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A couple of interesting pieces from the excellent Scottish Islands network

Broadband Funding Announcement:
The Scottish Executive has announced that it is to allocate £90 million to fund a project which will provide broadband connections for every school and public building in the Highlands and Islands. The Pathfinder Project is intended to ensure that rural areas have the same opportunities as urban locations to access modern technology. Work on the project will commence in 2006 and be spread over a 9 year period.

Announcement Due on Argyll Air Services:
The Scottish Executive is expected to make an announcement regarding funding for the proposed new Argyll Air Service, which will piece together a scheduled air service from Glasgow to Oban, Coll, Tiree and Colonsay, in the next few weeks. Agreement from Highlands and Islands Airports Limited to take over the running of Oban Airport is also awaited. It is believed that the new scheduled service will help to prevent further depopulation of the islands. It will cost in the region of £1 million a year to run the new hub airport at Oban. Capital funding of £4.8 million towards airstrip upgrades has already been secured from Argyll & Bute Council, Oban Common Good Fund, Argyll & the Islands Enterprise and the European Regional Development. The new service will commence next year.

How does this fit with what

We were very saddened to hear of the death of Martyn Bennett after a long battle with cancer.

Martyn's album 'Grit' has been our prize for a number of weeks now; in fact we are down to our last album. One reviewer described it like this: "On various levels this is an extraordinary album. The charismatic fiddler/bagpiper/dance innovator has endured a horrendous couple of years battling with cancer, and Grit - born of pain, passion, emotion and a very real sense of roots - is the immense response. Paradoxically it's tender yet explosive; ancient and futuristic; beautiful yet violent; scarred yet triumphant; quietly reflective yet full-on dance.... Remarkable stuff."



Martyn Bennett
17th February 1971 - 30th January 2005

I’ve tried to keep my counsel on the GWD (Great Windfarm Debate) but I thought that a couple of recent sites were worth a mention…

Someone one time posted saying why don’t they put windfarms on Salisbury Crags?

But if there are still renewable sceptics out there, (I guess there are!)…

Meanwhile - more grist to the (wind) mill - I see Gigha’s wind turbines are up and running…

Scotland's first community-owned mains-connected Windfarm is now up and running on the Isle of Gigha. The island's 3 turbines generated £1,000 worth of electricity during their first day of production and it is estimated that the wind turbines will generate an annual profit of more than £75,000 for the local community.

Some of the profits generates will be reinvested in introducing energy saving measures to the island's housing stock – 80% of which is currently below a tolerable standard. The Windfarm generates enough electricity to meet over two-thirds of the island's needs and the potential for replication of the community owned project throughout Scotland is huge. The project is managed by Gigha Renewable Energy Ltd. and was developed in partnership with Highlands and Islands Enterprise and was funded by a combination of grant funding and loan and equity finance.

A community-buyout took place on Gigha in 2002. For more information about the island,

The great folk-fusion musician Martyn Bennett died a week last Sunday after a long battle with cancer.

Martyn was a favourite son of the island of Mull. Here at Island Blogging we had been featuring his album 'Grit' as our Gallery prize for several weeks.

You can listen to a tribute to him from Radio Scotland's Celtic Connections programme here.

Today we launch our re-vamped site with its smart new design.

Take a look at our brand-new Gallery featuring our new prize of Tobermory's favourite son, the 'Mull Historical Society'.

This is the first of a bunch of changes to the site after feedback from users, but look out for more developments over the next few weeks.

yours
Mike

Almost got stuck on Iona after going up for a long weekend.

The ferry managed over from Fionnphort once on the Sunday and we returned to mainland with the replacement Lord of the Isles on duty. I think the usual MV Isle of Mull had taken a 'bump'.

Somehow the pictures don't quite capture the Northerly gale that was blowing down the Sound.

Thanks to those who helped us off the ferry with two many bags, one (oblivious, fast asleep five-month old boy) and not enough time to make it over Mull. You know who you are!

We're busy getting the Gallery pages up to date and updating the Islands pages too - filtering out errors like the mysterious rise in status of Ben More!

Apologies to new users – Funky Blog - who have discovered our 250 word limit. At the moment the way round it is to post the blog as separate entries…