Oh dear!

This view looking down Alswear New Road (Great Hele Lane is on the right) shows a concrete delivery lorry that has managed to come off the road. I’ve no idea what the car in front is doing but I believe the yellow digger is attempting to extricate the lorry.

Here’s one concrete lorry that’s just left Great Hele with the other. off-road lorry, on the right:

The lights further up the road on the right belong to yet another lorry making a delivery of concrete to Great Hele.

The anaerobic digester is responsible  for one hell of a lot of concrete deliveries!

At long last I can get superfast broadband: I’ll be ordering it in the morning!

It looks like the Gavel, Poltimore Road, Aclands, Dart Park, and Poltimore Close can all now get superfast broadband.

The bits of South Molton that are waiting to be connected are basically the south west part of town – Parklands, Churchill Crescent, Exeter Gate etc. –  and parts of the more central area ( Brook Meadow, Broad Street and Duke Street).

Hopefully these will all be ‘turned on’ in the next few weeks.

Following the hugely successful Christmas Lights Switch-On, Fireworks Display and Flea Market last weekend, we had the equally magnificent Winter Wonderland and Fat Stock Show this weekend, along with the stunning Christmas Tree Festival in the Parish Church.

Pictures of the festivities can be found in abundance on Facebook and Twitter, but what I have for you is this clip from Simon Bates’ show last Monday morning:

You can safely say that he enjoyed himself. After he turned the lights on he said that South Molton is a “Small market town with a great heart”:

All I can say is:  Hearty congratulations to all those involved in organising these fabulous events over the past two weekends. Very well done indeed!

The Christmas lights in South Molton are being switched this evening at 6:15 by Simon Bates. The big switch-on will be followed by a spectacular fireworks display at 6:55 in the Central Park.

There will also be craft stalls in the Pannier Market along with a blow-up pub (!), a pop-up Indian takeaway,  a hog roast etc.

BCC Radio Devon will be broadcasting the event live from 5:00 to 7:00.

Andrew Coates, the town clerk, was interviewed on Radio Devon earlier today and the clip can be heard here:

Walking the dog around South Molton the other day I spotted a BT Openreach contractor working on the new super fast broadband cabinet in Poltimore Road.

It transpires he was blowing fibre through the duct from the cabinet to the node where it meets the other fibre optic cables.

I later saw another engineer working in a manhole at the junction of Station Road and East Street. This engineer had just connected up the other end of the fibre that I’d earlier seen being blown from the cabinet in Poltimore Road. He was now working on the fibre that had been blown from the cabinet in Hugh Squire Avenue.

‘Blowing’ is a technique invented by BT that uses compressed air to literally blow the fibre along the duct.  Before then, all cable, including fibre, was typically pulled through the duct.

Blowing, rather than pulling, means that longer lengths of cable can be installed, a winch rope doesn’t need to used, bends and undulations in the duct are less of an issue, and equipment is only needed at one end of the route. So its quicker, easier and cheaper.

What it all means is that within a week or two another large swathe of South Molton will be able to get superfast broadband.

Tampons have 5% VAT applied to them.

There’s 20% VAT on toilet paper, toothpaste, prescription glasses and painkillers (aspirin, paracetamol etc.).

So tampons are actually taxed at a much lower rate than other, more essential, items.

Mind you, I suppose if you run out of toilet paper you could always use the Sun or Daily Mail which are zero rated! Or, if you’re more upmarket the Times, Telegraph or Financial Times.

PS Anybody remember Izal?

“I grew up in South London. If someone was rude to you, you were rude back to them. I didn’t go to Eton and get all that smarmy charming education”.  (Clip can be heard here.)

This was Ken Livingstone talking about the comments he’d made earlier in the day about the Shadow Minister for the Armed Forces Kevan Jones (the son of a miner, educated in a comprehensive school and Newcastle Polytechnic) .

I feel that Livingstone’s parents would be deeply upset if they thought that their son hadn’t learn the old fashioned working class virtues of decency and respect.

On the World at One today the final piece was this message from Antoine Leiris, whose wife was murdered by ISIS terrorists in Paris last Friday night:

“On Friday night you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you won’t have my hatred.

I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know – you are dead souls. If this God for which you kill indiscriminately made us in his own image, every bullet in the body of my wife will have been a wound in his heart.

So no, I don’t give you the gift of hating you. You are asking for it but responding to hatred with anger would be giving in to the same ignorance that made you what you are.

You want me to be afraid, to view my fellow countrymen with mistrust, to sacrifice my freedom for security. You have lost.

I saw her this morning. Finally, after many nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as when she left on Friday night, just as beautiful as when I fell hopelessly in love over 12 years ago.

Of course I’m devastated with grief, I admit this small victory, but it will be short-lived. I know she will accompany us every day and that we will find ourselves in this paradise of free souls to which you’ll never have access.

We are two, my son and I, but we are stronger than all the armies of the world.

I don’t have any more time to devote to you, I have to join Melvil who is waking up from his nap. He is barely 17-months-old. He will eat his meals as usual, and then we are going to play as usual, and for his whole life this little boy will threaten you by being happy and free. Because no, you will not have his hatred either.”

The audio clip can be found here. It’s one of the most moving things I’ve ever heard.

Well done the Dragonflies class from Wetherington Community Primary School in Launceston!

The pupils were so concerned about speeding cars outside their school that they wrote letters to their local MP, Scott Mann.

As a direct result of this, he presented a private members bill to parliament this afternoon.

The bill is intended to give town and parish councils the ability to hold a referendum on whether speed limits on roads in their area should be altered.

The bill passed its first reading this afternoon and the second reading will be held on Friday 5 February.

Whilst Scott Mann is very much to be congratulated on introducing this bill, I don’t believe it goes far enough.

I really think that, subject to certain conditions, parish and town councils should have the ability to impose speed limits on their local roads without having to hold a referendum . I also believe that they should have the same strong powers to regulate on-street parking (i.e. yellow lines).

I hope that our local MP, Peter Heaton-Jones, will wholeheartedly support this bill –  the Speed Limits on Roads (Devolved Powers) Bill – and will be contacting him to persuade him to do so.  I shall also ask South Molton Town Council to do the same.

For those of a pedantic disposition the bill was a Ten Minute Rule Motion and its full title is:

“A Bill to amend Part VI of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, and the Local Authorities’ Traffic Orders (Procedure) (England and Wales) Regulations 1996, to make provision about the powers and duties of parish and town councils in relation to applying for speed limit orders; to provide for the conduct of local referendums to determine whether such applications should be made; and for connected purposes.”

I haven’t (yet) been able to find a full copy of the bill but when I do I’ll have a closer look at it.

Osborne keeps on saying that the bill for tax credits has risen from £1.1 billion pounds in 1999 to £30bn today.

Of course he’s right . . . in a very, very narrow sense.

Apparently that £1.1bn relates to just three months in 1999, and just one type of tax credit.

Since then all sorts of other benefits have been absorbed into the tax credit system and as a proportion of government spending the cost of benefits for working age people and for children has apparently stayed pretty stable.