Berwickshire News August 3rd

This week's News has the story of a teacher winning a sexual discrimination case at Berwickshire High School centring on being passed over for promotion when the ultimately promoted person was male and less qualified. SEPA are looking for witnesses to a tanker dumping sewage sludge in a burn near Soutra Hill on the A68, which lead to the death of a large number of fish. It's a busy road - well what passes for a busy road in the Borders - so there really should be a witness out there somewhere.

More sewage-related news on page 3 where Eyemouth residents are still holding their collective noses about the smell generated by the effluent from the pea factory. The English Border (southbound) layby on the A1 at Lamberton is a disgrace too - the Scottish one (northbound) has recently been tidied up substantially - Berwick Borough Council are leading efforts to get it tidied, but it's not so easy in England as it was in Scotland.... Neither Berwick Borough Council nor Northumberland County Council are responsible - but the Highways Agency is, except that they've contracted it out further. That company aren't sure who is responsible for the wall that's been damaged by a vehicle, the broken information board and flagpole were erected by Northumbria Tourist Board (now disbanded) so Berwick Borough Council are trying to find out who owns them so they can remove/replace them. Motorcyclists are being targetted for road safety messages after yet another fatal incident involving a motorcyclist - this time a single vehicle accident in Gordon. A cider company from Ayton won the top award at the "Flavours of the Borders" event. Peelwall's has only been going since 2004, so this is a big thing for such a new company. The PaperBoy will attempt to obtain some of this cider for research purposes, of course.

The switchover to digital TV in Berwick is now resolved. From an unspecified point in the future the Halidon Hill transmitter which covers most of Berwick town will change from broadcasting ITV1 Border to ITV1 Tyne Tees. A side effect of this is that the switchover will now take place in 2012 rather than 2008, which will now no doubt upset some people in Berwick (and beyond) who have been looking forward to receiving the delights of five, ITV2/3/4, BBC3/4 etc.

Some Polish residents of Longformacus have been granted retrospective listed building consent to allow them to keep a satellite dish to allow them to get TV from Poland. It's been mentioned that they need a larger dish than for regular satellite TV - the PaperBoy has found the opposite for other stations on the same satellite as the Polish programmes, but bigger is better from a technical perspective at least if not aesthetically for holding the signals in wet weather.

The possibility of new butterflies in the Borders is raised - as the climate changes there are species that are making their way north and they'll be in Scotland soon - presuming they take the high road.

A much abbreviated report from Duns Sheriff Court this week - tucked away at the bottom of page 5. Sheriff Drummond found a Peebles man guilty of subjecting his wife to a torrent of domestic abuse. Refused the guilty party bail pending sentencing on the grounds that the only address he could supply for bail was the marital home.

On the letters page, the great stink of Eyemouth is once again centre stage. A correspondent urges all Eyemouth residents to complain to Scottish Water individually to get the point across that the problem is caused by inadequate sewage treatment facilities in Eyemouth. Another correspondent opines that SW should pay all residents of Eyemouth compensation for the stench. Yet another correspondent brings up the name of SEPA who apparently vetoed the original plan to dump the pea sludge (treated) into the sea, bypassing the town's sewage works.

Another correspondent alerts all on the north bank of the Tweed to the planning application for some 110m (350ft) high wind turbines that will obscure the view of the Cheviots (Chee-vee-otts, not Shev-ee-ohs). Frankly they are an eyesore, but considerably less intrusive than a conventional power station - even a hydro, unless it's built into a hill like Cruachan or Dinorwic.

Torness Power Station exported 415,000,000kWh of electricity to the National Grid in June - enough for every single resident of the Borders to have five one-bar electric fires on 24 hours a day for the whole of June. Reactor 1 was on for the whole period, Reactor 2 was returned to service on June 15th after a statutory outage. A fire protection shield was left out of place after maintenance work, but this is now rectified (remember the fire at Windscale 1957 anyone ?)