to come.
Admittedly I am no great lover of the pipes but after yesterday I`m hooked,
All the very best
Peter Stephen
Subject: Beijing
Well played!
Doug Arthur,
Kelowna, B.C. Canada
I just was watching the Olympic opening ceremonies… and then to my amazement, I heard the wonderful drone of the pipes, and Scotland the Brave!
My wife and I looked at each other in amazement, trying to figure out how it was possible… and after some few minutes of looking around on the
internet, I found this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/7549580.stm
Which lead me to your website, which leads me to this email.
Thank you, and the rest of your band of pipers who took one of my most favorite instruments, and one of the best known songs(Worldwide at any rate), to
the world stage.
Well done.
Thank you,
John Paul & Julie Stout
Clan Gordon
jpstout@mindspring.com
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
Amazing. Why would China want bagpipers at their Olympic games, maybe something to do with the sound volume of pipes compared to anything else.
Congratulations, what a gig.
Thanks, Ted Elliott, Aurora, Ontario, CANADA (a wannabe piper, I’m working on it)
Dear Richard & All of The Pipe Band.
May We Send Our Best Wishes To You All in Piping at The Games As We Recently Heard Of Such Wonderful News At The Choosing Of Your Pipe Band Going to China For Such A Wonderful Trip…Very Well Done To you All…
Hope To See You In Japan!
I Am Available To Carry Your Pipes Anytime, Anywhere Richard!
Cheers,
Lesley, Jimmy & Scott Duncan.
Edinburgh.xxx
Well done it was great to see you on TV from China Nice to see a small band given the chance of such an honour instead of a grade 1 WELL DONE
Kath
Dear Mr. Smith,
I am a piper living in Germany. When I heard your pipe band in Beijing 2008, today, I could not believe it.
You did a wonderful job. I enjoyed the sound of the pipes! You represented Europe and you did great!
Thank you for this!
Best regards from Germany.
Matthias
Hi, Richard!
So was your pipe band playing in Beijing today???
It was so nice to hear you on TV. I was so proud to know that a pipe band was there representing all of us.
Congratulations and keep up with the great work!!!
Cheers,
Eddie
***
Eduardo Scatolin Palazzo
Brazil
We may be west coast Argyll, but we couldn’t have been more proud to do a news item on your fabulous achievement today.
http://forargyll.com
Every best wish.
Lynda Henderson
Managing Director,
For Argyll
Hi
I saw you folks during the Opening Ceremonies this morning on TV.
I just wanted to say you folks did a fantastic job with your playing.
I read in a news clip a couple of days ago how you were spotted in France.
I goes to show ….you never know who is watching when we play.
Keep up with the great work !!!
Cheers : )
Kate MacAree
piper….RCMP Division E Pipe Band
Vancouver, BC, Canada
I have just watched the most amazing opening ceremony and without a doubt the complete highlight was watching and listening to your pipe band. Knowing that President Bush, Mr Putin and the President of China amongst a huge number of other world leaders ( not to mention about 4 billion of us) made this scotsman very,very proud.
Your band members should be absolutely chuffed with themselves along with all the supporters, officials and local people who have done the whole of Scotland a real service. I suspect we will struggle to get a medal but your performance will be hard to beat.
Best wishes
Gerald Cooper
Inverness
Dear Sirs
At work we have been enjoying the opening ceremony for the Olympics & you can imagine the surprise at hearing a pipe band performing!
It sounds great (unfortunately not able to watch it as we’re supposed to be working) but you can hear the pipe band regularly! I have so far heard Scotland the Brave & Highland Laddie!
Well done on getting such an amazing opportunity!
Enjoy the trip,
Heidi
London School Highland Dancing
Dear MOFPB
We wanted you all to know how incredibly proud we all were of you when we saw you performing at the Olympic Opening Ceremony. I had tears of joy running down my face! Not only are you superb ambassadors for Fintry, not only Dundee but the whole of Scotland and the rest of the UK. And every other pipe band in the world must have been wishing they were there too! Well done.
Our son plays drums in his school pipe band (George Heriot’s in Edinburgh) so you have also given him something to aspire to in the future!! We hope to see you at London 2012 at least!!
Please pass on our good wishes to all of the band members. We hope you will receive a civic reception when you all return home and if so – we will be there to see you!
With our best wishes and good luck for the future,
Gillian, Gordon and Michael Gray in Edinburgh
Fin
Go North Dundee – music industry showcase and workshops
Argyll creative professionals will be interested that Go North Dundee, Scotland’s Premier New Music Showcase will be showcasing 60 bands, over 2 days, in 6 venues. As a delegate you’re promised the opportunity to: do business and develop your skills; network with other industry delegates; participate in a wide-ranging programme of informative, provocative panel discussions and workshops featuring specialists from all areas of the creative industries; receive preferential access to Showcase events; receive free entry to the DCA/goNorth film programme; access industry receptions and the Clash and Norway Aftershows; take a place on the infamous GoNorth Mystery Tour.
The Workshop Programme will take place in Dundee Contemporary Arts and in the VISION Building on the 5th and 6th June 2008 from 09.00 until 18.00. The Showcases will take place in various venues including Fat Sams & Fat Sams Live, The Doghouse, the Westport Bar, and No 25s from 19.00 onwards. Register now online and for details of the Film and Fringe Programme.