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  • Johnston backs praises response of Lib Dem MEP Watson August 31, 2010
    Paul Johnston, a leading Aberdeenshire Councillor has welcomed the link between the Pakistan floods to climate change and the need for the UK to tackle it in a more co-ordinated manner. “In much of the coverage of the tragedy that is Pakistan at the moment it is hard to make the connection to the UK.  Its […]

Energy

 ------News-------

Welcome for lottery cash grant to Udny project

Mid Formartine Councillor Paul Johnston welcomed the news that the Udny Community Trust have been award £269,000 to take forward a proposal to build a large 800kw wind turbine at Tillymaud Hill, Udny.  Paul said: ” It s good news. While turbines generally raise quite a number of concerns locally, this site was substantially less controversial anyway.  The Udny Community Trust should be congratulated for the both their public consultation on the proposal and their success in the application for funding.”

The project is on course to deliver significant benefits to the Parish of Udny which included the villages of Pitmedden and Udny Green and the settlements of Hattoncrook, Mlldale, Pettymuick and Logierieve.

“If this delivers even a fraction of the potential benefits, then this will build resilience and strengthen all aspects of this rural community” said Paul.

Cllr Johnston congratulated Project spokesman Garth Entwistle for the success.  Mr Entwistle has said the project is on course for completion in the summer of 2011 and could deliver as much as £50,000 per annum to local Trust projects following repayment of capital elements.

February 27th, 2010 | Category: News

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Paul's Blog

  • Exams and Scottish Higher Education
    August 5, 2010 | 7:21 pm

    On the day that Scottish Exam results drop through the letterboxes of expecting students, there remains the unresolved debate about the future of higher education that underlies all the comments that will flow forth from the great and good.

    My concerns that commentators will rubbish the results again, as they do when any increase in pass rates are announced.  The requirements of any qualification change with time.  It does not mean it gets easier – it can, but there is no evidence that it actually has.  But there is evidence it has changed in another way.

    Change in the the topics covered by exams have always happened.  How many doing Maths now would be able to handle a slide rule?  In my day, it was part of the exam.  Now students would no know what a slide rule was.

    For all those who are tempted to suggest the utter nonsense of advising students not to go to further Education but study things that industry bosses want now, could I enter the thought that we are really teaching people for occupations in technologies and systems that have not even been invented yet.  Such is the challenge of the future.

    Congratulations to all students in your results.  I just hope that the generation currently making decisions about your futures, your higher education places and the very sustainability of the Country, will not indulge in the short term thinking of ‘government spending’.  I hope they will have the courage for the investment in peoples’ futures and not our selfish present.

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