Last year I gave a history talk to the Whickham Mothers' Union about the lost forts of Whickham. They decided to invite me back to give them another talk so today I gave them a talk about self-sufficiency. It was a whirlwind look at the last 14 years from when I first gave up paid employment to live the good life. A mark of the success of a talk is the number of questions at the end, of which
I was invited by St Albans Church in Windy Nook, Gateshead, to speak to them about how to improve their environmental credentials. They are aiming to be an "ecochurch" so I accepted the invite and went along to their harvest supper yesterday. They asked me to speak for about 20 minutes though I ended up speaking for at least double that! There was a good interaction with audience members as I
Curious British Telly had a post a couple of days ago on The Curious Tale of Bristol Channel, and that has led me to the blog Prodge's Views and the even more curious tale of Wellingborough Cablevision. In 1972, Christopher Chataway, the minister of posts and telecommunications, announced plans for five local cable channels. They were to be in Bristol, Greenwich, Sheffield, Swindon and Wellingborough. As Prodge's Views says, with admirable honesty: What strikes me about Wellingborough's foray into this early broadcasting experiment is that the town certainly doesn't strike you as a media-savvy environment. It's an average-sized market town, ...
Honestly, it could happen to anyone, as the judges remarked. The Leicester Mercury wins our Headline of the Day Award.
The Liberal Democrats have selected Helen Belcher for the new Reading West & Mid Berkshire Parliamentary constituency.
This time, it's personal. My nephew's fiancé's family was in hiding all day in a small room in Kibbutz Magen in Southern Israel that was attacked by Hamas. They survived after fierce fighting. Others were not so fortunate. Hundreds of civilians were murdered, many of whom teenagers and young adults who were at an overnight rave and were machine-gunned. Other civilians were taken hostage. The clips of an elderly woman and a gun-shot naked young woman being paraded by Hamas and cheered in the streets of Gaza are sickening. There is a video circulating which shows toddlers harassing a 3 ...
If there is one thing anybody involved with transport knows, it is that upgrades and new projects take careful planning and years of preparation before ground is broken, and that if you're going to start making rash promises from notes on the back of an envelope, you'd better be ready to back them up with a business case that shows that they are affordable and achieveable. Why did nobody tell Rishi Sunak that? The Guardian reports that documents detailing projects to be funded with savings from scrapping HS2 have been deleted from a government website, with one minister describing the ...
Plans have been submitted for advertising signs for a small retail unit on Ludlow Business Park squeezed between Howdens and the A49 bypass. The signage indicates the unit will house a Domino's Pizza. The take away will be accessed from Orleton Road, off Parys Road and Sheet Road. It intends to serve residents, local businesses and passing traffic on the A49. The current applications are for four signs to advertise the premises (23/03730/ADV; 23/03732/ADV). No indication is given of opening hours. The retail unit was approved in outline in October 2019 and in detail in December 2019 (19/02538/OUT; 22/04612/REM). It ...
Mon 9th
07:45
Welcome to my day: 9 October 2023 - "the train now arriving on platform 2 is an aspiration..."
It's one of the most obvious things about a Government attempting to be populist that the things it does should be vaguely popular. There's also an implication that they should get their messaging right as well. And yet, this Government doesn't seem to be terribly good at even something so simple, as demonstrated by this week's announcement that HS2 was to be abandoned beyond Birmingham and the £36 billion supposedly saved would be spent on other projects. In principle, given that HS2 has been easy to attack due to overspends and a false prospectus – speed was merely a benefit, ...
DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL - WEEKLY ROAD REPORT REPORT FOR THE WEST END WARD - WEEK COMMENCING MONDAY 9 OCTOBER 2023 Brown Street (south of Douglas Street) - closed for 13 months until May 2024 for construction works. Seafield Road, Dundee - closed from its westmost end (in cul-de-sac) extending for a distance of no more than 20 metres in an easterly direction to facilitate a site access for a new housing development. Commencing Tuesday 22 August 2023 for 15 months. Blackness Road (Rosefield Street to Rosefield Place) - closed from Monday 9 October for one week for pedestrian traffic signal ...
