Viewing all items in Resource Category: Looking at your Community

No more spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down The NHS may bring in a complete ban on sugary drinks in hospitals, after more than a third of its trusts have failed to sign up to a voluntary scheme to cut sales. It seems that so far 80 out of 232 trusts have...

Is there poverty in our local school? Are there children in our local school who are living in poverty? There could well be. At least, teachers right across the country report that they are now having to wash children’s clothes and lend parents money, as they report increasing poverty among their pupils. A joint survey...

Prenez garde! Voila le French mosquito! If you are going to France this summer, be sure to use repellent sprays. Aggressive tiger mosquitoes that can carry viruses such as Zika, dengue and chikungunya have already spread through half of France. Tiger mosquitoes (originally from Asia) can be identified by their distinctive black-and-white striped body and...

Diary of a Momentous Year: July 1918 – WHEN FRIENDS COME TO HELP It is called ‘World War 1’ and certainly no previous conflict had spread its ugly fingers so widely. Of course, we tend to think of the Western Front. Our default image of the War is of men in trenches, of mud and...

Read this before you take your dog to Europe British pets are at risk of catching deadly diseases from foreign ticks when they are taken to the Continent. This is the warning from vets, who are reporting increasing numbers of foreign ticks who are being brought home from holidays to Spain, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria....

Waterloo!  What’s in a Name?  To some people it’s a very famous song by Abba. To some London commuters it’s a part of their daily routine. To historians it’s a famous battle 203 years ago when the British army defeated the French at a place in Belgium. In case you are still wondering, it’s Waterloo,...

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All in the month of JUNE It was: 200 years ago, on 17th June 1818 that Charles Gounod was born.  This French composer is best known for the well-loved Ave Maria and his operas, notably Faust. 175 years ago, on 26th June 1843 that the Treaty of Nanking came into effect following the First Opium...

Diary of a Momentous Year:   June 1918 An interesting piece from the archives of the Church Times a few weeks ago vividly illustrates the way the war on the western front changed in 1918. For years the Church Army, like the Salvation Army, had run what they called ‘huts’, close behind the trenches, where soldiers...

Emmeline Pankhurst – leader of the suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the British suffragette movement, died 90 years ago, on 14th June 1928. Less than a month later, women were given equal voting rights with men. Born in Moss Side, Manchester, in 1858, she helped found the militant Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903,...

Get on your bike! It seems that cycling is great for keeping old age at bay, and it also rejuvenates the immune system. A recent study has found that cyclists do better at preserving their muscle mass and strength with age, while maintaining stable levels of body fat and cholesterol.  The study was done at...

No need to cut the grass weekly How often should you cut your grass?  That depends on how much you want to help the bees.  It seems that the ideal ‘gap’ is two weeks.  This helps improve the habitat for the pollinating plants that need bees to survive.  Cutting the grass more often than every...