Local News Sept 5-12 2019

Apologies: in the 26 September 2019 Penny Post newsletter there’s a wrong link which has sent you to this page rather than the current Local News (26 Sept to 2 Oct 2019):  this can be found by clicking here.

including Hungerford’s newsletter, Shefford’s bus stop, East Garston’s fête video, Compton’s PPG, Wantage’s NDP, Newbury’s Town Hall, Thatcham’s solar panels, Hampstead Norreys’ Greenfest, Theale’s school, Marlborough’s climate-change leader, Boxford’s mosaic, Bedwyn’s films, Highworth’s recount, Swindon’s sporting memories, police and travel updates, good causes celebrated, the over-crowded naughty step, a radioactive oversight, product labels, austerity, plastic pigs, council sizes, Steve Smith, Maurice the cockerel, failing with 99.9%, the growth of the web and a song for our MP.

Click on any highlighted and underlined text for more information on the subject. Some will link to other pages on this site, others to pages elsewhere.

Police, transport and council contacts

Information on police, transport (including roadworks) and district councils can now be found on a separate page here.

Links to the websites for town and parish councils can still be found in the appropriate sections below.

Across the area (and further afield)

• If you’d told me a year, or a month, or even a week, ago that both Wantage and Newbury would have independent MPs I’d have laughed. So, perhaps, might they. Both Ed Vaizey (Wantage) and Richard Benyon (Newbury) defied the government earlier this week and voted in favour of a bill to block the government leaving the EU without a deal on 31 October. In the referendum, both constituencies votes to remain (53.5% in Wantage and 52% in Newbury), figures that are very close to the reverse of the national picture. 

With Richard Benyon’s permission, we have reprinted in full the letter that he sent on Wednesday 4 September to members of the West Berkshire Conservative Association and you can read it here. This dramatic turn of events also prompted Tony Vickers, Chair of the Lib Dems at West Berkshire Council, to write an open letter to his Conservative colleagues, which you can read here.

The situation neatly summarises the essential contradiction at the heart of our political system: are our MPs elected to represent their constituents or to support or oppose, as the case may be, the government? The peculiar and unrepresentative first-past-the-post system we have implies the former: yet there are far more regular and effective pressures that can be applied to an MP in Westminster by their party than can be by constituents. Humans, like all animals, tend to respond to the immediate threat. In most cases, this manifest conflict can be resolved by supporting the government on, say, austerity measures that will affect services in their area but also making interventions in cases of injustice or lobbying for specific local projects. Another human trait – essential for staying sane – is to be able to live with two contradictory points of view. Most of us do this every day, at home, at work, with our friends, in our heads. It’s the only way we can keep going. These differing views can’t be measured empirically and so both can co-habitate as an often uneasy but generally functional compromise.

So far as politicians were concerned, the Brexit referendum ripped this up. There were suddenly two measures, both of them empirical and both sanctioned by democratic process which in many cases contradicted each other. Their own conscience and personal views have roles to play as well. Those MPs, like Ed Vaizey and Richard Benyon, who supported Remain and/or were in Remain constituencies after the Leave vote, were put on bare-knuckle terms with this paradox. Where do their loyalties lie? If the hapless David Cameron, bullied by Nigel Farage and fearful about the integrity of his own party, is reading this I’d ask him to reflect on how he saw this resolving itself. For these MPs, it must be like trying to play a hand of bridge simultaneously in four clubs and three hearts. Or finding yourself supporting both Tottenham and that other north London team whose name escapes me in a derby match. As this week’s events have shown, this eventually becomes impossible. Politicians are leaving one party for another, or setting up new parties, or resigning, or being sacked, like…actually, no comparison springs to mind.

• Meanwhile, as if nothing was happening, the new Chancellor ‘turned the page on austerity‘ with promises of about £14bn of investment. It passed virtually unnoticed. 

• On thing that might be worth looking at to save some dosh is my old friend HS2 which is now reported to be running about five years late and costing up to £88bn. Other estimates – this one, by Conservative MPs, whatever that means these days – puts the price tag north of £100bn. Pick your own figure: everyone else is. Two weeks ago, I suggested a few other ways £100bn could be spent.

• Another matter which the PM, whoever that is, needs to look at is one of the many overlooked aspects of Brexit, our relationship (or currently lack of one) with the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). This has long been a concern of the Wantage MP Ed Vaizey (see above). The movement of radioactive materials clearly needs to be regulated under an international treaty to ensure matters such as safety and provenance: but, due a staggering oversight or poor advice or both, it appears that Theresa May withdrew from this organisation without arranging another treaty  replace it. Euratom is a European organisation as the name suggests, but is only loosely connected with the EU and you don’t have to be in the EU to be part of it (Switzerland is a member). It seems this distinction was ignored or not understood. As matters stands, therefore, the UK will not be able to participate in such trade after 31 October. One of the most widespread uses of radio-active materials is in X-ray machines used for radiotherapy. A similar problem will result from our departure from the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is an EU body and which is currently based in the UK. This body approves new drugs and therapies across Europe but the UK will now need to set up its own approval process to replace this. On a different tack, anyone with a .eu email address may find that it doesn’t work two months after the UK leaves the EU. The list goes on.

The whole business resembles a divorce between two billionaires, one of whom didn’t want it and the other of whom keeps changing their lawyers and is in any case having second thoughts. For three years they’ve been arguing about points of procedure and trying to avoid losing face: meanwhile, the house is crumbling, everything they’ve created together risks being destroyed, any number of practical problems have been ignored or glossed over and their children are fighting each other. If this were a family, the social services would have been called in long ago. 

• Adrian Abbs of the West Berkshire Lib Dems has proposed a national and hopefully international scheme for using a colour-coded traffic light system for labelling all products using four criteria: energy type and amount expended on their creation; the carbon footprint for transport of raw materials and end product; the level of sustainability of the raw materials; and the extent to which the materials can be recycled. This seems a laudable scheme though, as always there are some practical problems. One is that the transport impact will vary depending on where in the UK the product is being sold. A second is that at present recycling arrangements are organised locally so what might be recycled in one area may not be in another. A third is that this will require a degree of self-certification or else an expensive system of checks and regulations. None the less, it’s a very useful step forward. You can see the document here. If you have any comments on this, please contact [email protected], preferably before Saturday 14 September. Seems like the kind of scheme that would work well as part of an initiative by the EU, of which we’re a member. Oh, hang on…

This report from Get Reading says that the government funding available to combat homelessness in West Berkshire will have run out by the end of March.

• The deadline for the autumn reactive grass from Greenham Trust is Friday 11 October. Click here for more information on these and how your organisation can apply.

• There must be some way that we can get Steve Smith out. When he delivers a chance, we drop it. When we do catch him, it’s a no ball. Even when a beach ball is bowled at him he strokes that away for four

• You might imagine that trying to use the courts to silence a crowing cockerel – one of the symbols of France – in a small French town would be doomed to failure: and so it proved. Maurice the cockerel lives to crow another day and the plaintiffs were fined €1,000. We’ve got four teenage chicks, or whatever the proper word is, and we’re not sure how many of them are male. If any are I hope we’ll arrive at a solution before we have to go to court. If they were lions or bulldogs this French judgement would be an encouraging precedent for us but the cockerel is not an English national symbol.

• The animal of the week is not Maurice the cockerel but the so-called ‘plastic pig’ which is not a new CBBC character but a type of train used by South Western Railway on some services through Basingstoke. Why they’re called plastic pigs I can’t imagine as they aren’t made of plastic and don’t look like pigs. Odder still, they’re being withdrawn from service for a while as they’re accidentally changing signals red at Earlsfield station in SW London. How do they do that? Why only at that station?

• The letters section of the Newbury Weekly News this week includes a number of comments about the current political crisis, a confirmation that 4LEGS radio founder Chris Capel is still also a presenter for Kennet Radio, a request for cyclists to slow down on canal towpaths and the assertion that ‘bog-standard Britons’ are ‘craftily-conditioned conformists.’

• A number of good causes have received valuable support recently, including: the Injured Jockeys Fund (thanks to the recent event at Marlborough Golf Club); Oak & Furrows Wildlife rescue centre (thanks to the Brunel Shopping Centre); Mary Hare School (thanks to the recent charity auction at Donnington Priory); Prior’s Court School (thanks to Retrofestival). 

Hungerford & district

• Please click here for the latest news from Hungerford Town Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Shalbourne Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Inkpen Parish Council.

• Click here if you would like to sign up to the newsletter from the Hungerford Bookshop which will be giving information on books, offers and events for children.

• The same shop has a couple of author events coming up very soon, both highly recommended: their recent newsletter described Robert Harris (Friday 6 September) as ‘the master of the intelligent thriller’ and Brian Bilston (Saturday 7 September) as ‘a laureate for our fractured times’, summaries I can’t improve upon. Click on the links for more details.

• The September Penny Post Hungerford was published this week, providing the most varied and comprehensive round-up of what’s going on in and around the town. If you didn’t receive it or don’t subscribe, please click here. This month’s edition features news from the Town Council, the Town & Manor, the High Street, Barrs Yard and the Chamber of Commerce; a first-birthday message from the Hub; news of an equine prize won by Hungerford Primary School; a vegan recipe; gardening tips; special offers; local events; inter-railing tips; memories of an old Mini; racing news; and a wise thought from Robert Benchley.

• Age Concern Newbury & District has just launched a meals on wheels service for Kintbury and Hungerford  on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Currently £4.50 (going up to £5 on 1 October) for a two-course hot meal cooked in their kitchens and delivered to the door. If you or anyone you know would like to use this service, or if you’re able to be a volunteer driver for the deliveries in the Newbury area, please get in touch with Age Concern through their website.

• A reminder that due to an unplanned and unavoidable period of staff absence, Hungerford Town Council has taken the decision to close the council office on Mondays and Thursdays for the foreseeable future. It will be open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 10am and 2pm. Theyhave deliberately chosen to close on the same days as the library, when footfall tends to be lower.  If you need to contact HTC urgently on Mondays or Thursdays, please telephone the office on 01488 686 195 to speak with a member of staff. You can also email [email protected] at any time. In addition, the office will be closed altogether between Friday 13 and Thursday 19 September.

• Hungerford’s annual Food Festival returns on Sunday 6 October – details here.

Lambourn Valley

• Please click here for the latest news from Lambourn Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from East Garston Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Great Shefford Parish Council.

• The Great Shefford, formerly The Swan, opened last night and we popped (or, rather, squeezed) in for a pint. A lot of money has been spent on the refurb and the results seem pretty good to me. The question of the name change continues to divide opinion. As I’ve said before, Joshua Khan has taken the financial risk and he’s entitled to call the place what he wants. As he points out in this week’s NWN, the recent history of The Swan has not been a happy one and he wanted to make a conscious break with the past. One criticism I’ve read is that the name change will cause problems for the bus timetables as the stop is known as ‘The Swan, Great Shefford’. I think that the drivers will be able to work out where they’re meant to pull up. In any case, the listing doesn’t say anything about ‘The Swan’ being a pub. Perhaps the bus shelter could be named ‘The Swan’? Another good reason to change the name is that I’ve never seen any swans in that part of the River Lambourn. It could be argued that the pub has for decades being flying under false colours, with people disgruntled that they went there for lunch but didn’t see any swans. I appreciate that you don’t expect to see a bear in The Bear, nor a queen at the Queens Arms, nor a plough at The Plough; though it’s quite likely you could see someone called George at The George. It’s just a name. People can continue to call it The Swan if they wish and I’m sure they won’t get barred. After all, for years after decimalisation many people still said ‘ten bob’ to mean 50p. 

• The Great Shefford Flood Alleviation Association has all but reached its target of £80,000 plus the costs of match funding by The Good Exchange. One final event is planned for later in September (details TBA), another metal-detecting day. Details when available will be available in penny Post and from Ray in the shop. If the success of the last such event is matched this will comfortably meet the target. The ball will then be in the court of the Environment Agency which will be responsible for the work. As yet, however, there’s no confirmation as to when this might start.

• There’s a karaoke night at The George in Lambourn this Sunday 8 September from 8 til late.

• Click here for details of the online petition to try to make the stretch of the A338 between Hungerford and East Grafton safer.

East Garson’s fête took place on 31 August and you can see a video of the event here.

Click here for details of flu clinics at Lambourn Surgery. 

Click here for details of how can volunteer at Lambourn Library.

Volunteers are still needed to help run Great Shefford’s youth club. 

4 Legs Community Radio Station will on Friday have its 69th day of broadcasting – click here for more.

Newbury & district

• Please click here for the latest news from Newbury Town Council: and here to see NTC’s archive of monthly newsletters.

• Please click here for the latest news from Chieveley Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Hamstead Marshall Parish Council.

• Please click here for Hamstead Marshall.net, which provides an excellent round-up of what’s going on in and around the village. It also publishes the Hamstead Hornet – if you’d like subscribe, contact Penny Stokes at [email protected].

• Newbury-based Falkland Cricket Club has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help raise the final £50,000 needed to finish the club’s new pavilion.

• The chamber of Newbury Town Hall will be open to the public on Saturday 14 September.

• Newbury Town Council has strongly reaffirmed its view that, rather than increasing the charges for coach parking in the town, West Berkshire Council should scrap them altogether. “This could jeopardise valuable business for the Town Centre,” Council Leader Martin Colston said. “It sends out the wrong message to coach operators who use our town-centre facilities.”

• Newbury Town Council will be hosting a Climate-change Community Workshop on Saturday 28 September.

• We were invited to got to the viewing of the Boxford mosaic last weekend but were unable to go. Looking at the report on pp6-7 of this week’s NWN, I rather regret that. According to the paper it’s one of only three of its kind in the world. The main scene describes a chariot race with the winner receiving the hand in marriage of Princess Hippodamia: what she thought about this arrangement is not recorded. The mosaic will now be covered up again to protect it. Hopefully it will be on display again at some point in the future.

• Boxford’s 2019 Party in the Park will take place on Saturday 7 September from 3pm at the Boxford Rec.

• Click here for the latest news from the development of the University Centre at Newbury College.

• Click here for the latest NTC News from Newbury Council.

• Newbury Town Council is looking at ways to further develop and promote the canal corridor which runs through the town. If you have any suggestions, contact the Leader of the Council Martin Colston on [email protected] or 01635 36591.

• Click here for the latest information from Growing Newbury Green.

Click here for information on free English courses offered to ESOL students in Newbury (also Thatcham and Calcot) by the Berkshire School of English.

Compton & Downlands

• Please click here for the latest news from Hampstead Norreys Parish Council (where there are currently two councillor vacancies).

• Please click here for the latest news from Compton Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Ashampstead Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Chaddleworth Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Brightwalton Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from West Ilsley Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from East Ilsley Parish Council.

• Some advice here from the East Isley Parish Council website about bonfires (equally applicable to other parishes).

• Thanks to Graham from Chaddleworth Parish Council for a summary of  of the recent meeting of the Downlands Practice Patient Participation Group. The positives included a good reaction to the new Primary Care network arrangements, the appointment of two (job-sharing) Social Subscribers who will help provide a support structure for people living alone and the recruitment of an extra nurse. The negatives include the fact the flu vaccination letters will no longer be sent out by post but instead the service will be publicised by other means (or contact the practice for more information), that the Newbury District has 40% fewer nurses than it should due to recruitment problems and that 75 appointments were missed in July, so wasting 10 hours of the doctors’ time. More information will doubtless be in the next issue of Chaddleworth News which is normally emailed to subscribers in the first part of each month. You can see the archives here. If you want to subscribe or contribute, email [email protected]

• A reminder about the Hampstead Norreys Community Shop’s eco-bricks project which re-purposes your one-use plastic. You can read more about this by clicking here. You can also click here to see the start of the work for which these were designed at the school playground. 

Hampstead Norreys will be hosting a GreenFest sustainable living event on Saturday 7 September.

• The August Chaddleworth News will soon be added to this page on the village website. If you want to subscribe or contribute, email [email protected]

• The August issue of West Ilsley Parish News can be found here.

• Please click here for dates and venues for the PCSO Have your Say meetings in the Thacham, Theale and Compton & Downlands areas.

Thatcham and district

• Please click here for the latest news from Thatcham Town Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Cold Ash Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Bucklebury Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Brimpton Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Woolhampton Parish Council.

• Please click here for details of Thatcham’s civic events in 2019.

• An article in this week’s Newbury Weekly News (p23) neatly shows a dilemma facing local councils. I’ve spoken to one of the councillors concerned, who’s confirmed that the issue is that Thatcham TC wishes to encourage people to install solar panels by helping to organise bulk buying. On the other hand, to recommend that this be done through one company could be seen as endorsing that company at the expense of other ones. It’s great that TTC is considering this initiative but it clearly any council needs to be sure that it’s seen to be dealing fairly lest it otherwise suffer that most horrible of municipal fates, a mention in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs section. One solution might be for some form of competitive tendering to take place. The logic of using only one firm seems inescapable as, without this, the economies of scale vanish.

• The same paper also reports, on the previous page, that the commemorative stones honouring the town’s three VC recipients may need to be moved as they’re getting damaged.

• The French Market will be returning to The Broadway on Saturday 7 September.

• Click here for information on the various play parks in and around Thatcham.

• Cold Ash’s neighbourhood development plan is seeking volunteers to assist with the work involved and is also requesting comments from residents. For more information, visit the NDP section of the parish council’s website.

• Please click here for dates and venues for the PCSO Have your Say meetings in the Thatcham, Theale and Compton & Downlands areas.

• Click here to see the latest Cold Ash Community Bulletin. This concludes with a wise observation by George Harrison, who was described by the author of Revolution in the Head as ‘not the most talented but certainly the most thoughtful of The Beatles.’ Mind you, he was pretty talented as well.

Theale and district

• Please click here for the latest news from Theale Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Aldermaston Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Stratfield Mortimer Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Englefield Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Burghfield Parish Council.

• Kier is issuing roughly monthly updates about the building progress at the new primary school is Thealehere’s August’s

• Stratfield Mortimer Parish Council is searching for a new parish councillorclick here for details.

• There will be a Macmillan Coffee Morning at Burghfield Village Hall on Friday 13 September from 10am to 1pm.

• Click here for details of other forthcoming events in Burghfield.

• Also in Aldermaston, several residents have now completed training on the Speed Indicator Device (SID), and the Parish Council hope to deploy this shortly to confirm speeding hotspots in the area.

• The Aldermaston and Wasing Show takes place on Saturday 7 September from 2pm.

Click here and here for the latest from Highways England about the progress of the work to turn the M4 from J3 to J12 into a smart motorway.

• Click here for information about Burghfield’s plans to create a community hub.

Click here for the August/September 2019 Parish Magazine from Englefield Parish Council.

• Please click here for dates and venues for the PCSO Have your Say meetings in the Thacham, Theale and Compton & Downlands areas.

Marlborough & district

• Please click here for the latest news from Marlborough Town Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Aldbourne Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Great Bedwyn Parish Council.

• Information here on Marlborough’s LitFest (26-29 September). 

• Click here for details of the online petition to try to make the stretch of the A338 between Hungerford and East Grafton safer.

• I see in the Gazette that permission has been granted to turn a former public toilet in Chantry Lane into a house. 

Marlborough News reports that Jonny Friend, Head of Science and Climate Change Leader at St John’s Academy, has become a United Nations-accredited Climate Change Teacher.  

• The same source explains that ‘the long process of the sale by Wiltshire Council of the public access land off Rabley Wood View so it can be turned it into a housing development is not yet over.’ Click here for more. If this follows the same path as countless other developments, including the ongoing Salisbury Road development in Hungerford, the reserved matters  (the first detailed plans of the proposals) will bear scant resemblance to the vision portrayed in the outline planning permission. 

• The Town Council is now taking bookings for stalls at the Christmas lights event on Friday 22 November.

• Good news for film buffs – the Bedwyn Cinema is returning to the Village Hall. As result of recent fundraising, a high-resolution video projector and four-metre screen have been installed and recently-released films will be shown each month, usually on the third Thursday. The first showing is Fisherman’s Friends at 7.30pm on Thursday 26 September. Tickets will be available from the Post Office and Village Stores from Tuesday 10 September. 

• If you’re in Great Bedwyn, keep your eye on the Village Hall Facebook page here for details of what’s going on there, including films (featuring new state-of-the-art equipment).

• And in the same village, click here to keep up to date with what’s going on at the Youth Club.

Wantage & district

• Please click here for the latest news from Wantage Town Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Grove Parish Council.

• Please click here for the latest news from Letcombe Regis Parish Council.

• Click here for details of the surgeries held by local District Councillors Jenny Hannaby and Jane Hanna until late November.

• This weeks Herald has more on the row between South Oxfordshire District Council (SODC) and Oxford City Council (OCC) over the former council’s decision to review its Local Plan in October. Critics claim that the move puts over £200m of funding at risk: SODC’s view is that the original plan is flawed.

• The same paper reports, on p9, that the Thames Valley Police is likely to receive about 600 new officers as a result of the extra funding for the police recently announced by the Prime Minister. 

• South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils have each appointed their first ever Cycling Champions to help and encourage people to travel by bike. 

• The Oxford Mail reports that the number of rubbish bins left uncollected by Biffa in South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse is ‘poor’. The article explains that the target is no more than 40 missed collections per 100,000, but Biffa missed 102 in 2018. This means that the company has a success rare of 99.9% – something every train operating company would kill for – but is still rated ‘poor’.  There are plenty of English words or phrases describing performance that’s worse than ‘poor’ but not many of them are printable. I wonder what the councils’ worst rating is called?

• These two councils seem to do many things together: have they considered merging? Their combined population would be about 276,000, round about the size of the London Borough of Hackney. The average population of an English council is 175, 400 (the population of Kingston-upon-Thames) so neither the Vale nor South Oxon are that small. West Berkshire (158,500) is also smaller than average, whereas Swindon (222,000) and Wiltshire (498,000) are larger. The extremes are Birmingham (1,141,000) and The Scilly Isles (2,242). When you look at population density, the range is ever wider: Islington has 15,817 people per sq km whereas Eden in Cumbria has only 24.

• Organisers of community events in the Vale are invited to apply for some of the £10,000 worth of festival and events grants on offer from Vale of White Horse District Council. 

• The Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust annual Ride and Stride takes place on Saturday 14 September from 10 til 6. 

• The Grove Volunteer Litter-picking Group meets at Old Mill Hall in School Lane at 9am on the second Friday of every month. Equipment is supplied by Grove Parish Council. More details here.

Click here for information on this year’s Wantage Literary Festival which runs from Saturday 26 October to Saturday 2 November.

• Click here for information the Didcot, Abingdon and Wantage Talking Newspaper (DAWN) for the blind and partially sighted. The organisers are currently appealing for help to keep the service going – click here for details.

• Click here for information on the location of defibrillators in and around Wantage.

Grove Parish Council has need of three more councillors: email [email protected] to find out more.

• Julie Mabberley’s regular column on p8 of the Wantage & Grove Herald compares Wantage’s 2015 draft neighbourhood development plan with the 2019 reality and finds that the latter has in many cases fallen short of the aspirations of the former. 

Click here for the latest from the Wantage and Grove Campaign Group

• Click here for details of some forthcoming events in Wantage.

Swindon & district

• Click here for the latest news and information from Swindon Borough Council.

• Several times since the May council elections, we’ve reported on the Democracy for Highworth campaign which was set up after what appear to have been systemic errors during the counting process resulted in at least one councillor being incorrectly elected. The only way of contesting the result was through a judicial petition (which aren’t free), a process which has gone on throughout the summer. It now appears that a successful outcome has been achieved with a recount finally taking place under controlled conditions with one councillor being deemed not elected (this needs to be formally ratified) and the campaign group being awarded all its costs. Well done to all involved. One of the things the group’s FB page is currently promoting is a consultation from Swindon Borough Council as to how often elections should be held.

• Residents of Swindon living with dementia will come together at the County Ground on 18 September for a special day of sporting memories. I imagine the first sporting memory that will come up will be the 1969 League Cup final…

• A series of activities will be taking place in the week from Saturday 7 September to highlight the link between money worries and mental health.

• Four new car-charging points are now available at the Civic Council Campus for members of the public and Borough Council staff to charge their electric vehicles.

• A section of the Wilts & Berks Canal has been restored thanks to an investment from Swindon Borough Council.

• From 7 to 11 October, the South and Vale Business Support Team will bring the free five-day Pop-up Business School to Shrivenham for people looking to start and/or expand their own business without using any money. More details here.

• People living in Swindon will get the chance to have their say on the town’s future transport needs, including options to improve traffic movements in the town centre and a new policy which sets out how new developments should make appropriate provision for the parking of cars, motorcycles and bikes. The consultations close on Sunday 15 September.

Beat the Street, the walking and cycling initiative that saw people in Swindon travel more than 300,000 miles last year, is set to return this September.

• Swindon Council  is introducing a trial collection (from September) of separate food waste recycling.

• Click here for details of the many volunteering opportunities at Great Western Hospital.

The song and the quiz

• The Song of the Week is one for Richard Benyon, currently languishing on BoJo’s naught step (see Across the Area above). When I interviewed him before the 2015 election – how long ago and far away those times seem – he picked Desperado by The Eagles as his favourite song. I love it too, so let’s have that. This isn’t the studio version but from a performance in New Zealand (the date isn’t provided). Don Henley is certainly one of the best singing drummers: but the lord only knows what he was doing with that towel on his head. For the first few seconds I thought he was, for some odd reason, dressed up as a nun.  

• Which brings us to the Quiz Question of the Week. This week’s question has been answered elsewhere in this post and is: Which English council has the smallest population? Last week’s question is from the last Monthly Mindbender’s Quiz at The White Hart in Hamstead Marshall with the proceeds in aid of Parkinson’s UK. The quizzes take place on the first Thursday of the month, so the next one will be on Thursday 3 October. The question I’ve selected from August’s quiz is: Info.cern.ch is famous for being what? The answer is that it was the world’s first website, developed by Tim Berners-lee at CERN and launched to a probably largely indifferent world in August 1991. In January 2019 according to Netcraft there were 1,518,207,412, though I should think that figure was accurate for about one and a half seconds. This increase rather suggests that the worldwide web thing is a proving quite popular. 

Brian Quinn

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2 Responses

    1. John
      Thanks for your comment and your interest.
      My problem when writing the Local News section each week is that I try to cover an area which spans four district/borough/unitary councils, about 70 parishes and three newspapers (all of which concentrate on the large towns). I often dig out good information about the smaller communities and ask to get on as many newsletter circulation lists as possible but most of these are infrequent. Parish websites are rarely updated. Social media is great for immediate matters but very poor at telling a story properly. There are also so many of them, and most are so partisan, that it’s hard to know where to start.
      What I always say to people is that if you know of something happening in your community which you feels merits wider, or different, coverage then let me know about it. This might be a perverse planning decision, a local campaign, a pub closure, a charity event or a score of other things. I’m particularly interested in things where there are parallels to be be drawn with what has, or is, or might happen elsewhere. Most planning matters fit into this category, as does the issue I covered today about Thatcham Town Council’s policy towards solar panels. I’d be delighted to spread our net a bit wider but I need people to send me information about what’s going on. We’d love to employ roving reporters to get in the car and on the phone but we can’t. Our aim has always been to make Penny Post a kind of crowd-publishing thing and this applies to the Local news section as much as anything else.
      So

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