Last Saturday my wife and I hosted a Hog Roast to raise funds for the repair of the roof of South Molton parish church.

We couldn’t have been more lucky as Saturday was a lovely, rain free day sandwiched between two awfully wet days – something like 35 millimetres of rain on the Friday and almost 20 millimetres on the Sunday!

The turnout was excellent, with more than 90 people attending and as a result of everyone’s generosity we raised £1,177.05!

Very many thanks to those who came and thanks also to those who couldn’t come but still gave generous donations.  Of course thanks are also due to the committee of the Friends of South Molton Parish Church who helped by selling tickets and providing the desserts. Thanks also to the many others who donated items for the raffle, loaned us tables, chairs and cutlery,  helped ferry everything around and did the clearing up afterwards.  It was very much a team effort

Unfortunately, because of the huge amount of money needed to repair the roof, if we held a hog roast every year and raised the same amount of money it would take 250 years before we reached the target! (Actually, to be pedantic, as the target is £250,000 it would only take us 214 years!). Still, it’s a very good start, and there are lots of other fund raising initiatives waiting in the wings to help the target be achieved.

The new community college has been granted planning permission.

The most interesting bit of the decision notice is this:

“Prior to the occupation of the new school building a Community Use Statement [CUS] shall be submitted to and approved in writing by the Local Planning Authority and thereafter implemented. This shall provide a template which will list the facilities within the school that may be used by the community, the hours of potential use and the means of publicising, accessing and booking such facilities. The CUS shall thereafter be reviewed by the school on an annual basis and publicised in accordance with the terms of the CUS.

Reason: To ensure that the school’s facilities can be made avaialble to the community to improve the sustainability of facilities within the town.”

It sounds good but is really largely meaningless. The Local Planning Authority (i.e. North Devon Council) are not very likely to delay occupation of the school if a suitable CUS isn’t completed. Even if the first one is completed in a satisfactory fashion the school can water things down in subsequent years with absolutely no comeback.

In other words all the facilities in the school, which have been provided by public money, may actually not be available to members of the public, community groups etc.

I totally despair of the planning system and our planning officials.

It would appear that North Devon Homes wish to demolish the old Cottage Homes and replace them with a hideous new build.

Here’s what the homes looked like last summer:

They looked very much nicer before the chimneys were removed.

Although the Cottage Homes are owned by the charity South Molton Cottage Homes, North Devon Homes have apparently been managing them for a number of years.

North Devon Homes don’t like chimneys and I suspect that they were responsible for ruining the buildings by removing the chimneys.

The screen at the top of the urinal was showing adverts.

Not something I would have expected to see in a German toilet!

If the advertising revenue helps defray the running costs of the (free) public toilet then I suppose it can only be a ‘good thing’.

I’m very conscious that I haven’t posted anything for several weeks.

This is largely because I’ve been on holiday for a couple of weeks without access to decent internet connectivity.

I have to say I was very surprised at the extremely patchy 3G connectivity in Germany – or at least in rural Germany! Wi-Fi in hotels is always a  bit hit-and-miss unfortunately.

The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population and yet holds roughly 25% of its prisoners!

Good news if you holiday in Europe (or travel there on business), because as of 15 June 2017 mobile roaming fees will be abolished!

Other good roaming news is that starting from 30 April 2016, the existing price caps on roaming will change, and consumers will be allowed to roam in the EU from their existing post-paid bundle or home prepaid rates.

Hopefully this will mean the end of ludicrously high mobile bills after going on holiday in Lanzarote or wherever. It’s usually the roaming data charges which are really painful. They can be unexpectedly large because people frequently don’t turn data roaming off and still expect to look at their email, use Twitter and Facebook etc.

Apparently South Molton Recycling have gone into administration and ceased trading.

Sadly this does mean, that in the short term at least, jobs will probably be lost.

This doesn’t affect the recycling shops in South Molton and Barnstaple as they’re run by a separate company. But it does mean that people who in the Torridge council area won’t have their recycling rubbish collected.

I wonder whether they would still be trading if North Devon Council hadn’t taken the controversial decision to take their recycling services in-house?

As long as it has some sort of bus service Devon County Council doesn’t consider that a community is isolated.  In some cases this may mean a service that runs just once a week!

Contrast this to London where a large number of the bus services now run 24 hours a day 364 days a year (there are no bus or tube  services on Christmas Day).

From 12 September even some London tube services will run through the night on Fridays and Saturdays. Not only that, there’ll also be a service about every ten minutes!

If you live in South Molton (even worse if you live in more rural areas) it isn’t even possible to have a night out in Barnstaple and get a bus home. As for a night out in Exeter – no chance. And if you’re thinking of going anywhere on a Sunday or Bank Holiday forget it.

This is just one example of how Britain is fast becoming a two-tier nation.

In the run up to the general election in May there was much talk from UKIP (And the Conservatives) about how immigrants are overloading the NHS.

Speaking at the British Medical Association annual conference, its chair, Dr Mark Porter, said that “We were told immigrants are filling up our GP surgeries and our hospitals,”

“Well, they are. They’re called doctors, and nurses, and porters, and cleaners, and clinical scientists. And without them, the NHS would be on its knees,” he added.