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I am really looking forward to this event.

Rick Wakeman concert live in the Centaur at Cheltenham Racecourse

Support Act: 7:30pm Rick Wakeman: 8:30 – 10:30pm
The show is Rick Wakeman’s personal selection of highlights from his three most famous albums: “The Myths & Legends of King Arthur”, “The Journey to the Centre of the Earth”, and “The Six Wives of Henry VIII”.

During this astonishing 2 hour programme Rick will take his audience on a seamless journey through the albums that established him as an individual artist and global icon of progressive rock music.

He is bringing together a full orchestra, rock band and choir to bring to life an unforgettable and unique music experience for all Rock fans. 90 musicians will support Rick Wakeman on stage comprising the acclaimed English Rock Ensemble, the Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Guy Protheroe, and the Choir of Gloucester Cathedral.

Tickets on sale now!

Yesterday I decided that enough was enough and deleted my Facebook account. There are many reasons, but here are the principle ones:

• Facebook now permits anyone to advertise on my pages and timeline, even direct competitors
• Facebook now seems to echo the old CB channels of a few years back. A large proportion of people I saw every day were people who for various reasons  don’t work, so they can sit there all day
• Every day, on my timeline I saw the most dreadful lefty propaganda posted, particularly from the “Nobody likes a Tory” group. I do wonder how they won the election.
• My work, particularly local photographs have been consistently stolen and put up on Facebook. When I tried to challenge these out of work thieves, the reply was, “If you don’t want it stolen, don’t put it on the web”, and another was “If I want it I’ll take it”
• My wife asked me, how many of your “Friends” on Facebook would you invite to your home. The answer was depressingly few.
• Other social media groups like Twitter and Linked In, do provide contacts and even work. I have had some very good leads from both, but not 1 single one from Facebook. In fact looking back, 200 orders direct from Linked in and about 50 from Twitter. None from Facebook
• I am frankly bored with it, and the time spent there is just wasted.

So in the end I pulled the plug and will not be going back

Teachers will no longer receive increases based on length of service – but instead there will be a stronger link to performance, says the profession’s pay review body.

The School Teachers’ Review Body says pay increases in England and Wales should be based on annual appraisals. Education Secretary Michael Gove welcomed the “greater flexibility”.

The idea has been attacked by teachers’ unions, with one saying it would be “a disaster for children’s education”.

The Unions really do need to join the 20th century even if they can’t manage the 21st. I really do wish one of these dinosaurs would tell me how paying good teachers more than poor ones would be a “disaster for Childrens education”

I watched the start of the march going up Westgate Street. The procession moved through the city centre towards GloucesterPark where acts entertained the crowd.

Performers included The Gloucestershire Drag Kings, Miss Felicia and Clair Le Brocq. This is a colourful addition to Gloucester’s festivals.

Some of you may have heard of the new law governing the use of cookies on web sites. Cookies are pieces of personal data stored when users browse the web, sometimes to power advertising, or to remember your log in credentials.

Westgate St Gloucester

On Visit Gloucestershire we only use cookies on our bulletin boards ( they will not work properly without them ) and for our google ads which pay for all the free content here. We don’t allow anything that would track you, and we don’t allow other sites advertising to gather information about you.

Like the majority of sites we are late in implementing the legal requirement, but we will be fully compliant within the next 2 weeks. Last week the UK government admitted that most of its sites would not comply with the new rules in time. It said it was “working to achieve compliance at the earliest possible date”.

If you are a customer of SoftData Internet Ltd web hosting we will be offering you a complimentary script for your site to make sure that you are fully legal. Do Contact Us if you have any questions about this.

Sir Timothy Laurence on the left

The priory, the oldest medieval Dominican priory in Britain (dating back to 1270AD) was opened by Sir Timothy Laurence, husband of HRH The Princess Royal and English Heritage Commissioner. The site will now be used for wedding ceremonies and receptions (it is fully licenced as a wedding venue), music and theatre events, exhibitions, filming, education and private hires. Preserving the site’s historic and heritage aspects will also be a key part of the Council’s plans for the venue, as per their agreement with English Heritage.

Apart from Sir Timothy Laurence, there were many councillors present, and the cities MP Richard Graham. It was marvelous to see this magnificent building open again, and I was only sorry that business matters prevented me from staying longer.

Here are a few pictures from the event.

Ivan Tailor and Richrd Graham

The Gloucestershire Portal has been promoting local business for many years. There are also many ways that you can promote yourself here as well.

• Join our bulletin boards ( free of charge )
• We have a section “Tell us about your business” that you can use to advertise your services, again free of charge
• Astute posters will take part in the discussions here. So long as you have set up your profile, then every post leaves a link to your website.
• You can send every post you make to your twitter, facebook or Google + page with a single click
• Advertise with us - The best advertising rates in the county
• Make sure you are listed in our local Directory , the largest on the web

Don’t forget that SoftData Internet are full nominet members and can register your domain and host your web site. Again, local companies recieve many extra benefits.

If there was ever a real “hero of Gloucester”, then that person should be Ivan Taylor, chairman of the Westgate Quarter Traders’ Association, who runs Truscot Jewellers .

Ivan can be seen every day early in the morning sweeping up, not only in front of his own shop, but all of College Court and into Westgate Street. He is incapable of walking past any rubbish without picking it up and putting it into the nearest bin. Most of the decorations and many of the plants that are brightening up the westgate quarter were bought by Ivan, and then put up and planted by him. He is over 70 years old, but nothing seems to stop him.

Not content with running the Westgate Quarter, Ivan is also the driving force behind the four gates of Gloucester , and a great supporter of local business. If we had another dozen like him, then Gloucester would be transformed. We all owe him a great vote of thanks.

Sadly I have to admit, I just don’t have time to update this site. It is a shame because there is great potential there, and it gets reasonable traffic, but I’m just too busy.

If anyone is interesting in buying England’s Portal  then please get in touch. The site includes a working directory and I’ll include a years free hosting.

The morning of the 24th May will see the torch Relay start its day in Gloucester at 8.15am when it sets off from The Docks and travels through the City for approximately an hour.  See map

This will be a great day for the city of Gloucester, but don’t forget that many roads into Gloucester will be closed early in the morning. We plan to be here for 7 am. Naturally we will be taking some video and photos as the torch passes my office twice. It will run down Westgate Street, into the Cathedral and then back up Westgate Street, so we will have 2 bites of the cherry.

I am hoping to get the video up live on line within an hour of the procession passing us.

If you are in Gloucester we are at 46 Westgate street. Do drop in and say hello.