aldivalloch

"I have a air rifle, but who else knows that I own one..." Well WE all know now.... :lol:

You're very welcome. I know the place quite well, so if I can be of any further help just ask. Hope the weather is kind to you!!

Hello, m'lord! Have you arranged accommodation? If not, I can make some recommendations. Orkney is a very popular tourist destination and finding a place to stay can be problematic at the best of times. And just to compound that, the 30th Hoy Half marathon takes place on Sunday 12th June..... As for places to eat, well, it depends on your budget. For top-notch food I'd suggest the Lynnfield Hotel (right alongside Highland Park distillery), Foveran (about three miles outside Kirkwall, and so a taxi job), or, a bit less expensive but still excellent, Helgi's or the St Ola (both right across the road from the harbour). There are several other very good places. As for things to do, what are you most interested in? Having access to transport would be an advantage. You'll certainly not get to Fair Isle as there's no direct access from Orkney - you'd have to get up to Shetland, by ferry or aircraft, and then travel on from there. Oh, and if you want to indulge your interest in shooting and fishing, make a point of nipping into Wm Shearer's emporium (closed on a Sunday) on Kirkwall's Victoria Street.

Just curious, as my late father was born and brought up in Glenlivet. As a young man he worked at the distillery, and also at the distillery farm at Minmore. Very beautiful area.

No problem. And you're spot on about scamming - it seems to have become a national sport! We now have a phone that filters unfamiliar numbers. The officer who came to see me was in full uniform including body armour, baton, cuffs and pepper spray, and arrived in a marked Focus estate which she (yes, I've got a female feo) neatly reversed into our little drive to keep the street clear. The effect was fabulous - my nosey neighbours were suddenly all at their windows, only to be caught in the act when I went to the door!! Made my day!!

Absolutely not! Both excellent, but the Cragganmore was the slightly more excellenter of the two. Out of interest, does your user-name indicate a connection or just an appreciation of the product?

That's not what I said. I initially got a courtesy telephone call from the local station, the renewal papers arrived by post the following day, and the discussion about the keys took place face-to-face during the officer's home visit. No scam - not unless the officer sneaked into the police station to use the phone and then went back again a fortnight later to borrow a uniform and a marked car for the visit!!

I have no view to express regarding this particular accident. However, it's way off beam to say that "If the guy was driving at the speed limit he was doing nothing wrong.." The speed limit is exactly what it says - a limit. The MAXIMUM speed at which one may drive. It's NOT the speed AT WHICH one should drive. Should one drive at the speed limit in thick fog? In snow? On ice? In heavy rain? In a heavily built-up area? Of course not. Driving at a speed inappropriate to road conditions IS wrong, dangerous, and can - and often will - attract prosecution.

Yes, it's purely my opinion - I don't think I claimed it to be fact. I described it as reasoned and intelligent because that's how it came across to me, in contrast to some of the other rather less well-thought-out posts on the subject. I don't think you can pick and choose between "conventional" war (which, anyway, I believe, is usually construed as non-nuclear warfare) and "guerilla" warfare waged by terrorists. For one thing, the term "terrorist" can often be too vague and / or subjective. And it's not just recent history that indicates that a conventional army is unlikely to beat a guerilla army. The Romans didn't have a lot of luck north of Hadrian's Wall, did they? I have no issue with an army using all legitimate means at its disposal to defeat an enemy. The key word is "legitimate". Chemical warfare? Germ warfare? Nuclear warfare? Scorched earth? Systematic genocide? Rape? Torture? A policy of "no prisoners"? How far is too far? It's precisely why rules are required - to attempt to protect both participants and the civilian populations caught up in the madness that is warfare by imposing the potential for prosecution for breaching these "rules" and committing what we label "war crimes". Better by far to take a consistent line in keeping with international law and stick with it.

Gentlemen, I thank you for your responses. Some have been more useful than others, but they've all greatly brightened a rainy evening - together with the very large 16 year-old Glenlivets we drank to mark my neighbour's birthday. The even larger Cragganmores we used to wash down the Glenlivet were the icing on the cake that we didn't bother having - given a choice between damaging our livers with alcohol and damaging our teeth with sugar we wisely chose the former as we'd have to pay for dental treatment. Thank you again for the fun. By the way, and I hate to say it, the Cragganmore was more pleasant than the Glenlivet.

Rather than being a "limp opinion", it's a reasoned and intelligent view. To scrap the "rule book" is to give carte blanche to those who would perpetrate the sorts of atrocities that occured during the Holocaust; on WW2's Eastern Front; at My Lai; in the Balkans; and in innumerable other places at innumerable other times down mankind's long and bloody history. How are war criminals to be held to account if their actions are no longer regarded as crimes under the international law that you would, presumably, delete? It's all very well to advocate all-out total war in far-away places whoses names you can hardly spell, and which you'd be hard-put to identify on a world map. It's fine for the fantasy world of computer games. It's an entirely different matter when war comes to your doorstep and suddenly you and yours stand a very good chance of becoming those casualties that you would previously have simply dismissed as "collateral damage".

I've just this very day had my Coterminous Certificates renewal visit. This is my first experience of renewal by the new Scottish Police Authority - hitherto my dealings were with the old Northern Constabulary. I've been a certificate-holder for over forty years. My renewal is only due on April 11th, but I received my papers three weeks ago, the day after getting a courtesy telephone call from a friendly officer at the local station. A fortnight later I received a further call to negotiate a time for a home visit. The checking process was thorough and efficient, but cordial, and ended with dog-talk when my Lab came through to see how things were going - the officer turned out to be a fellow Lab-owner. So full marks to the SPA for service and for being on the ball. But the visit threw up a some questions: I keep the keys to my cabinet in a hiding-place known only to me.The spare set is hidden elsewhere, whereabouts again known only to me. My wife asked what she should do if I suddenly shuffled off my mortal coil, given that has no access to keys; the officer said that someone from the station would come past with an angle-grinder! I'm not entirely sure that she was joking, and it's not what I would want, me lying in state in the living-room while a bobby plies a screaming power-tool just upstairs! So, in general terms, what have you Pigeon Watchers done to address this potential scenario? My bank doesn't offer safe-custody facilities; my solicitors are two hundred miles away so I don't want to lodge the spare keys with them as it would be a huge hassle to get hold of them if I simply lost or mislaid my set. Has anybody lodged their spares with their friendly local RFD? Would it be legal to do so? Further: The visiting police officer took away my old certificates, which means I can't buy rifle ammo until the new FAC is sent to me, and that may not be til April. It's not a problem as I have sufficient, but those who would be inconvenienced by this - what course of action would you take? And finally, my old FAC entitled me to shoot "anywhere the holder has lawful authority". I've always regarded this as an open certificate, only requiring me to have a landowner's permission and with no requirement to inform the police of specific details. However, the officer told me that this was not the case and that details of each of my permissions should be sent to the police for clearance before I shot over them. I await with interest my new certificate to see what form of words has been applied to it!! And then I'll either challenge it or bother Firearms HQ with a shower of letters of permission. I look forward to hearing views on the foregoing.

You've either got a very trollish and distorted sense of humour or a deeply disturbed and disturbing attitude to your fellow human beings. Neither does you any credit whatsoever. Crawl back into your cave.

All joking aside though, isn't there a delicious irony in Australia's policy given the ethnic origins of many of the ancestors of the politicians who made this decision, and the circumstances under which they would have come to Australia - as people fleeing injustice / religious intolerance / persecution and /or seeking a better future for themselves and their families in the "New World"? I wonder how they would have felt if the indigenous peoples (the aborigines) had stopped them landing, rounded them up, and coralled them on an island..... Talk about "I'm all right cobber."!!

Maybe the planet where turkey-rearers do whatever they can, however daft it may appear, to keep their valuable livestock from being panicked by the sound of fireworks and all rushing into a heap in the corner, thus crushing and smothering one another and thereby causing very considerable financial loss?

By gad, sir! The damned impudence of those blasted Scotch Nationalist johnnies! Not paying their licence fee, eh, what? Every last one of them you say? Every single one? And d'you know, I've heard that they're planning to paint themselves blue with that woad stuff. Yes, all of them! By gad, sir, very single one of them! And crawl across the border under cover of darkness. Every single one of them. All the same you know, unenlightened bounders. After the pies and Mars bars, y'know. Going to take them all back to that damned uncivilised midge-ridden Scotchland and deep-fry them! Can't trust them, you know. Damned savages, trying to have a say in their own futures. I say let's send the door-knockers up there, sir! By gad, yes! Have them sing the National Anthem as they drag the bounders from their peat-fired hovels!! Rebellious Scots to crush, and all that!! Long live the Empire and unfounded generalisations!!

Wrong on every count. Have another guess or two, though! It's helping me to see what makes you tick. Oh, and it's "conscience", by the way, not "conscious".

Aah, reasoned and intelligent debate!!

m3vert, I respect your opinion, but you need to recognise that this event is not unique in having its genesis in an unpleasant period in comparatively recent history. We all have our glass houses, and yet we continue to throw stones.... I think the OP was simply asking whether people had enjoyed the music. I, like several others who responded, did. Mea culpa. But before I go away and foolishly indulge myself in other facile pleasures, like the tub of Cadbury Roses that's sitting on the table, may I humbly beg you to explain something? You concluded your post with "National Anthem.....don't be stupid, I am not biting" and a whistling smiley. Now, setting aside the obvious rudeness, telling someone not to be stupid infers that you claim some intellectual superiority over them. That being the case, perhaps you will be good enough to tell me, poor benighted soul that I am, how it is that I am being stupid. I hope to be able to learn and thus become a better person. Got to go. The Roses beckon.

I don't know quite how you got the impression that I'm somehow pretending that we're talking "about the ancient past". Far from it - I'm sure you're well aware that the remnants of the British Empire were stll tottering along yars after the conclusion of World war 2. Anyway, I didn't realise that there was a convenient time-bar on national conscience and guilt. If there is, I assume it falls neatly between the Boer War, when we introduced concentration camps, and World War 1, when we British fought the Germans "with God on our side", and were surprised to find that our adversaries had had the same belief instilled in them! And as for "losing the Empire", well, when you take the time to study how we gained, exploited and retained it there's a great deal to be less than proud of.

Fair play to flashman and m3vert for their anti-Nazi stance. But lads, I hope you're not too lonely, sitting there on your moral high ground, munching on your FairTrade bananas. For goodness sake, don't look down too searchingly. You might see some of the fruits Britain's faded empire - you know, the empire that was largely based on invading foreign countries, repressing their peoples, "introducing" them to Christianity and exploiting their natural resources? Oh, and the slave trade. Yes, Britain did pretty well out of that. Still a lot of nice country seats around that were built on the proceeds. But let's not think too hard about that. After all, history is always less perturbing when it's written by the winners. And m3vert, you'll be well aware of that bit in the National Anthem that mentions crushing rebellious Scots. But I see you're based in Central Scotland and the Middle East. I wonder what you're doing out there? Hope it's nothing like working in construction, or in the oil industry? Got to go. I recorded Last Night of the Proms so that I could watch it from time to time. My special favourite is "Land of Hope and Glory". Much better than that Blue Danube nonsense.

In the space of last week I spent quite a bit of time with three friends/acquaintances. The thing they have is in common is that all three are former policemen, and all were firearms officers. And they like to reminisce. None ever fired a shot in anger, and they're all very happy that they never had to. All three talk very eloquently about how they felt about carrying firearms in the line of duty, and how hard and often they thought about possibly having to kill a human being, and in what circumstances, even if it were to save life. They point out that the ramifications go beyond the person who squeezes the trigger; it affects those close to them as well. One told me that during training he had been asked to consider very seriously how his parents, wife and children would feel if they suddenly found themselves living with a man who, however justifiably, had killed another human being. They also talk about making the decision. At what point is it right to kill? And in what circumstances? And what about the risk posed to bystanders when bullets are fired in a public place? How much skill, focus, practice and training is required to carry out instantaneous risk-assessment in what may be the red-hot heat of the moment to ensure that the field of fire is utterly safe and no innocent third parties are going to be endangered? What I'm trying to point out here is that these were the concerns of extremely highly-trained individuals. And if these extremely highly-trained individuals were constantly haunted by these concerns, who would reasonably want ordinary members of the public carrying firearms for self-defence? I'm going to be absolutely brutal here, because it's late, I'm tired, and some people have used this thread to spout enough hot air to melt the polar ice-caps. My proposal for those that wish to be allowed to carry a firearm for self-defence is that they should be offered free willy-extensions on the NHS. That might go some way to stopping them fantasising about going down to the mini-market for their newspaper and six rolls with their Glock or Smith & Wesson penis-enhancements tucked in their waistbands. Individuals who actively want to carry a gun in public "for self-defence" are, in my opinion, the last people who should ever be allowed to do so. And those who would tell you that they could, in a moment of bowel-melting crisis, draw a gun and use it responsibly and safely to defend themselves and others are certainly full of something - and it's NOT courage.......

You just don't get it, do you? Surely it's not that difficult to understand that as people fought and died for a better world the least we can do is respect their sacrifices by striving for the same ideal. Try putting your "I'm all right, Jack" attitude to one side for a couple of minutes - long enough to try to imagine what it must be like to have to flee drought, famine, poverty, persecution, violence, and/or civil war. How would you face up to leaving behind all you know to trek miles, take unthinkable risks, put your trust in criminals - in other words, step into an unknown future in the hope of finding water, food, shelter and security for your family and yourself? I'm sure the people who embark on leaky boats in the company of traffickers don't do so lightly. They must be very, very desperate. Put yourself in their shoes just for a moment. And once you've done that, ask yourself what YOU did today to make the world a better place. Convince us that it's not way down your list of priorities.

Norfolk dumpling, kdubya, oisin og, guest1957, Falcon fn, Psyxologos - your posts do you great credit. You have my respect and admiration. As for the rest of you, whose posts have ranged from the inappropriately flippant to the repulsively brutal, I hope that you may all have the opportunity to live well in this safe, orderly, civilised country that has been handed down to you by the sacrifices of your forebears, and that you may some day have the maturity and wisdom to reflect upon your comments. How sad that you should even have the insensitivity to express them as we prepare to mark Armistice Day in this the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day Landings, when so many people gave up their lives confronting repression, fascism, cruelty and inhumanity to their fellow human beings.

That's a nice looking gun which will give someone a LOT of pleasure for not a lot of money. £155 is peanuts for something that will feel and balance just right. But for the record, it's a Scottish game gun, not an English one - Alex Martin was based in Glasgow.