Gloucestershire Talk The Gloucestershire Blog

Many thanks to Celebration Photography of Gloucester for judging our photo contest of the Gloucester Tall Ships.

The winners have been announced today on our bulletin boards

We have upgraded our Gloucestershire message boards to the latest version, so why nopt join in the chat .

Our Gloucestershire community message boards have a major upgrade available. We will be performing this upgrade next week, but first we are upgrading all our hosting services. See this post for more information.

“New website is just the job” proudly proclaims the this is gloucestershire site, but it is not a new web site, it is not local, and worst of all when they first trumpeted this so called story comments were open.

2 perfectly legitimate comments were put up, but these were deleted and the ability to add new comments were removed .

It makes me laugh when a vast organisation like Northcliff is afraid of a local family firm. Be ashamed Mr Mean.

The Gloucestershire Portal is once again supporting the Gloucester Tall ships Festival that takes place on Friday 29th – Sunday 31st May 2009 by running a photo contest with really good prizes.

You dont need to be a profesional photographer to enter, we are not looking for technical excellence, so why not enter your snaps whether you are using a digital camera or a traditional one.

Full details of the competition can be seen on:

http://www.visit-gloucestershire.co.uk/Win-Prizes-for-your-Tall-Ships-Photos.pdf and on our message boards at

http://www.visit-gloucestershire.co.uk/boards/index.php?showtopic=6011&hl=

Entries can be posted on line, emailed or posted to us

At least that is what they call themselves, but to be perfectly honest I think the Citizen, Echo , Forester etc are less and less local every day.

They have a large feature on the site at the moment entitled Local Newspaper Week ( heavily moderated ) with virtually no comments at all telling us how marvelous and at the heart of all things local they are. If only

Comments are routinely deleted and some times the ability to comment at all is withdrawn with no explanation at all. Emails sent to the site are never answered, but we still see the same smug stories telling us that they are local and their campaigns are the only ones run in Gloucestershire at all.

It is a great shame, but in my opinion they are killing themselves. Apart from the hatched matched and despatched section they provide very little now that isnt available elesewhere, and their pretense that they take into acount local opinion and views is sadly tarnished.

The Tigers won their match against Farnborough, which guarrantees promotion for the club.

The final score was Farnborough 0-1 Gloucester City .

Well done Gloucester.

Airport officials are celebrating after the bulk of its controversial development scheme was given the thumbs up.

Tewkesbury Borough Council yesterday approved three planning applications and deferred a fourth.

1 The airport could continue for ever in its present form. There are no safety issues.

2 The so called safety issues only apply if the business changes. The extra length is required for larger planes and to allow present planes to take of with full tanks. This means losing more green belt and the twin councils get even less for their investment.

In a leaked email, Laurence Robertson said “I do not intend to become poorer”

He has claimed more than £140,000 in second home allowance – a £24,000 annual payment which covers the cost of MPs having to stay away from their main residence on parliamentary business – in the last seven years

Perception in politics is almost everything so, yes, we must be seen to be cleaning up our act. But we should NOT be bounced into a system, either with regards to employing staff or effectively working for very little, simply because the Home Secretary mistakenly claimed less than £10 for a porn film or because another MP employed someone who did very little – there are public servants up and down the country who do very little.

 

I believe that we, as MPs, should regain some self confidence. We should be paid a salary which reflects the degree of our responsibilities, the fact that we work long, unsocial hours, spend days on end away from our families, the stress levels we are subjected to and the fact that our professional and personal lives are disected by the media and others. We should be able to pay our staff proper wages which reflect their expertise – and I cannot believe that we are debating whether or not we should retain operational charge of our secrataries – of course we should. And we should be properly compensated for the fact that being an MP is an expensive business in terms of travel, living in two places, runnning two offices and, yes, all the bottles and lunches and teas we provide as raffle prizes and so on.

 

So while I certainly approve of moves towards transparency, accountability and a system which is perceived to be fair, I certainly do not intend to become personally poorer at this stage of my career.

 

Laurence Robertson

 I do wonder if some of these people have ever lived in the real world.