Latest news with #Crofton
CTV News
17 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
30-year-old man dies in industrial incident at Vancouver Island paper mill
The Catalyst Pulp and Paper Mill in Crofton, B.C., is seen in this file photo. (CTV News)
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The $9.99 ALDI Find I'm Using All Summer Long (It Pays for Itself)
I love iced coffee all year round, but it becomes essential when the humidity hits and I can't stand drinking anything hot, especially on sticky, summer mornings. With the rising temperatures, I'm getting ready to retire my warm cups of coffee and go back to drinking them cold. Thankfully, ALDI recently started offering an affordable tools to help me out: the $9.99 Crofton Cold Brew Coffee $9.99 Why I Love It: This affordable tool makes delicious cold brew coffee at a fraction of the cost of getting one at a coffee shop. I love that it can also be used to brew iced tea or infuse water with different cold brew maker comes with a sleek glass carafe that holds up to 50 ounces of coffee, or around four 12-ounce cups. The system also includes a stainless steel mesh filter and two lids. The first lid seals to the filter while the coffee steeps. The second is used to pour the coffee once the filter has been removed, with a sieve to catch stray coffee granules. The system is currently available in three accent colors: black, gray, blue, and red. The instructions for this cold brew system were super unclear. I almost went insane trying to twist the top off of the carafe before turning to Reddit, where I learned that it pops off like a candle lid. An insightful YouTube video by an ALDI fan also helped me figure out which parts of the system did what. Thankfully, it was easy to use once I got this clarity. I added 3/4 cup of ground coffee to the filter and put it inside the carafe, which I had filled with cold water. I then put the lid on and placed the carafe in the fridge, letting it steep overnight. The next morning, I removed the filter and poured the cold brew into a glass, adding ice cubes and milk. The filled carafe is heavy and handleless, so I had to be careful lifting and pouring. The coffee tasted just like the cold brew I've gotten at cafés, if not better, because I could control all the elements. Like many coffee makers, the system was a little hard to clean, with some wet coffee grounds clinging to the inside of the narrow filter. I rinsed the filter in hot water several times to get them all out. I prefer blonde roast coffee, so I used Maxwell House Master Blend Mild Roast Ground Coffee, which turned out to be a great choice. The coffee should be steeped for 12 to 24 hours, depending on your desired strength level—I steeped mine for 13. Cold brew is a concentrate, so always dilute your glass with water or milk. The system isn't limited to coffee. Place loose-leaf tea in the filter to make an iced tea concentrate. Or use it to make a refreshing infused water or lemonade, adding cucumber, citrus, berries, mint, watermelon, ginger, or mango to the filter. Whether it's tea, flavored water, or cold brew coffee, it's so nice to set the system up the night before and wake up to a drink that's already made. Now that I have this process down, I'll be using this cold brew system all summer! To learn more about our approach to product recommendations, see product is an ALDI find, which are limited-time and inventory items that the store rotates onto its shelves every week. They come and go quickly—and sometimes return. Keep an eye out, but it's possible your local ALDI may have sold out or no longer carry the the original article on SIMPLYRECIPES
Scotsman
08-05-2025
- Scotsman
Upland by Ian Crofton review: 'a book to savour'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Rich in memories and beautifully written, Ian Crofton's account of a lifetime walking the hills and mountains of Scotland, England and Wales makes for a delightful book, and one of its peculiar pleasures is that the author derives as much enjoyment from small, friendly hills as he does from the grander mountains. That said, the last chapter's evocation of the Cairngorms is splendidly rich and full of good stories, even though, surprisingly, there is no mention of Nan Shepherd, one of the finest writers on that subject. This is unusual, for in general so much of the book is enriched by Crofton's wide-ranging literary references. Raised in Edinburgh, Crofton's first introduction to hill-going was in the Pentlands, which as a boy he walked with his father. When he later left home and headed off to work in London, his father tried to dissuade him, saying there were so hills worth the name there. Well, indeed, he found no great heights, no nerve-challenging walks, but much pleasure in the Chilterns and the Downs of Kent, Sussex and Oxfordshire. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Turnhouse Hill in the Pentland Hills Regional Park near Edinburgh | Roger Cox / The Scotsman In boyhood, the Pentlands provided an escape from "the drudgery, harsh discipline and lovelessness of school"; half a century later, the Chilterns provided relief from the misery of lockdown during the pandemic. Hills comfort and enrich the walker. Moreover, wherever Crofton goes he delights in history and poetry, knows too how much that is good may be found in imagination and nostalgia. Quoting lovely verses from Housman's A Shropshire Lad, he remarks that the poet wrote these lines in London and scarcely knew the country he evoked. No matter, beauty lives in imagined memories. There are of course chapters on the Highlands and they too are good. If I prefer those dealing with hills rather than mountains, I am aware that is not a preference likely to be shared by most of the readers of this book. Still, I prefer the Borders to the Highlands and, in my calf-country of Aberdeenshire have more delight in the Don and its valley than in the Dee. Memory suggests that I don't need all my fingers to count the Munros I have climbed. This may suggest that I am not the sort of reader for whom this book was written. Yet all pleasure in hills and mountains is offered by memory and imagination as much a by physical experience. Indeed, delight in mountains is a luxury of civilization. The 14th century poet Petrarch is said to have been the first mediaeval man to have climbed a mountain for pleasure - or perhaps for the view, while Dr Johnson thought mountains "horrid". Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Writing about that remarkable Scottish minister, Crawford Tait Ramage, who wandered all over southern Italy recording Roman relics, Norman Douglas said that the author of a good travel book should have a mind worth exploring; well, Ian Crofton has that. He offers a fund of historical as well as topographical knowledge, and his judgements and observations are almost all pleasingly to the point. Any reader will get knowledge as well as pleasure from his book. Of course it isn't perfect, and is not without fashionable prejudices, mentioning the profits of slavery, deploring landlordism, and so judging the past from the perspective of the present. For my part, I find enough to deplore in our own times: the covering of the hills with plantations of Sitka spruce, for example. But enough carping. This is a book to savour, and one that I'm sure readers will return to again and again.
Press and Journal
29-04-2025
- Health
- Press and Journal
Scott Begbie: Stop finger pointing and get round a table to help those affected by Torry Raac crisis
Imagine losing your home and possibly your lifesavings in one brutal swoop through no fault of your own, just the stroke of a pen from a bureaucrat. Just consider the sense of hopelessness and despair at having someone else make a decision that will change your life forever and there's nothing you can do about it. For some desperate folk in Torry, that's not a hypothetical scenario but the reality they are living since Aberdeen City Council decided there was no choice but to run a wrecking ball through their Raac-riddled homes, despite the desperate pleas of the folk who lived there. These are the people who face not only being forced out of a home they called their own but also being offered a desultory price for it – reported to be up to £55,000 less than their house was valued before Raac was found. The grim toll on their health and well-being has now been laid bare by Torry GP Dr Adrian Crofton who has passionately laid out the the 'unremitting and inescapable' stress patients are facing because of Raac-related issues. He has told of recurring themes from Raac-victims as they seek medical help – betrayal, uncertainty, powerlessness, injustice, financial fears and regret they have little to leave their children. And Dr Crofton raises one question that needs to be answered – why was there no health impact assessment as part of the options for fixing or demolishing? Didn't anyone in the corridors of power consider the well-being of those who live in those houses, or the wider community of having a whole neighbourhood gutted? And that raises, yet again, the spectre of those in power making decisions without closely looking at the way those choices will impact ordinary people – see also the city centre bus gates. It wouldn't be so bad if there was an overarching sense of a council that truly cares but has to make the tough call for the better good, doing so with full empathy and understanding of the ramifications of what they are doing. But families affected have spoken of councillors scrolling through their iPhones or eating sweeties even as the vote destroys homes and futures. Raac-affected pensioner, George McDonald summed it up best when he said: 'There's been no compassion or empathy throughout this whole process.' All the people of Torry want now is to be treated fairly and with dignity, not to be just shrugged off as collateral damage in what is a national scandal. Instead, they have different levels of government each saying it is the others' responsibility in a sickening display of sloping shoulders, while ordinary folk have to be prescribed anti-depressants and sleeping pills. There is a simple fix to this – one that the P&J's Trapped By Raac campaign has put front and centre. Westminster, Holyrood and local authorities need to stop the finger-pointing, put an end to playing a game of 'pass-the-blame', and get around a table to find a way to help Raac-victims put their lives – and health – back on a firm and fair footing. Scott Begbie is a journalist and editor, as well as PR and comms manager for Aberdeen Inspired.
Scottish Sun
28-04-2025
- Health
- Scottish Sun
Scots city's concrete crisis causing major trauma for residents doctor warns
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A GP told how dangerous RAAC concrete has caused a mental health crisis. Dr Adrian Crofton runs a health practice in an area where hundreds of homes were found to be affected by the dodgy material. 3 Homes in the Balnagask area of Aberdeen have been blighted by RAAC Credit: Dave Johnston 3 Dr Adrian Crofton revealed residents have sought medical help Credit: FACEBOOK 3 John Meiklejohn went to his local GP over the stress caused by RAAC Credit: DAVID DONALDSON He revealed it's taken a massive toll on locals in Aberdeen who are desperately seeking help and medication to cope with the turmoil. Dr Crofton said: 'There are quite considerable levels of distress arising from this process. 'We are prescribing sedatives, sleeping medications and anti-depressants to people who would not otherwise have needed these, and they are not medications we use needlessly. "There's a lot of anger. We stick to prescribing guidelines when it comes to these medications but we are often left with very little choice." In 2023 council bosses revealed they had discovered collapse-risk RAAC in more than 500 homes in the Balnagask estate. A total of 366 are owned by the local authority but another 138 are privately owned in the scheme that's part of the Torry suburb. Officials have decided the best option is to rehome residents and demolish the properties. More than 18 months on from the discovery many council tenants have been rehoused while owners are trapped. Talking to the Press and Journal Dr Crofton told how some locals have turned to booze to deal with the stress. He said: 'The health and well-being of Torry people is suffering. It's pretty grim. What is RAAC concrete? It's the duration of this that's most troublesome. 'This is long-term, sustained pressure that these people can't escape from. There's no holiday they can take, or rest they can have from this." The medical practice is the largest in the area and treats more than 7,000 patients. But Dr Crofton claimed the council has made no attempt to get in touch and discuss any of the potential health issues thrown up by RAAC. John Meiklejohn, 61, is one of the affected homeowners and was forced to get medical help. He fears he could lose as much as £100,000 if council bosses demolish his four bedroom home. The IT consultant said: 'It's taken it's toll on a lot of people, including myself. 'I could only sleep for about two or three hours a night. 'The whole thing would be going over and over in my head. If there was any kind of council announcement I would feel anger. 'I'd be awake just thinking about what I could do. Plus I noticed I was drinking a bit more at the weekends to cope.' John quit as chairman of the Torry RAAC campaign group because he felt he couldn't do the job properly. He's now been given medication for stress and to help him sleep and is considering attending a counselling session set up by the council. He said: 'It's going to be a long time before this is all sorted out. I'm stuck. 'They can give me all the counselling they want, but it's not going to resolve the main issue. 'If they're not going to pay me what my house is worth then the stress and worry is not going to go away.' Aberdeen City Council said they had commissioned services from Scotland Action for Mental Health which were available to anyone affected by RAAC. A spokeswoman added: "An integrated impact assessment was undertaken as options were explored. 'Discussions were undertaken at senior level with the Integrated Joint Board."
