Birstall Post July 2001 (215)
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Bowls news

BIRSTALL BOWLING Club’s season is again going well.
The Club are through to the semi-final of the Bramley Bowl, which is the major Parks competition. They are also top of the Leicester & District Bowls League Second Division at the halfway stage of the season.
Birstall had a team in the Quarter Final of the Men’s County Triples where Dave Clarke, Wayne Parkin & Jan Hunt lost to a very strong Loughborough triple. Meanwhile, a Birstall four of Nicky Greasley, Pam Ratcliffe, Jan Everitt & Diane Hurst made it through to the Quarter Final of the Ladies County Fours competition before losing out to a team from Burbage who went on to reach the Final.
The junior club is still being run on Friday nights for any youngsters between 11 and 18. For details please call Jan or Rick on 2122578. The club are also looking for new members. Ladies are welcome on Monday afternoons at 2pm while men can visit on Tuesday nights from 6.15pm. All you need are a pair of flat shoes or trainers. Please call Betty on 2216743 or Grahame on 2677994 for more information.

Carnival of reading

THIS SUMMER, why not go down to your local library and join the Reading Carnival or the Reading Challenge Plus?
Leicestershire Libraries are joining the National Reading promotion, which was very successful last year.
Children aged 4-10 years joining the Reading Carnival will be able to pick up a collector pack from the library and fill it with up to six illustrated record cards - one card for each book read. If the collection is completed, you will receive a certificate and a medal. There will be events for children aged 5-10 years on Wednesday July 25 and Wednesday August 1 from 10-11.30am. Storytelling and activities for Under 5s will take place on Monday August 6 from 10.15-11.15am. Please contact Birstall Library in June or July for more details.
Young teenagers aged 11-13 years can join the Reading Challenge Plus. You can collect a card wallet and six scratch cards from your local library. You will also have a personal reading record card to note which books you have read. A diary is awarded after reading six books. As an extra activity, why not take part in the Blue Peter Book Awards scheme or simply write mini reviews for your friends or to display in the library. Details will be available from local libraries at the end of June.
Children and young teenagers will be able to enter a prize draw after reading six books. The closing date for the Reading Carnival and Reading Challenge is Saturday September 8.

Family help

HOME-START is a voluntary organisation in which volunteers offer regular support, friendship and practical help to families under stress in their own homes helping to prevent family crisis and breakdown. Home-Start is available for any family with at least one child under school age.
Home-Start was established in 1973 and provides a unique kind of support to families within our community, is confidential and sensitive to local needs. Every family, regardless of its shape or size, needs help at times. There is no shame in not being able to cope. The latest news is that we now have two new projects that we hope will make a positive impact locally in the immediate future.
The first one is the ‘South Charnwood Out-Reach Project’ which is dedicated to raising the profile of Home-Start in the villages, enabling services to be made available to more families and establishing a Support Group for Post Natal Illness and Isolation.
The second project is in response to the need to find more volunteers from the ethnic minorities. We are acutely aware that this section of the community is not represented appropriately and a new co-ordinator, Segal Modha is in place to address this deficit.
Bringing these two initiatives together we plan to hold a Volunteer Preparation Course in Syston commencing October 2001.
Home-Start has made a huge difference to many parents and children, we are privileged to be allowed into the lives of these families and we are constantly amazed by the level of care and commitment that our volunteers share with their families.
Are you a parent? Can you spare 2-4 hours a week? Can you make a difference? Are you willing to give something back to your community?
If you have answered yes to any of the above, we are offering preparation training and will cover out of pocket expenses.
Please phone us now on 01509 239786.
From Helen Wootton (Organiser)

Planning

Nursery wins prizes

Goscote Nurseries are once again involved this year at a number of the RHS Shows.

Having won a bronze medal for their garden at BBC Gardener’s World last year, they have this year sponsored a garden, for local designer Kim Sutherland at BBC Gardener’s World, whose garden was given the top award of a Silver Gilt. This was Kim’s first show garden.

They have moved on to build a large show garden at Hampton Court which is being sponsored by Mitsubishi. The garden is designed for a town garden and uses exciting contemporary materials such as slate and metal decking, contrasting with a blend of more traditional softer plants.

The Show runs from 2 to 8 July. All these plants will be for sale at the Nursery from 9 July.

Inflatable fun

A LARGE, multi-coloured big bouncy inflatable has virtually filled Birstall Pool at the weekend fun sessions.
Children and teenagers are finding the new play structure to be a difficult challenge as they try to get from the shallow end to the deep end on a slippery obstacle course. A large slide completes the experience, before it’s time to try again.
This monster can be seen and tried out at Birstall Pool fun sessions: Saturdays and Sundays, 2-3pm or at private birthday parties. Tel: 2673461 for details.

Wild about canoeing

A TALENTED wild-water conoeist from Birstall, ranked fourth in the country, has been picked for the Great Britain squad.
Jamie Oughton (13), a pupil at Stonehill School, will be competing in the Juniors Pre-World Championships on the river Tryweryn in Bala, Wales at the end of July.
Jamie will take part in both the sprint competition, over one kilometre, and the classic event which is over a longer distance. He said: “I’m going to sample the atmosphere - I’ll be pleased with a top 20 place.”
Jamie started canoeing four years ago at the Leicester Outdoor Pursuits Centre and started racing after two years. I’ve done well in competition” he said, “and I really enjoy the adrenalin rush of the sport”.
Jamie trains every day; running, swimming or paddling, and hopes to progress to the very top of the sport.

Samaritan volunteers

THE LEICESTER branch of the Samaritans has experienced a 5% annual increase in calls to 23,700 and needs 20 to 30 more volunteers to help sustain its 24 hour service. Val Wilkinson, the Director, said: “The impact of increased calls is that it places greater demands on our volunteers. If you are a good listener, open-minded, non-judgmental and able to carry out regular three to four hour duties plus seven nights duties per year, we want to hear from you”.
Volunteers are of all ages from 18 upwards and from all walks of life. Applicants with good listening skills are carefully selected and thoroughly trained. Anyone interested can obtain more information on 0116 270 0007.

Lift off at Space Centre

BRITAIN’S FIRST attraction dedicated to space opens its doors to the public in Leicester on June 30.
The National Space Centre at Abbey Meadows will be a visitor attraction providing families with an awe-inspiring journey of discovery through interactive challenges, stunning images and sounds and real space hardware. It will use the stories, personalities and technology of the past and present to explain our current understanding of space and how it will affect our future. It’ll be a place where people of all ages will be wowed by real rockets and satellites, find out what they are used for and how they work, get the latest low-down on alien life and decide whether they personally have what it takes to go to space.
Within the visitor experience you’ll voyage through rings, moons, rocks and gases seeing science fact alongside science fiction and find out not only the facts about the planets but the reasons behind many of the myths that surround Mars, Jupiter, Venus and their celestial neighbours - just why is Saturn placed in a bathtub at the Space Centre?
The Space Centre will give visitors all the latest theories to those big questions: Where do we come from? How will it all end? Could an asteroid ever destroy the Earth? How do you eat or breathe or go to the loo in space anyway? It’ll also bring you the very latest news from space, with live footage, live commentary and real life scientists building instrumentation destined for the skies. The attraction will feature the most up-to-date information available on space research, launches and inventions from across the globe - including the UK. You’ll look at the ways we on Earth use space every day to benefit our own lives - monitoring the changing climate, locating new resources, watching satellite TV and accurate weather forecasting for example. You can even have a go at predicting and presenting the weather of the future in the Space Centre’s own weather forecasting studio.
If you thought you’d never experience the stars close up, this is the time to think again. A visit to the Space Centre will include a show in its multi-media Space Theatre, housing this country’s newest hi-tech planetarium. The Space Theatre shows are being produced in-house by some of the world’s leading planetarium experts and will be unique to the National Space Centre. Using the latest in audio-visual technology, shows will take visitors on a totally involving experience - perhaps to comets and stars, tunnelling through black holes or discovering the oceans and volcanoes of space.
As well as being a fun day out, the National Space Centre will also provide a number of special educational programmes for school groups of all ages, starting in September. The Space Centre’s Challenger Learning Centre opened eighteen months ahead of schedule, on a temporary site in Leicester in 1999, and is the jewel in the Space Centre’s educational crown.
Challenger is every teacher’s dream, proven to make a difference to science, maths and technology lessons for schoolchildren. Class-sized groups take part in realistic simulations of space missions becoming astronauts, engineers and researchers exposed to the science and technology that space missions entail. Each mission requires a crew to work together in teams, making decisions and solving problems to ensure they complete their mission successfully. Building space probes, locating stars, scanning databases, monitoring life support systems and analysing soil samples are merely a few of the activities the crew is involved in. Mission uniforms, communication headsets, electronic workstations and a complete themed work area ensure complete immersion in the mission. All crew members get the chance to work both on a space station and in mission control so they get the full Challenger experience.
Challenger will relocate to the main National Space Centre site at Abbey Meadows this Spring, and reopen alongside the main attraction. Leicester is the only Challenger Centre outside North America, where there are around 40 such centres, and schools from around the country have been using the facility over the past year. More than 12,000 young people have already had the Challenger experience, exceeding all targets and expectations.
Funding for the project has come half from the Millennium Commission with the same amount match-funded by various sources. The projects’s founding partners are Leicester City Council, the University of Leicester, BT and East Midlands Development Agency, each of which has contributed more than £1m in sponsorship. Other contributions have been received from local business sponsors, as well as national and international ones.
Prices for the National Space Centre are as follows: All entrance prices include a timed Space Theatre Show (season ticket prices, valid 12 months, in brackets).
Single Visit: Adult £7.50 (£16); Child (5-14 yrs) £5.50 (£12); Senior Citizens/Students/Disabled £5.50 (£12); Family (2 adults + 2 children) £22 (£45); Family (2 adults + 3 children) £27 (£55)
To book a ticket at the space theatre show, visitors need to call our hotline number on 0870 6077223.
For groups of 20+ or for schools bookings enquiries, please call the bookings line on 0116 2582111.
Tickets also available from www.ticketmaster.co.uk. Space Centre website: www.spacecentre.co.uk

Your Say

Your June 2001 edition reminds me again, the value of your paper in providing an excellent window through which the concerns and opinions of the local community can be viewed and shared.
The comments included in “Your say” are usually interesting and ‘Motivation?’ by ‘An Ex Councillor’ was no exception. I assume this to be a contribution by a lady of very definite opinions, who usually has a great deal to say on most issues. The only problem is that she seems not to understand the issue.
Parish Councils are, for very good reasons, required to adhere to specific rules and regulations as set out in the Council’s Standing Orders, to ensure that they transact their business openly and properly, and render themselves fully accountable in respect of their decisions and actions. This includes the requirements that Chairmen, shall, a) protect the Council against outside interference, d) ensure as far as possible that information is complete, and e) that every point of view shall have a fair hearing.
This, and the use of appropriate agendas, the faithful recording of the proceedings of the Council’s meetings, and the consideration of each issue in an appropriate forum, are the guarantees of proper and efficient operation of the Council as a local authority.
Unfortunately, the Parish Council disregards many of these essential requirements, and it is basically that, not personalities which are the cause of my concerns, which include:
1) The primary, if not the only, function of the Parish Council is to frame instructions (determined at Council meetings) on which people (officers and agents) can act to carry out its decisions. However, for the past year, in conflict with the Standing Orders set out in a) above, open sessions, where the public effectively take over, have been included, often less than a third of the way through agendas. These quite improper sessions, a source of concern to me, have been known to last until after 9.20pm.
2) A senior councillor, as well as me, has expressed concern that this situation of 1) above has resulted, in conflict with the requirements of d) and e) above, in rushing consideration of further council business in later, agenda items which, as a result, are not properly debated before decisions are made. These concerns have been ignored by ‘those in authority’. They have also not been properly or effectively recorded in the public minutes, so there is, effectively, no accurate public record of them.
3) Consideration of issues by local authorities should mean ‘be appropriate to the nature of the issue’. Minor matters may be delegated, outside experts may be involved through advisory committees, and major issues referred to working parties which include members who wish to take part, preferably with a written report being sent back to the Full Council, with enough time for the other council members to consider issues properly before taking part in debates and voting on them at full council meetings. This effectively ensures all members are able, more or less, to undertake the role in the council’s affairs they consider appropriate to their inclinations and talents. No member is especially privileged. Meeting chairman are required to ensure duties a), d), and e) above are properly fulfilled.
However, without debate, ‘those in authority’ at The Birstall Parish Council have upgraded a privileged membership, Management Sub-Committee, scheduled to meet three times in the year, to be a Management and Policy Committee with responsibility for considering all major issues including major planning matters including the Hallam fields development, establishing a privileged group who are effectively able to determine Council policy, while, at the same time, ensuring that the Council is rendered unaccountable for its actions and decisions.
Standing Order 63, Inspection of Documents, reads:-
63. A member may for the purpose of his duty as such (but not otherwise), inspect any document in possession of the Council or a committee, and if copies are available shall, on request, be supplied for a like purpose with a copy.
In the present situation, where an elite, privileged, well informed controlling group has been established within the Parish Council, leaving the other members relatively ill informed, the requirements of, and proper adherence to Standing Order 63 become of paramount importance. Ex Councillor seems to disagree on this issue.
I have made myself unpopular in the Council by raising my concerns at the disregard of Standing Orders generally, and this particular Standing Order in particular. I have had to do so on several occasions because my concerns have been ignored and disregarded by ‘those in authority’. For example, at the Parish Council’s meeting on 10th April 2000, reported in the May 2000 edition of the Birstall Post as follows:-
“Cllr Clarke said that if the Council ignored Standing Orders on the conduct of meetings, as it does regularly, there was a danger of bias entering. Cllr Tony Stott said that the Council had traditionally conducted its business on a reasonably informal basis and that this had been of benefit.
Cllr Clarke said that decisions to spend very large sums of money on consultants’ fees when objecting to the Hallam Fields development had been discussed in committee when they needed much wider discussion. The Council has spent around £70,000 so far and a further £15,000 has been allocated”
Readers of the Birstall Post will be aware that I have been trying for years now, both inside and outside of the Parish Council, to draw attention to the fact, of immediate public concern that the expenditure of this £70,000+ has been a complete waste of money, and that no further money, including the £15,000 allocated should be poured down this particular drain until the matter has been fully, properly and openly considered. However, it seems that the Clerk and Chairman of the Birstall Parish Council are bent on refusing to allow me to bring this concern before the Council.
It may have escaped people’s notice, but when I tried again, correctly and properly to address this concern at the last Council meeting, as disclosed in your Parish Council Notes on page 4 of the June 2001 edition, the Chairman refused to allow discussion of, and thereby accountability in respect of this important matter, although he is required, and agreed to do so, when he signed his acceptance of the office of Council Chairman.
It appears that because I express concern that in conflict with Standing Orders, the Parish Council is being run improperly in the manner of a private interest group instead of properly as a local authority, Ex Councillor suggests I should resign from the Parish Council.
Ex Councillor is probably unaware that our new Clerk, who I understand has had no previous experience as a Council Clerk, has stated, “If I replied to every question put to me, I should not have time to fulfil my duties to the public, which are my first responsibility”, and the Council Chairman, who is relatively young and inexperienced seems to agree with that statement.
This of course is absolutely incorrect. The first responsibility of all members of the Council, officer of member, is to the sovereign body, the council, and anyone who supposes otherwise would be wise to seek the advice of the Parish Council’s Officer of the Leicestershire and Rutland Association of Local and Parish Councils, whose duty it is to advise Clerks and members of Parish Councils on such issues. It would also seem that Ex Councillor would have benefited from such a consultation before pontificating on such Council issues as she has done in her letter.
Cllr Chris Clarke

My good lady friend suffers from various complaints which restrict her mobility, amongst other things. When she took delivery of a brand new second-hand electric wheel chair, therefore, she was raised to a state of ecstasy rarely witnessed these days, and immediately decided to go to the shops.
One incident marred this otherwise glorious procession. At the corner beside the Alliance & Leicester bank a woman had parked her car in such a manner that it obstructed the pavement, almost preventing the wheelchair from passing, as well as the drive to the flat above the bank, and over a double yellow line. She had left her children in the car and gone off shopping. Whilst we were trying to pass - without going onto the road which is dangerous at that point, being a blind turn - she returned (walking normally - in no way could she claim to be disabled), jumped in her car and drive off in a manner which suggested that she did not wish to know that we existed.
Later that week the good lady decided to try going to the Gates estate, where her church house-group meet occasionally. On one Gate there were several cars parked on the pavement, two in such a manner that even I could not pass them on foot. She was forced onto the road, again on a bend which is NOT a good idea.
There may be an excuse for people who live along these relatively narrow roads who have motor vehicles and whose driveways are full, parking on part of the pavement to improve safety for other road users - but not at the expense of pedestrians: but the bl**dy minded arrogance of the woman outside the Alliance & Leicester takes the ship’s biscuit (and I hope it is stale).
Dr D A C McNeil

I wish to take this opportunity to say “thank you” all to the many friends and neighbours for their love and support and the many prayers said for me during my time of heart surgery. For the many cards, flowers and good wishes, visits and love and support of Chris Gray, particularly for the prayers said for me, which have been very uplifting for me and the family.
I’m making a good, slow, recovery and hope to be amongst you all again very shortly.
Thanks & God Bless
Alice (Staines)

A big thank you to all the helpers, all the donators and all the supporters of the Birstall R.B.L. Women’s Section Coffee Morning on Friday June 15.
£140 was realised for the Women’s Section funds.
Angela Parkin

Birstall Post July 2001 (215) continued