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.
May the 5th Candidates
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.
Dorchester parking prices
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?
Dorset Parking Ticket Battle – Real West Dorset
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.
Innocent Smoothies – Try Me Free
Pinched, with permission, from Bob’s Free Stuff Forum.
Spotted 250ml bottles of innocent smoothies in the Co-op with a Try Me Free offer.
You need to write at least 15 words on innocent smoothies and send with your till receipt to a freepost address.
Trying to beat the high fuel prices
Petrol and diesel prices seem to be spiralling ever higher. I do silly mileages for my work so I’m always on the lookout for the cheapest diesel I can get.
Some time ago I came across PetrolPrices.com, a useful price comparison website for fuel.
Put in your post code or town and your choice of fuel and they return a list of the local prices, allowing you to plan where to buy your fuel to get the best deal .They get their data on fuel prices in individual service stations from fuel card transactions allowing them to keep up to date.
Below is a live feed from the site of their overall figures for the whole of Dorset.
Dorset Life Magazine Article On Les Bagwell
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.
My first geochache hide
I came across geochaching a while back but didn’t give it a go until I got a mobile phone with built in gps late last year.
For those who haven’t come across this it’s a sort of treasure hunt using hand held gps receivers. Geocahing.com explains it better than I could hope to.
So far I’ve found a few hidden caches but until today I hadn’t placed one myself. Now I’m waiting for it to be approved and then the thrill of the first person finding it.
Anyone else find the Match advert annoying?
At first I thought it was sweet, the latest TV advert for online dating site match.com. You know he one, a guy with a guitar and a girl on piano serenading each other in a music shop. But after seeing it over and over in what feels like every ad break, and even though the girl (actress Amber Anderson) is rather cute, it’s really beginning to get on my nerves.
I didn’t realise VAT going up to 20% meant increasing prices by 20%
While out and about at the weekend I ended up in a kebab shop that I frequent often enough for the staff to know me.
I was shocked by the cost of my order! Looking at the price board above the counter the prices that I remembered from before had gone up by about 20%. I guess they were using the VAT increase as a means of getting away with this huge price hike.
Feeling ripped off means I won’t be going back in a hurry.
