High Down 11

For a number of years I've had  a passing interest in the Criminal Justice system.
I was a member of an Independent Monitoring Board , and regularly visited a prison and spoke to inmates and staff and contributed to a series of Annual Reports. The 2014 reports from every prison in the UK can be seen here .I've also remained an Associate member of AMIMB, the Association of members of IMBs, and for my £20 /year receive the quarterly publication , Monitor.

In various places (including the November 2014 issue of Monitor)  but not an any of the main newspapers there have been a number of reports of the  

High Down 11 .

 11 inmates refused to go back their own cell when instructed by prison staff.  They barricaded themselves into a cell and committed an offence under Section 1 of the Prison Security Act (1992), 

“....when two or more prisoners, on the premises of any prison, engage in conduct which is intended to further a common purpose of overthrowing lawful authority in that prison. The offence is aimed at behaviour intended to make a prison, or part of prison, ungovernable.”

When the accused prisoners were told to go into their cells they responded:

“F*** off, we want our association, we are not going behind our doors”.

 They then barricaded themselves into one cell for over seven hours. They pushed a note under the door

‘The reason for these capers is we are not getting enough food, exercise, showers or gym and we want to see the governor lively’. and were ‘........not getting any association and [were] banged up like kippers’.

 They offered to end their protest if they were given ‘mackerel and dumplings’ to eat. this went to a 3 week trial. Called to give evidence was the Governor , Ian Bickers.  He outlined the pressures prisons faced because of a Whitehall regime which enforces austerity.

Anyway the jury decided unanimously to acquit the 11 defendants.   Presumably they thought it was a legitimate protest about the conditions and the Governments' austerity packages. 

 So Grayling, the worst Prisons Minister anyone can recall, thought that teaching these prisoners a lesson in court rather than using the internal disciplinary processes,  would be a good idea, has has a kicking thanks to the jury. 

 There is a more considered  insiders view of the whole business from Alex Cavendish and on the politics.co.uk website

Fraser gets his chance

So the time has come ,and Fraser , the Gotland ram, has been let out of the barn and into the field  with the Gotland eyes.  He was raddled  before being let into the field.













Anyway he was clearly keen  as he spotted the ewes  higher up the field .

Sadly they didnt seem to be as keen  as he followed them round the field.   

Farewell. trusty friend

After 31 years , I've had to say farewell to a tried and trusted friend.  The  power cable became frayed and shorted through onto the frame of the drill.
And in addition it think I need  something that is battery powered and therefore usable round and about .

So farewell  Black and Decker H264 ( it didnt have a name )

RIP : Andrew and Albert

After what appeared to a be an improvement after a course of Flubenvet, and he ventured out by himself

 Albert the drake  took a turn for the worse and  has sadly departed to the great duck pond in the sky.

Likewise Andrew the Cockerel. a cheeky little bird who went around with harem of bantams. Unfortunately  going around with them was all he was ummmmmm up to  as far as the hens were concerned. After an improvement after his coughing as documented in September and he was able to get out and about.
He was his usual crowing (well, squeaking) self  in the morning and then found dead in the corner of the run in the afternoon. 

So RIP Andrew 

Fraser, Milton and 3 more

The time has come to go and get some more sheep from 'down South' - ie anywhere south of Wick. The ferries run at different times at the weekend , so this time it was a 9am sailing from Stromness. 9am sailing means the last check in 830 am and the Ferry terminal is about 10 minutes drive from home, so allowing some time for congestion (!) we leave home a bit after 8am . And we arrived at the Stromness terminal in daylight (still).

And the crossing was in daylight , so we went past Hoy. The hills of Hoy were in cloud








So far , so good.  Then a drive south, this time to Ardgay. It not as long and tortuous as going to Lochinver. And most of the road is dual carriageway












Having got there , Fraser is a Gotland ram , who in due course will go with our newly-acquired - and a subsequent blog post - Gotland ewes who will again in due course , produce some Gotland  lambs. Milton is a wether (castrated ram) , or wedder in Orcadian.  And there were 3 gimmer boreray ewes as wel that we were picking up.

A bit of deft reversing ,

  and there were Milton and Fraser, ready to be 'encouraged' into the trailer.
 

Fraser

Milton

All that was needed was to partition the trailer and make space for the  other Borerays and we were off .

Bede, the Boreray

Berriedale Braes remains challenging with a  loaded trailer .  So an uneventful 7pm crossing (in the dark)  and we were home.

The Borerays were put in the barn overnight and Milton and Fraser given the run of the trailer

Borerays - barn

The next morning the ram was put with the other wedders in the field and the young ewes  separated off with the other ewes . Tupping the Borerays comes a bit later

  Milton , meanwhile was eager to explore his new surroundings. 

 

 So he ws encouraged to go into the barn.  And he will be here for a  wee while whilst we sort out suitable dates for lambing the Gotlands by reference  to a lambing calendar 

Birmingham airport - worst one so far

you do tend to fly a bit when you live on an Island. Regular flights go from Kirkwall to Aberdeen ( 3 a day), Edinburgh (3 a day) and Glasgow and Inverness (1 a day) . I used the Inverness flight, in conjunction with the overnight train ,on a trip back from London.  And you can go on from there.
Recently we've been to Birmingham via Edinburgh. I'm not so keen on flying and mainland Airports.
At Kirkwall the parking is just across from the terminal building - and free. Here is Kirkwall airport - the terminal building  is the white one at the back and the car park is in front of it . You can check in online and arrive  30 minutes before your flight and go straight into the Departure Lounge

Kirkwall Airport

 Birmingham drop-off £1 for 10 minutes.
At Kirkwall check-in queue at it busiest is about 6 people.
Birmingham - its like the start of the Ba, this scrum of people milling round.

Airport Security   - a necessary inconvenience (usually).
But at Birmingham its more of an inconvenience than usual .  Think Supermarket checkouts- you choose the one that you think will move fastest and join it. And then you are wrong as the people in front of you cant find their loyalty card,  drop stuff on the floor whilst  packing it and a who l host of ther things that can go wrong.
At Birmingham your queue is indicated to you . Fair enough. And then you have to put all your stuff in the plastic box. Most places  have 2 or 3 people at a time doing this , so  if someone is particularly  slow ( you know, they can find their toothpaste or have lost their clear plastic bag ) the queue keeps moving as the others at the conveyor belt get on with it. Not at Birmingham . One at a time. No idea why  but its even more frustrating than usual.

Duty-free shopping. In the Departure lounge. Not going to be backwards in coming forwards heres the list of all the shops you can 'enjoy'.
 

But Birmingham is like the worst IKEA store you can imagine as you are forced to circuitously navigate the perfumes.  No we don't want to try this smelly stuff, or the next one, or the next one as we wind our way round blingful displays of stuff we know we don't want. Im convinced part of the 'you must turn up  at the airport 3 hours before your flight' is so they can use the rapidly getting bored and hungry captive audience to flog them  over-priced stuff   they didnt know they needed.

 Anyway our 12.25  Birmingham to Edinburgh flight was cancelled due to 'technical problems'. So Flybe re-arranged us onto the next one , still with time to get the last flight to Kirkwall. And they were  generous  enough to give us each a 'meal voucher' value £3.50. All the passengers had to collect their hold baggage (we didn't have any) go to  check-in desk, get  new Boarding card and go round through Security again ( see above) and again run the gauntlet  of perfume pushers .And we now had a couple of hours to spare. So we thought we'd better use it . The restaurant for Gates 1-20 is here . and the menu is here




 Have look at the menu - what can you have for £3.50 . A glass of Diet Coke. A cup of coffee. A meal with your meal voucher ?  - no chance. Half of the cheapest meal - no chance.  And I'm a grumpy old ****  who doesn't like being taken advantage of.

 So we went walkabout . And there is  a WHSmith. That does sandwiches, crisps , and bottles of stuff.  So not a meal with a meal voucher  but how about snack, even though they dont call it a snack voucher. But WHSmith don't take Flybe meal vouchers when you are wanting to buy a snack. And they too are taking the p***,  £1.99 for a small bottle of Diet Coke.

 And by now I was on  a crusade. there was a Boots store.  And they would accept a Flybe meal voucher. Even though you were buying a snack. And it wasn't  ridiculously over-priced. So we got a snack with our meal voucher and managed to pass  the time waiting for the flight.

So at Birmingham Airport, boycott All Bar One.  Boycott WHSmith.

 Buy at Boots !

The other thing we have discovered is that we are probably entitled to  compensation for our delayed flight courtesy of EU rule 261/2004. Technical faults happen. Flying is so safe because these things are taken note of. So its hard luck for Flybe  and its in my interests. But Flybe and other airlines are so sympathetic when you need to fly somewhere urgently. Airline ticket pricing is a murky business - the price of  flight to London from Kirkwall  will vary from about £250 return if booked well in advance to >£500 if  you need to go tomorrow. So they are happy to take advantage of me. So I'll look into receiving compensation.

Poorly Albert

 Albert the drake is  sitting around a lot, not following the ducks.

 When you go near him  he gets up and walks away and you still need to chase him to actually catch him, but there is an awful lot of sitting down .   He looks like he's coughing.

So he might have gapeworm ( which some say ducks don't get)  or gizzard worm
 

 

Look - there is nothing stuck and no foreign body to see .

The solution ( as with most things avian) is Flubenvet, so we'll give that a try.