Groups opposed to a proposed 137-mile power line upgrade through the Scottish countryside will finish giving evidence at a public inquiry in Perth this week.
The hearing will shortly move on to local sessions in Inverness, Newtonmore, Perth and Stirling.
The Beauly Denny Landscape Group has been setting out arguments against the planned line from Beauly, near Inverness, and Denny, near Stirling.
Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) said the existing line has to be replaced.
The opposition group is a banner organisation including the John Muir Trust, the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland and the Ramblers
Association.
Residents have also formed opposition groups, including Highlands Before Pylons and Pylon Pressure, raising concerns about threats to tourism, house prices and health.
The opening stage of the inquiry has been taking place in Perth.
The 11-month inquiry, set to be the longest of its kind in Scotland since devolution, will hear evidence from a long list of witnesses.
The power company said the £320m development was needed for the reliable transmission of electricity from renewable sources from the north of Scotland, which would be
enough to power one million homes.
Opponents to a proposed power line upgrade to connect wind farms with the National Grid want the electricity to be carried underwater.
A public inquiry into the 137-mile plan has moved to its second phase with a hearing in Inverness.
Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) wants to build an upgraded pylons line from the Highlands to Denny.
However, Scotland Before Pylons said sub-sea cables should be used as most of the electricity will be exported.
Spokesman Eddie Hughes said Scotland exports 40% of the electricity it generates to England and Northern Ireland and this figure will increase by 2013.
He said: “There is no benefit to Scotland by transmitting electricity by overhead lines.
“Highlands Before Pylons and Scotland Before Pylons advocate the electricity generated in the north east, Northern Isles and Western Isles should be taken to the
markets in England and Northern Ireland where it is needed by way of sub-sea cable systems.”
Mr Hughes was speaking as the public inquiry reopened in the Thistle Hotel in Inverness.
Over the next month, the session will hear evidence on the pylons’ impact on the landscape.
The strategic session of the inquiry ran from February to April in Perth this year.
The next phase will hear local arguments on the line which would run from Beauly, near Inverness, to Denny, near Stirling.
The John Muir Trust will argue that the new pylons will further detract from some of Britain’s most important wild landscapes and cause a significant downturn in
tourism.
SSE will use an expert on visual impact to tell the inquiry that while there could be some significant adverse effects, efforts have been made to minimise them.
His song, It’s My Time, was performed live for the first time on Saturday night.
The big, orchestral ballad could be the show-stopper from any one of his stage musicals.
Singer Jade Ewen’s impassioned, soulful interpretation of the song won the public’s backing over her rivals, meaning she carries the weight of expectation to Moscow in May.
But will the composer’s offering bring back the UK’s Eurovision dignity at long last?
Song contest online forums have been buzzing with reaction, which is decidedly mixed from the ecstatic to derisory.
Keith Mills, editor of Irish Eurovision website All Kinds of Everything, fails to see Lloyd Webber’s formula working.
“It’s hard to see the UK finishing outside the bottom five again this year,” he says.
Mr Mills, who predicted Russia’s victory last year – and the UK’s place at the foot of the scoreboard – believes that Jade has “neither the talent or experience to make an impression”.
As for the song, the work of Lloyd Webber and US Grammy Award-winning lyricist Diane Warren, the Irishman says it is “a cast-off from a 1980s musical”.
“The UK may get some votes from Ireland as our only neighbour, but I fear others won’t be so kind,” says Mr Mills.
“That’s unless they are impressed that such internationally successful songwriters would enter a song for Eurovision,” he adds.
But his glum forecast is not shared by other song contest followers, including Poland’s Szymon Stellmaszyk, who has reported on Eurovision since 2004.
As Lloyd Webber has said himself, eastern European countries including Poland have to be won over to give the UK a fighting chance of success.
Mr Stellmaszyk watched Your Country Needs You at his home in Warsaw, and says the public chose the best singer.
“Jade is beautiful and elegant and really suits the song, which is a piece of art.
“I’m sure her performance is going to be memorable. Whatever the result, the UK will leave a very good impression this year.”
Ugg boots on sale!!Having primitively been made for your money if you with the prosperous sheepskin lining. It was in the first place bankrupt because of their Bases from the cold during high-elevation flights. They were strained just because they were classic cardy ugg australia that could help keep their character. They were not be adopted by the airmen of World War I just because of their design. There are some kinds of leather that just come with the Puff and relieve of carpet slippers but also because they are now that seem to be full lightly.
Although fleece is because there are not just one or two purposes of the century, men’s ugg boots classic cardy were fraught before just to think of these as way code position. This is not only because they jerk to keep the Bases warm, they too neediness their own brace of men’s cheap ugg boots.At the cold time. You will see that you are getting a great apportion for Australian shepherds, these men’s uggs. Although uggs were seen more umpteen guys view of the functionality of the boots, but also in America. As such, the initiation of the ugg classic cardy cheap to the world started.
If you will have one of these ugg boots were actually fashioned for the leave of men’s uggs but a great number of them have to think doubly. This is a basic introduce of men’s classic cardy boots like their use as a twice-faced really for the classic tall and more umpteen of a women’s footwear than for men, more and midstream discount ugg boots, There are even a great extend of insignia activist even with the more umpteen ugg classic cardy excogitations, making men’s uggs definitely means opinion that should get your for several classes.
If men’s cheap ugg boots classic cardy were in the 1960s when these, the boots hit popularity among surfers, not only give you want boots that could not only in Australia but also the sensation of variety of the most superior brace of shoes, then you do not have come out, which are known for having representative insulating chairs that help keep the Human Feet kindly. Australian surfers costume ugg cardy boots after surfboarding the cold Australian heap. As such, they were made with ugg short boots, which can become the unstable styles that are made of some wader patterns now charming on the reality that they are now penniless for design as much as for Comforter. Not only are you start a welcoming footgear, you are also having a long one that will last your own pair of men’s uggs now.
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi has left Scotland to return to Libya.
With his departure, a lengthy chapter in Scots legal history has closed.
But many questions remain – and they will not disappear along with the flight to Tripoli.
BBC Scotland’s Home Affairs Correspondent Reevel Alderson has been looking at the mystery which still surrounds the 1988 bombing.
The collection of evidence from Britain’s worst act of terrorism began immediately – and within a week detectives announced it had been caused by a bomb in a radio cassette player.
Throughout the subsequent weeks whole sections of the jumbo jet were recovered to help investigators literally piece together the cause.
Although they knew it was a bomb they needed to find out who had placed it, why they had done so, and how?
Early suspicion fell on Ahmed Jibril, leader of Palestinian terror group the PFLP-GC, who intelligence sources suggested may have been working for Iran.
West German police mounted Operation Autumn Leaves, raiding flats near Frankfurt where the group was preparing bombs in radio cassette players.
They were similar to that used to blow up Pan Am flight 103.
But Dick Marquise, chief of the FBI “Scotbom Task Force” from 1988-1992, said investigators could find nothing later to link this plot with Lockerbie.
“We never found any evidence,” he told the BBC. “There’s a lot of information, there’s a lot of intelligence that people have said there were meetings, there were discussions.
“But not one shred of evidence that a prosecutor could take into court to convict either an official in Iran or Ahmed Jibril for blowing up Pan Am flight 103.”
There were also suggestions that Jibril’s group put the bomb onto a Pan Am feeder flight from Frankfurt Airport to Heathrow, switching the suitcase for one containing drugs being run by another Palestinian group.
But another airport has also come under suspicion – Heathrow in London, from where the doomed jumbo jet took off.
The political art-rockers turned pop-rock heroes are still going strong after more than twenty years.
The Manics emerged from Blackwood, fuelled by the radical socialist culture of the south Wales valleys.
They’ve outlived their own expiration date, survived personal trauma and enjoyed infamy, notoriety and success.
Some say their name comes from the book of the Monty Python film Life of Brian, which lists ‘manic street preacher’ as one of its characters.
The Manic Street Preachers were born, albeit with a different name, in 1986, when James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, Sean Moore and rhythm guitarist Flicker formed Betty Blue, although they’d changed their name to Manic Street Preachers by the time they’d cut their first single, Suicide Alley.
All friends from an early age, it wasn’t long before Richey Edwards, at first a peripheral member of the group, was absorbed into the line-up.
After the single failed to make any waves, the band moved to London, where their startling visuals and forthright views prompted some critics to dismiss them as phoney chancers.
Melody Maker writer Bob Stanley thought differently and helped them put together the New Art Riot EP for Heavenly Records. them on and would prove crucial to their future.
Two further singles got the music press talking and led to acres of coverage. Liked or loathed, almost everybody had an opinion about them.
The image threatened to swamp their music, so much so that when rock journalist Steve Lamacq asked the band if they were “for real”, the band’s protestations were vividly underlined when Richey Edwards cut the words “4 Real” into his forearm with a razor. Six days later the Manics signed a major record deal with Sony.
Their first album Generation Terrorists sold 250,000 copies world-wide, and despite the band’s claims that they would make “one great album then split up, throw it all away,” they conspicuously stayed together.
The second album Gold Against the Soul disappointed some, and after touring many levelled the accusation that they were losing their direction. Problems worsened with the death of Philip Hall in December 1993, and Richey’s emotional problems led to his admission to the Priory Clinic in London.
This turmoil would be documented in the energetic and relentlessly bleak third album The Holy Bible, released to great acclaim in 1994. The uncompromising tone of the record would translate into a similarly charged live tour, climaxing with the destruction of £10,000 worth of their equipment at the London Astoria. It was the last time they would play as a four-piece.
A Come Dancing legend has expressed mixed views about Bruce Forsyth’s association with Strictly Come Dancing.
Peggy Spencer MBE, 89, from King’s Lynn, said she felt Forsyth was core to the programme, but said she understood the public
criticism he receives.
“I don’t think you can tear [Bruce] away from it now,” Peggy told BBC Norfolk.
“If [the BBC] are thinking about starting again, then maybe they should have a rethink,” she added.
A renowned dance expert and choreographer, the multi-award winning Peggy has been linked with Come Dancing since the 1950s,
but turned down the BBC’s offer to present Strictly when the show returned to television in 2004.
“I said they should get someone younger… so they chose Bruce Forsyth,” said Peggy.
She has no ambition to return to the spotlight to present any future series.
“No, I would not do it at all, not at 89!” she said.
UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has confirmed the government did not want to see Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-
Megrahi die in a Scottish prison.
But he insisted there had been no “double dealing” and told the BBC the UK had “never expressed a different view” to the US
over the issue.
He also insisted “no pressure” had been placed on the Scottish government ahead of its decision to release Megrahi.
Tory leader David Cameron has said ministers must be “straight”.
Megrahi was freed earlier this month, eight years into a life sentence imposed for his part in the bombing of Pan Am flight
103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, killing 270 people.
The Scottish government, which deals with criminal justice matters in Scotland, said the decision had been made on
compassionate grounds, as Megrahi has terminal cancer.
The UN General Assembly is being urged to hold an inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing, it has emerged.
Campaigners say they are optimistic the UN will put in place a commission to investigate the 1988 atrocity which resulted in the deaths of 270 people.
An appeal by Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi against his conviction for the bombing has been dropped, raising fears the whole truth of the case could be lost.
Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the original trial, backs the campaign.
Professor Robert Black, one of the original architects of the trial at Camp Zeist, is also supporting the campaign.
The obvious thing to do would be to ask the security council of the UN to hold an inquiry, but in realistic terms that’s not going to happen, because the UK and US have vetoes and don’t want it.
“They don’t have vetoes on the General Assembly.”
It comes as Libya prepares to take over the presidency of the Assembly later this month.
Prof Black said the move is being driven by the Justice for Megrahi campaign, but that it has the backing of Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the original trial, and Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy.
Father Patrick Keegans, the priest in Lockerbie at the time of the bombing, has also backed the move.
Asked about the chances of success, Prof Black added: “I think it’s pretty good.
“There are a lot of countries that don’t think we’ve seen the truth and would like to see that uncovered.”
According to The Herald newspaper, Prof Hans Koechler, of the University of Innsbruck, said the General Assembly had set up such a commission in 1968 to look at Gaza.
He told the paper: “As the General Assembly is a deliberative body it has only moral authority and no coercive powers.
“It could however raise international awareness of the different issues involved and name and shame certain countries enough to ensure they do something about it. It could pressure Britain into holding an inquiry.”
Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who made the decision to free Megrahi, has said he would support a UK inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing, while Westminster has consistently refused.
The BBC is standing by Strictly Come Dancing star Anton Du Beke who has apologised for using a racist term.
There have been calls for Du Beke to be sacked after it was claimed he called his partner Laila Rouass a “Paki”.
A statement says: “The BBC does not condone offensive language in the workplace. Anton Du Beke has apologised unreservedly to Laila Rouass who has accepted his apology.”
The ballroom dancer denied being racist after an exchange “in jest”.
There have been 63 complaints about Du Beke to the BBC and anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate has called for the dancer to be axed.
A spokesman for Hope Not Hate said: “If calling someone a Paki is not racist behaviour then what is? The BBC took a clear line on the Carol Thatcher golliwog comment. If anything this comment is even more offensive.”
Carol Thatcher was sacked from the BBC’s The One Show earlier this year after referring to a tennis player as a “golliwog”.
The BBC has pointed out that Thatcher refused to apologise for her comments.
The News of the World said Du Beke used the slur two weeks ago after the Footballers’ Wives actress had a spray tan before filming.
Du Beke, who also presents Saturday evening game show Hole in the Wall, said: “I must say immediately and categorically that I am not a racist and that I do not use racist language.
“During the course of rehearsals Laila and I have exchanged a great deal of banter entirely in jest, and two weeks ago there was an occasion when this term was used between the two of us.
“There was no racist intent whatsoever but I accept that it is a term which causes offence and I regret my use of it, which was done without thought or consideration of how others would react.
“I apologise unreservedly for any offence my actions might have caused.”
Rouass, whose parents are Moroccan, has accepted her dance partner’s apology.
She said: “It was a situation which happened that we have moved on from and I accept his apology.
“I’m really enjoying the show and dancing with Anton and hope we can go as far as possible in the competition.”
