Congratulations.

It is not very often that Fife eateries win major food awards, so Carnegie is very happy to highlight the success of North Queensferry's Wee Restaurant. Hopefully their success will not mean that Carnegie won't be able to get a table if he decides to drop in.

"A NORTH Queensferry restaurant has won a prestigious culinary award in the new 2008 Michelin food guide for Great Britain and Ireland. The guide, which came out last week, lists The Wee Restaurant as one of just three new additions to Scotland’s Bib Gourmand list."

Well done and keep going, West Fife has a real dearth of high quality eating establishments and the Wee Restaurant shines out amongst those that do exist.

Tolls away.

Carnegie notes that the previous speculation about tolls being abolished on St Valentine's Day has now been corrected with confirmation that tolls will instead be abolished from 11th February 2008. Great news for Fife's travelling community who had to spend a pound a day, £240 every year, just for the privelige of crossing a bridge to get to their places of work in Edinburgh and on the other side of the Forth. It cannot come too soon.

Do you believe?

Carnegie reads that "CRIME IN Fife plummeted by 14% in the nine months to the end of December while the detection rate rose by 3.4%. Members of the region’s police, fire and safety committee were told that reported crimes fell from 22,696 in 2006 to 19,558 last year, a drop of 3138, and the clear-up rate rose from 50.8% to 54.2%. The figures were given to councillors by Chief Constable Peter Wilson in the latest performance report on the Fife force and he pointed out that they are far better than the five-year average."

Just one problem ... do you believe the statistics given that it is reported that as many as two in three crimes go unreported because of a lack of response by the police?

Carnegie has his doubts, but never mind the Chief Constable has announced his intention of resigning already. With that kind of performance perhaps he should be persuaded to stay, or is he just a one trick pony?

Karaoke Fife.

"MOST people enjoy a good old sing-along but one Dunfermline pub owner is bracing herself to take the conventional karaoke night to a whole new level. Elaine Ner, owner of Carnegie Drive pub Coady’s and former student president of Carnegie College, is hoping to break the Guinness World Record for continuous karaoke – which currently stands at an astonishing 214 hours – by constantly holding karaoke in the pub over 10 days around Spring."

Seems like a lot of effort to Carnegie. Surely it would just be easier to sit in a bath of baked beans for a couple of weeks? Only in Fife.

Petrified of that PC?

That is the rather misleading title on one of Fife Council's PR Department's recent news releases.

Carnegie thought it was aimed at some of Fife's less law abiding citizens and publicising some local crime initiative, but no it is actually trying to encourage Fifers who got computers as Christmas presents to learn how to use them.

Carnegie think the PR team need to be a bit clearer in their communications.

Lapping it up.

Carnegie notes how uncomfortable Liberal Democrat MP Willie Rennie looks in his picture from the Dunfermline Press folowing his meeting wtih the owners of Dunfermline's lap dancing club.

"BOSSES at Dunfermline’s lap-dancing club, Private Eyes, have said they are going nowhere, despite renewed pressure from West Fife MP Willie Rennie to leave. Mr Rennie met Tony Cochrane, managing director of Private Eyes’ parent company Decades, last week to discuss the club’s presence in the city centre. While insisting that the meeting was amicable, Mr Rennie told the Press he would be keeping a close eye on the club to make sure all is above board ..."

Carnegie thinks the picture is a fitting one for his first "add the caption" competition. Any suggestions? Is that Willie's all "above board" look?

Snap.

Carnegie reads that: "More than one wire a month is snapping on the Forth Road Bridge, monitoring equipment has revealed. Advitam, the specialist company which set up acoustic monitoring instruments on the bridge, said 22 wires had broken since August 2006. The wire snaps, which are detected by microphones embedded inside the cables, come on top of 86 snapped wires found during an inspection four years ago. However, officials said the wire breaks were in line with "expectations".

Carnegie is not a structural engineer so is reassured that all these wires snapping is in line with "expectations," but thinks that the more wires that snap, the greater the pressure that there will then be on the wires that are left, meaning that more of them will then snap, which will then increase further the pressure .... think we get the idea. Hence the importance of getting a new Bridge.

Poor hygiene.

"FIFE'S food hygiene inspectors are the subject of a damning report criticising their scrutiny of more than 3000 premises across the region. They have come under attack for: not inspecting premises often enough and not having sufficient staffing levels.The report documents the findings of an audit conducted on Fife Council's Food Law Enforcement Service - based in Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes - during October 2007."

But hang on wasn't Fife one of the areas that was part of a recent government pilot scheme which meant premises selling food had to display the results of hygiene inspections in the windows of their businesses to give customers more information. Not much point if the information was incomplete and out of date.

Fife Council should give the issue a higher priority. Nothing is more important than public health.

Foolish.

"PERTH MSP Roseanna Cunningham has slammed a Labour MSP for “scaremongering” over her claims of the impact on flood prevention works of an agreement between the Scottish Government and local councils. Labour’s Claire Baker said the decision to change how cash is allocated for flood prevention schemes could cause problems with the removal of ring-fencing from funding for the country’s flood schemes."

Carnegie thinks it is very difficult for Claire Baker to sustain her argument when Labour leaders in local government actually supported the agreement with the SNP controlled Scottish Government to end ring fencing. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have a point, but Carnegie is not sure that Claire will want to end up on the wrong side of Trekkie Antipodean Roseanna. After all, Roseanna could have Claire "beamed up".

£1 million.

That's how much it cost to employ the consultants working on plans for the new Forth crossing.

"CONSULTANTS received more than £1 million for work on a study which backed a new bridge across the Firth of Forth, documents have revealed. Figures published by Transport Scotland show how much the engineers and transport planners from the private sector picked up for carrying out the Forth Replacement Crossing Study, which was published in June."

Nice work if you can get it.

Bridge closed.

Well. Were you one of the tens of thousands of motorists who got caught out yesterday by the closure of the Fortyh Road Bridge, all because of a dodgy painting gantry?

Whilst the weather conditions were extreme, surely the big cheeses at the Forth Estuary Transport Authority (FETA) should be making sure that anything they allow to be raised above the deck of the Bridge could stand up even to extreme weather conditions?

Another example of poor management by those at FETA who really should know better?

On the road again.

"The biggest operator of public transport in Fife has said it might not use a new flagship £4m bus station. The facility is part of a major regeneration project for the centre of Dunfermline, which also includes an expansion to the main shopping centre. With only three months until work is completed, Stagecoach has said it still has not decided whether its services will operate from the new bus station ... Dunfermline Central Councillor, Willie Sullivan, told the BBC Scotland news website: "I think it's ridiculous these private monopolies holding the citizens of Dunfermline to ransom. "It is the citizens who own the roads and they have to got to acknowledge that."

Er ... surely Fife Council should actually have checked with the bus companies that they needed a bus station before allowing £4 million to be spent on constructing one?

That's Festive Fife.

"A CHRISTMAS prankster fell fowl of revellers last week, when they stole the Christmas Day turkey from a party. Staff and punters at Raffles Bar, in Chalmers Street, Dunfermline, were amazed and amused when they noticed the cheeky thief had made off with the main attraction from their buffet. And bar manager Sharon Paterson said she had an idea who the culprit may have been. “I think it was probably a regular,” she joked. “I didn’t call the police, I just took it as a laugh."

Only in Fife. Not much of a joke for the turkey though.

£3,850,000.

"A FAIRYTALE castle in Fife was one of the most expensive homes sold in Scotland last year, fetching £3,850,000. Fordell Castle, which once belonged to the late Conservative MP for Perth and Kinross, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, was fifth on the list of top properties. Set in 210 acres of woodland and formal gardens, the A-listed 16th century castle comes complete with the title of Baron and Baroness of Fordell."

It's not Stobo though is it?

Mr Herman Munster.

Goodbye Mr Wilson.

"FIFE’S CHIEF Constable, Peter Wilson has announced his plans to retire in May. When Mr Wilson took up the post in April 2001, he pledged to build upon the excellent work for which the region’s police force was already known and ensure the “best possible policing service was provided to the people ... Central Fife MSP, Tricia Marwick also paid tribute to Mr Wilson, saying he would be a “hard act to follow.” “I am very saddened to hear of Mr Wilson’s forthcoming retiral,” she said. “He is a thoroughly decent, honest, approachable and committed man who I cannot speak highly enough of and he will be sadly missed.”

Carnegie thinks that Tricia Marwick may be over egging the pudding somewhat. The Chief Constable is after all only retiring. He isn't dead.

And is it just Carnegie but does he have the look of Herman Munster about him?

Cross Factor.

"X-FACTOR winner Leon Jackson pulled out of his sell-out Dunfermline Hogmanay concert just hours before he was due to go on stage. The singer issued a statement saying he was suffering from tonsillitis. He was scheduled to open the Edinburgh Hogmanay street party, then bring in the bells at Dunfermline’s Velocity nightclub before finishing the night off with another appearance in Falkirk. At around noon on Monday he pulled out of all three events saying, “I’m really poorly. “I’ve had to cancel because I’ve got tonsillitis. “It just came on two days ago and I’ve been trying to doctor it up. “My tonsils are the size of golf balls ...”

Golf balls? Really? That's not Fife.

Turkeys and Christmas.

Carnegie notes that it has taken just seven months for some our elected representatives on Fife Council to start complaining about their workloads a result of the introduction of proportional representation for May's local government elections.

"Councillors say new ward system means more work ... SINCE emerging triumphant from last May’s chaotic local elections, West Fife councillors in the new administration have said their experiences in office so far have been a “mixed bag.” Councillors, elected using the single transferable vote (STV) system of proportional representation (PR), on the same day as the parliamentary elections, have been working in multi-member wards for eight months. Bill Walker, SNP councillor for the West Fife and Coastal Villages said, “Although the ward covers four old size wards I think you get more than the original workload. "People often go to all four councillors and see who gives them the best result. It’s pretty hard for the councillors to get everything done.”

The fact that they all get a guaranteed income of at least £16,000 a year to do what still largely remains a part-time job should offset some of the pain they are feeling. The again they could just quit if they feel that they can't stand the pace and let other people more motivated by public service take their places? Not very likely is it?

New Year Resolutions.

Carnegie notes the attempt by the press team at Fife Council to inject some seasonality into their website's news section with helpful hints related to some possible resolutions by Fifers.

But Carnegie thinks they are being a tad optimistic with number two in which they suggest "I want to learn something new ... Learn to swim, play the guitar, dance like Alesha Dixon or Gethin Jones from Strictly Come Dancing."

We think that the average Fifer even if they wanted to do a bit of dancing might have some difficulty reaching these levels of achievement. But then again ... who knows ...?

Pulling the plug.

So Carnegie reads that Fife Council had a near miss which could have resulted in the meltdown of it's IT system.

"FIFE COUNCIL’S computer network came close to disaster last week in an emergency which could have led to months of chaos, and irrecoverable loss of data and systems. The incident, which carried with it a potential fire hazard, has been reported on the council’s internal “intranet” system, which provides information for employees. No details of the scare were released publicly at the time, but it is clear in the message from IT help desk supervisor Jayne Fernie there was an emergency shutdown. Ms Fernie said the problems started on December 21, when IT staff were forced to respond to some “serious electrical problems” relating to the power supply to the computer centre."

It makes you wonder what would have happened if they hadn't been able to shut the systems down in time. Carnegie suspects there is more to this story than meets the eye. Worryingly it would appear that the Leader of Fife Council doesn't appear to know whether the problem had been fixed.

Happy New Year.

Carnegie would like to wish all his readers and Fifers a very prosperous and peaceful 2008.

May all your dreams come true.