Gloucestershire Talk The Gloucestershire Blog

A very busy week coming up next week for me. More information

Butchers in Gloucestershire are backing a national call for consumers to boycott supermarket beef.

The National Beef Association (NBA) says supermarket habits are threatening to undermine the British beef industry. The association says multiple retailers are doing little more than stacking up piles of mince on their shelves.

I must say I agree. I’m fussy about what I eat, and although we do eat less meat nowadays, I insist on quality. My favourite local butcher is The country butcher in the forest of Dean

Gloucester docks

Council workers look set to be moved out of the iconic building, with the site rented out to the highest bidder.
Gloucester council are hoping to bring in “a six-figure” yearly pay packet by renting North Warehouse out to a commercial company.
It is most likely to become either a hotel or the HQ of a top company.

A good quality hotel would be marvelous, but thats probably too much to hope for.

Friends of the Tailor of Gloucester

We are launching a new site today - The Friends of the Tailor of Gloucester . You can join there and also watch a video of Patricia Routledge opening the new kitchen.

Eastgate Market

Gloucester’s Mall shopping centre in Eastgate St has been sold. I certainly hope that this means a bit of investment for this important part of Gloucester. The indoor market is still part of it but you would never know from the outside.

I’m pleased to say that after months of meetings I have been given the go ahead to update the Westgate Quarter web site. In fact we look like moving our offices to Westgate St in the very near future.

Westgate St Gloucester

This is something I’ve been doing for several years at http://www.visit-gloucestershire.co.uk/boards/ and for the vast majority of the time it has been very rewarding. It is always good to have somewhere “unnoficial” to discuss local affairs, and all sorts of other things. It does take a lot of time and also a fair bit of money to keep everything updated, but that’s all par for the course.

During that time I have made many friends, and have met in “real life” many from the boards. We do get problems of course. Because it is a high traffic site, we have had to have a double validation technique that keeps the bots out and the worst of the spammers. They try to get on of course because links are valuata nowadays, mores the pity I think.

Some times though we do get individuals who are determined to carry out their vendettas, no matter what. Recently we have had the worst example I can recall. Not only has this person tried to spam my boards, but in the last couple of days he has spammed at least 2 other blogs in a completely shameless way. He has no qualms at all about using other peoples sites for his own ends, and no doubt will carry on until the site owners get fed up and ban him there. That won’t be a new experience of course, will it Joe.

He is under the illusion that it is his right to be able to spout and whine anywhere he likes. Not so Joe. This site is privately owned and so is TIG and other peoples blogs are exactly the same. It is up to the site owner whether to allow any comments at all.

Of course this is a very difficult concept for someone who doesn’t work and just launches free web sites to grasp.

He says in his latest bit of content spam:

“Do you suddenly have no problem with TiG’s ‘policy’ (or seeming whim) of denying readers the right to comment? Thought not. How would you going about saying your piece then?”

The answer Joe is to whinge , rant and whimper on your own blog, not to spam other peoples sites with irrelevant bile, but then again you probably realise that very few people actually read it and even less care about your rants, so you prefer to spam other sites that do have a good number of visitors.

Added:

Not content with vilifying me, he has accused 2 people from the Barton and Tredworth trust of posting comments here and even accused Barry Kirby on his own blog ( in a post about a motorway ), but that is his favourite technique. It didn’t occur to him to email, or even go to the contact page of Barry’s blog to ask if that was him – that wouldn’t suit his purposes at all. It must look pretty bad to anyone who is a constituent of Barry’s, but again, that’s no concern of this nasty individual. He doesnt care that it may affect Barry in his work in Quedgley as a councillor.  Well, liars and paranoids always get caught out in the end. For your information Joe, the Barry who posted here is someone I’ve know since I was 9 years old.

Instant fines of £80 will be slapped on anyone caught using the city as an “open litter bin”. Posters and a radio campaign will spearhead the drive, launched today by Gloucester City Council. From August, instant fines of up to £80 will be dished out.

Quite right too. Litter is an increasing problem in our towns and the countryside.

Gloucestershire Gateway Trust claim on their web site that “Gloucestershire Gateway Trust is a charity, set up in 2007 in order to bring this vision to reality.”

I was doubtful all the time as charities always display their number on their web sites. Today the Charity Commission replied to my enquiry with this email

Thank you for your email dated 16 July 2010.

I would like to advise you that the Commission is aware of this situation, and are currently looking into this matter.

I can confirm that Gloucestershire Gateway Trust is not a registered charity, however the Charity Commission has received an application to register the organisation. This application has yet to be processed, and as such they should not refer to themselves as a charity.

It makes you wonder how many of their other claims are true.

A study, which was conducted by former Gloucestershire Chief Constable Tim Brain, says thousands of police will be made redundant and adds that if adjustments are made for inflation and growth, cuts might fall to between 11,500 and 17,000 jobs.

This is the same Tim Brain that conned vast increases in the police budget for Gloucestershire without fulfilling his side of the bargain – to give us a police force to be proud of.

Who does he think he is kidding. Apparently the police are the one body in the country that have never wasted a penny and can;t make any cuts. Dear me.