Cheeky rental agency - Rettie 101A/17 St Stephen Street Edinburgh

We've been living in our flat since last January. The property is:

101A/17 St. Stepehen Street Edinburgh

Less than one week after moving in, we noticed that water was entering through one of the window casings. It didn't seem too bad at the time, but obviously was not a good sign. We immediately emailed the rental agency:

Rettie & Co 1 India Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HA 0131 220 4160

Here is the email response:

"Many thanks for your email, and it was good to discuss all of the items on the telephone earlier today. I have instructed two contractors to attend - Raymond for the handyman issues, and Valentine Property Services to look at the windows and water ingress.

They will both be in touch shortly to arrange an appointment to attend, and pelase do let me know if you have any further queries in the meantime, or if you discover anything else."

The water problem has gotten consistently worse since then, and has turned into a smelly mold on the window casing. We have, every month or so, reminded Rettie that the problem has not been resolved, and at every stage have been reassured that it would be taken care of right away, or that because the problem was complicated, it required special logistics, or contacting another party (such as the building owners). Regardless, not one minute of work has been done to fix the problem.

Last month we notified Rettie that we wanted to rent the flat again, and they had the nerve to tell us that "the owner wanted to increase the rent."

We pondered this for a while. Today we sent them an email pointing out that the water problem has been "current" for 280 days, and we thought it was a bit cheeky to ask to increase the rent when they aren't holding up their part of the rental agreement.

To be honest, I mostly expect them to serve notice.

I will blog about this daily until it is resolved one way or the other.

But the bottom line is that there is a water entry problem in this flat that is at least 280 days old.

Really bad weather in Scotland

http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16125967 Scotland Shut Down By Snow And 165mph Gusts
(But at least the surfing was good...)
A fierce storm with winds of up to 165mph has battered the northern parts of Britain, with people warned to stay indoors, schools forced to close and flights and rail links cancelled.

Localised flooding has also caused major disruptions on roads - and more than 30,000 homes have been left without power. In North Yorkshire, a RAF helicopter plucked a couple to safety after their car was swept away in floodwaters near Aysgarth. They were flown to hospital with suspected hypothermia. A third person was also rescued from his car in a separate incident near the village of Gunnerside. Police have advised against all travel until 2am Friday, when winds are expected to ease. The Met Office earlier issued its strongest warning - a red alert - for winds in Scotland and warned parts of England and Wales to "be aware", as temperatures were expected to drop and snowfall was predicted as far south as Birmingham. It said the Highland observing station at Glen Ogle reported a gust of 104mph at 11am. The Met Office later tweeted that a gust at the Aonach Mor ski area peaked at 137mph.

But further north in the Cairngorms mountains, winds topped 165mph - the fastest gust recorded in the UK since 1986 when 173mph was recorded, also on the top of the summit. A Met Office spokeswoman said: "We do not issue red warnings lightly. That is why people need to take heed of it and take appropriate action." By 2.45pm Scottish Rail confirmed it was suffering severe disruptions on express routes and minor disruptions across Highland, central, southwest and sleeper services. It later suspended all routes from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, Perth and Dundee. :: Upload your snowy photos and video on the Sky News website. Flights to and from Scotland were also affected by the wild weather. Up to 5pm, Glasgow Airport had cancelled 37 flights and Edinburgh Airport said it was forced to cancel 21 flights with a further three also having to be diverted. Passengers have been advised to check the status of their flight before going to the airport.

Flood warnings have been issued for parts of northern England, with train speed restrictions in place between Carlisle, Leeds and Skipton. In the north of Ireland, Malin Head was hit by steady winds of 58mph and gusts of 80mph, while ferry crossings to Cairnryan were cancelled. Meanwhile, the Welsh Environment Agency has warned of strong winds, with heavy rain expected for both mid and north Wales.

Southern and central Scotland are covered by the red alert for gale force winds during the next 24 hours, with both transport and schools badly affected. Scottish Hydro reported thousands of customers left without electricity in Argyll and the Western Isles. While ScottishPower said that, as of 3.30pm, as many as 12,000 homes in the Perthshire area were without power. Wind also disrupted power supplies in Dumfries, Central Scotland and the Clyde coast, it said. The electricity company added that engineers have been prevented from fixing the problem as roads are blocked by fallen trees and the high winds have made it too dangerous to climb up poles. The Forth Bridge was closed at around 10am, five hours ahead of an expected precautionary closure. Northern England and the rest of Scotland were on amber alert for 60mph winds. The Met Office also warned regions as far south as the Midlands of impending strong winds.

The Scottish Government said many schools would be closed in the west, central and southern areas after expert advice warned motorists to avoid travelling altogether. The Government said its resilience committee met on Wednesday night to prepare for the icy blasts. Ministers, along with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), heard from the Met Office's chief forecaster and the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos). :: Read the latest weather forecast from the Sky News weather team. Council-run schools and nurseries in the Borders, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and Stirling council areas closed at lunchtime. North Ayrshire recommended that parents keep children at home and North Lanarkshire Council predicted its schools would be shut.

All classes at Glasgow and Strathclyde universities were cancelled, while Glasgow Caledonian university remained opened but asked students to take travel advice. The Government said travel conditions could be "dangerous" and that road users may experience severe delays of several hours or more. In particular, high-sided vehicles, HGVs and buses were advised not to travel during the onslaught. Central Scotland Police assistant Chief Constable Allan Moffat extended the warning to motorists in northern and eastern areas of Scotland on Thursday night, as the severe weather spreads from the central belt. "This decision is based on the continued monitoring of weather activity which now predicts that the extreme winds will travel northwards and have a similar impact across the Northern, Grampian and Orkney Regions as has been occurring throughout the day in the central belt," he said. "We are advised that this weather will impact from about 7pm and continue until about 2am, in addition to storm force winds there will also be snow especially in inland areas giving blizzard conditions at times. "The wind will abate slightly after 2am with a possibility of ice thereafter. "There are clear indications that the high winds will affect wide areas of those regions both inland and in coastal regions and in the Northern Isles."

"Bad" weather in Edinburgh

We're having gale force winds combined with rain and sometimes hail. There is a possibility of snow tonight and tomorrow. The Uni is closed at 3pm, and city schools closed at noon. Gale force means upwards of 70mph, so it really is potentially dangerous. On the other hand, it isn't a tornado or hurricane, for example, and this is really about as bad as it ever gets here. Very unusual. But Lynn was standing with the kids at the window watching the rain and hail and wind. Taran was worried about tornados & I said we were totally safe and we could enjoy watching the storm. He was still worried, so I said again that we are totally safe. Then Kenna says calmly: "Nope. We're all going to die."

Sedentary life hazards

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/health-news/is-your-office-chair-killing-you/article2258518/ December 4, 2011 Is your office chair killing you? By DAVE McGINN Globe and Mail Update The past year has seen a surge of medical research and interest into an overlooked aspect of modern life You're going to want to stand up for this. Researchers of sedentary behaviour, a burgeoning field with Canadians at its forefront, are beginning to amass a large body of evidence with one unsettling conclusion: Sitting down is killing us. For decades, hundreds if not thousands of studies have examined the relationship between our activity levels and our health. Only recently have researchers turned their attention to the consequences of sitting at a desk all day and lying on the couch all evening. "We're talking extensively and producing public health messages about what we don't do. And we don't talk at all about what we do do: We don't move very much, but we do sit idle," says Dr. Mark Tremblay, director of healthy active living and obesity research at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. The average person now spends 9.3 hours a day sitting. People who sit for six or more hours per day are 40 per cent more likely to die within 15 years compared to someone who sits less than three hours a day, even if they exercise. Obese people sit 2½ hours more each day than people of normal weight, according to data compiled by Medical Billing and Coding, a U.S.-based organization. As recently as 2006, there wasn't much data about this - that's when a group of Canadian scientists published a commentary calling for research on sedentary behaviour in the Canadian Journal of Public Health. "Research into sedentary behaviour is at an early stage," they wrote. "We actually know very little about the nature of sedentary behaviour, its dimensions, determinants and relationships to important health outcomes." This year marked a huge turning point in the field. Research may still be at an early stage, but scientific interest has reached unprecedented levels. In February, the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology launched its sedentary behaviour guidelines for children and youth, the first systematic evidence-based sedentary behaviour guidelines in the world. The August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine was dedicated to the theme of sedentary behaviour. The Journal of Applied Physiology, followed suit in October, with a theme issue of its own, highlighting the physiology of sedentary behaviour and physical inactivity. And in September, Dr. Tremblay and his team launched the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network, a first of its kind that has so far connected more than 100 researchers from around the world. "We realized that there's this big growing field of research, but we aren't actually linked by one organization," says Travis Saunders, one of Dr. Tremblay's colleagues who helped establish the network. "So many labs are getting into this area that it's hard to keep track of who's doing what." Studies of sedentary behaviour suggest that sitting for extended periods of time increase a person's chances of developing a wide range of illnesses and diseases, including several types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity and Type II diabetes. "It's definitely an emerging area," especially in cancer research, says Dr. Christine Friedenreich, senior epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services. "There have only been 10 studies that have been published on sedentary behaviour and cancer risk, and most of them have only been published in the last one to two years," she says. Meanwhile there have been more than 200 studies examining the link between physical activity and cancer, most of them published over the last two decades. In a recently published study, Dr. Friedenreich found that high levels of physical activity reduced the risk of breast and colon cancers by up to 30 per cent, reduced the risk of prostate cancer about 10 to 20 per cent, and reduced the risk of endometrial cancer between 30 and 35 per cent. The most arguably disquieting results of her study? People who jog for half an hour in the morning and then sit at a desk all day may be no better off than those who don't go running, even if they are technically meeting the requirements of Canada's physical activity guidelines, which recommend adults be active for at least 2½ hours a week. "The big public health message is that people have been thinking they reduce their risk of cancer by doing something like 30 minutes a day of some sort of moderate to vigorous exercise, but that's not in itself necessarily going to be sufficient," Dr. Friedenreich says. "We haven't quite done the research yet to figure out exactly how much you do need to break up your time." Such a study is currently being conducted by Australian researchers, one of many studies of sedentary behaviour needed to determine just how dangerous inactivity is to our health. For instance, while Canada was the first country in the world to launch sedentary behaviour guidelines for children, no such guidelines exist for adults, Dr. Tremblay says. "Over the next 25 years you'll see a ballooning of this type of research," he says. Whatever that research might discover, there is already enough evidence to draw a clear conclusion, says Frank Booth, a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri. "It's a lifestyle factor that's like a bomb on health." --- Sitting not so pretty 22 Every hour of television watched may shorten a person's life by as much as 22 minutes, according to a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine this year. 50 A 2009 study of more than 17, 000 Canadians found people who sat the most were 50 per cent more like to die during the follow-up period than people who sat the least, regardless of age, smoking, and physical activity levels. 90 Levels of enzymes that help break down fat drop by 90 per cent as soon as a person sits down. x 2 Rate of cardiovascular disease among people with sitting jobs compared to people with standing jobs. 11 A longitudinal study conducted by Australian researchers found each hour of daily television viewing is associated with an 11-per-cent increase in the risk of all-cause mortality regardless of sex, age, waist circumference and physical activity level. 46 Percentage of Canadians who said busy work days left them with no time to be active on a regular basis, according to a recently survey conducted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Photos from October trip to Oban (finally)

Below are some photos, as well as a link to the full album, from our trip to Oban. After uploading all the photos from Venice to Blogger, I realized that Google+ (formerly Picasa) was a much better way to do this. Oban is a beautiful, small port city on the West coast of Scotland, about a hundred miles north of Glasgow. It's the ferry connection to the Isle of Mull and a variety of other islands off Argyll. We did go to the Isle of Mull, but it was, other than the scenery, one of the less successful days of our trip. The weather was good, and we saw lighthouses, rainbows, and so on, but we were there on a Sunday, when there were few transport options and we had no plan in advance. The CalMac ferry rides were fun and the scenery, as throughout the trip, was incredible. We didn't even go to the really scenic places, and the photos from the train don't do the landscape justice. The vista photos from Oban are taken from Pulpit Hill and McCaig's Tower, both of which are easy 15 minute walks from downtown Oban. We spent time at the library, lots and lots of time in our holiday rental flat, perhaps a bit too much time at the Atlantis Leisure Center in Oban, but all in all it was a very worthwhile trip.

https://plus.google.com/photos/103247747429321225220/albums/5679335395073642881

Hardly working...

And finally, a few photos that at least hint that some work was done, though a lot of it was done over drinks at restaurants... and while taking photos...

Venice walkabout 5

This set finishes with a few shots of one of the University of Venice facilities, located right on the waterfront. Oh, and a couple shots of Lynn traversing one of the VERY narrow walkways...

Venice walkabout 4

In a way, Venice is a Hoofers' paradise. Water everywhere. Presumably sailing nearly all year; though we saw surprisingly few sailing boats in the Lagoon, and of course none in the canals. But consider: - It's perfectly normal to begin drinking at, or before, lunchtime, and to continue imbibing lightly throughout the day - It's an island. Riddled with canals. There's water everywhere. - If you manage to injure yourself, say because you've been drinking all day and there's water everywhere, the paramedics will pick you up in a BOAT.