I called into The George Inn at Chideock at lunchtime earlier this week. Being peckish I ordered a ploughman’s lunch to have with my pint of beer.

I’m not a great fan of Palmers beer, there are plenty of other local brews I’d rather have, but there are a couple of Palmers pubs I visit that do pretty passable pints of Copper bitter. Perhaps I caught The George, a tied Palmers pub, on a bad day but I wasn’t impressed with my pint there.

My ploughman’s arrived on a chunk of wood rather than a plate! Three cheeses, cheddar, a red coloured cheese and a blue cheese that I would guess was stilton, this being a Dorset pub I was half hoping for Blue Vinny. This was accompanied by a generous portion of bread, small pots of pickle and a frilly but fairly tasteless salad which included some very small pickled onions.

There were also caramelised walnuts as mentioned on The George Inn’s menu. They were very crunchy and very sweet. Walnuts on their own might have been an interesting addition but these seemed out of place and a distraction.

At £7.95 an ok ploughman’s lunch pretentiously presented.

The Rampisham radio mast closure story makes the pages of the Western Gazette this week, but they seem to think it’s a television transmitter! Fairly typical of the standard of journalism in some local papers I’m afraid.

They also manage to somehow link the story to The Dorset Broadcasting Action Groups campaign for a BBC Radio Dorset. I’m struggling to see how the closure of a huge short wave transmitting station broadcasting internationally can be linked to setting up a local FM station.

BBC World Service transmitter site at Rampisham will close with the loss of 19 jobs according to BECTU trade union web site. The site is run by Babcock Engineering.

Rampisham Transmitter Station

© Image Copyright Nigel Mykura. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence

Have just spotted this on the Bridport Radio website.

There are mock ups of two not too flattering postcards, one from Weymouth, the other Bridport. I’d love to reproduce them here that would be pinching so you will just have to visit this link and see for yourself.

Flicking through The Independant on Sunday today I came across an article titled What ho! Lay out your best tweeds – chaps are dressing up again and there was a brief interview with Roger Snook, owner of our very own Bridport specialist hat shop T Snook of West Street. The link above will take you to the article.

Had the first West Dorset District Council election leaflet delivered today. They are starting early, nominations only closed a few days ago.

I decided to see if I could find a list of candidates, and yes there are links to the notices on the dorsetforyou.com website.

It looks like they have printed the lists, scanned them and then converted the scans to pdf files rather than just converting the originals so they look a bit crude.

Here are the links.

West Dorset District Council candidates

Parish and Town Council candidates

I had an outpatients appointment at Dorset County Hospital earlier (well posting at 00:45 it was technically yesterday) and got to Dorchester early. I parked in a car park in the middle of town and paid 60p for an hour. Moving on to the hospital for my appointment I had to pay £1.60 to park for an hour on the hospital site. How on earth do they justify that?

Real West Dorset have posted a series of articles and a video about one man’s battle with Dorset County Council over a parking ticket he got in High West Street, Dorchester.

I’ve reposted the video below, but it really should be viewed in conjunction with the original articles which can be found at the following links.

Dorset parking ticket battle: Lester Cowling’s story
Dorset parking ticket battle: Ali Cameron’s story
Dorset parking ticket battle: Dorset County Council’s view

I found the following passage most disturbing.

He said I should have been aware that a new pay and display scheme was in force because it had been widely advertised in the Press and on commercial radio.

It was a theme taken up by Parking Services Manager Anne-Marie Goodbody who wrote to me in December 2009: “The new pay and display scheme was advertised in the local press and on the radio.”

This statement was untrue. Checks revealed no advertisements were placed in the press and no commercial had been aired on radio.

Eventually, in May last year, the County Council conceded there’d been no advertising. Why had I been told this untruth?

Here is the video.

Ok I’m behind the times having only just found this article that was published in the Dorset Life magazine in June 2010.

Tony Burton-Page tells the story of Les Bagwell’s childhood, his travels as a young man, and his years farming near Netherbury.

A fascinating read for anyone, but especially for those of us that know that lovable rouge, Les.

Two things I intend doing is catching Dorset’s answer to Adge Cutler, Who’s Afear’d, play live and attend the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and Rally.

Here is a video of the former playing at the latter. Enjoy!