Organisers want to showcase the area’s environmental groups.
Friends of Gedling Country Park chairman Terry Lock, 75, said: “We all hope this will become an annual event which celebrates education, environment and local help.
“We want local groups who work with the environment, such as running groups, the scouts and wildlife groups.
“At the minute we have a list of about 30 groups and activities we are talking to.”
These include bat groups, beekeepers and the Nottingham Climate Change Partnership.
Twelve groups have confirmed they will attend including the Women’s Institute, Men in Sheds and the Entomological Society.
Terry added: “We are hoping to appeal to everyone, we want people to come along to see how they can get involved in their communities.
“We are not looking to do another Gedling Gala.
“We want this to be very much an educational environmental based event, which we hope in time could become quite a major environmental show for not just Gedling, but the whole of Nottinghamshire and the East Midlands.”
In a time when life was beginning to get back to normal after Covid, the cost of living crisis has now begun to bite with people across the borough being squeezed by soaring gas and electricity prices, while the cost of goods and fuel are also rapidly rising.
The Office for National Statistics has revealed the latest figures showing the prices of food and non-alcoholic drinks rose at the fastest rate in more than 45 years in the 12 months to March 2023.
The price rises have hit Britain’s takeaway lovers particularly hard with the cost of fast food and takeaways having increased by 13% over the same period with takeaway fish and chips seeing the largest increase within that category at 19% (an average increase of £1.44 to £9.00).
For takeaways which have made it to the other side of Covid, it comes as a fresh double blow for their businesses. Their own costs are rising while customers have less money to spend.
Pictured: The Plains Takeaway & Restaurant (Courtesy of The Plains Takeaway & Restaurant)
Mapperley’s famous takeaway, The Plains has been owned by the same family for nearly forty years.
Peter Georgiou is one of the two brothers passionate about their work and the quality of service they offer.
Peter told us that “In almost 38 years of owning the Plains fish bar this has been the most challenging period.
“Brexit and Covid have both had a big impact and maybe the war in Ukraine has been a factor in the huge increases in gas and electricity prices.
“Also climate change has caused problems with farming potatoes as well as other vegetables. Too much rain and or long drought spells has seen sharp increases in the cost of potatoes.
“The fuel cost increases and brexit issues have added to the price of purchasing potatoes fish and cooking oils.
“Profits are almost non-existent at the moment so it is a time of trying to survive until things improve. If that doesn’t happen soon more takeaways and restaurants will continue to shut down.
“Sales are generally down as people can’t afford what used to be a cheap meal. We have had to keep increasing selling prices but there is a limit to what you can expect someone to pay.
“Trying to get the balance between portion sizes and selling price has never been so tough. Quality we never compromise on though. We always use the best potatoes available and the freshest fish.”
The Plains Takeaway & Restaurant can be found at 916 Woodborough Road, Nottingham NG3 5QR and offer home delivery as well as outside seating (weather permitting). Their facebook page can be accessed HERE and they can be contacted on 0115 9609796
This weekend Arnold’s Paviors RFC booked their place in the final of the Notts, Lincs and Derby Cup Final by defeating a spirited Glossop RFC XV at Burntstump Hill.
On a lovely afternoon and on a pacey looking pitch, both teams entered the fray with plenty of vim and vigour.
Glossop opened the scoring with a penalty, before Paviors struck back with a Matt Molyneux try and a George Billam penalty on 25 minutes.
A further Glossop penalty saw a half time score of 8-6 in favour of the home side.
Glossop made a bright start to the second half, before Paviors pressure began to tell.
Phil Eggleshaw broke through to score on 55 minutes and with the conversion and a further Billam penalty Paviors took what proved to be an insurmountable lead at 18-6.
Paviors now take on Dronfield RFC at Lady Bay on May 27 in the final game of the season.
Paviors Rugby Club play at Burntstump Hill, Arnold, NG5 8PQ and the club runs over twenty teams.
New players are always welcome – girls, boys, men & women, there is a team for all.
Further information about the club including contact details can be found on http://www.paviorsrfc.co.uk/ .
Nottingham fine-dining restaurant, Cleaver & Wake has shown its support for the next generation of hospitality leading lights, with an interactive careers event hosted in partnership with the Springboard Charity at a Nottingham Hospitality Takeover.
Aiming to inspire students to consider a career in hospitality, the event saw more than 120 young adults from around Nottinghamshire come together at the stunning canal-side restaurant, Cleaver & Wake. There, they were able to learn more about the industry and get involved in a range of interactive workshops, including a cooking demonstration from MasterChef: The Professionals 2018 winner, chef patron, Laurence Henry.
Pictured: Cleaver & Lake host hospitality event for Nottingham students (PHOTO: Cartwright Communications)
Laurence, the youngest finalist and one of the youngest ever MasterChef winners when he appeared on the TV show in 2018, grew up and still lives in Mapperley.
He has previously volunteered his time to give patients at a Mapperley hospice a fine dining experience.
Throughout the day, the students also participated in a variety of challenges, tours, and inspirational talks from experienced individuals in the industry.
Laurence Henry, chef patron at Cleaver & Wake, said: “This event was a particularly special one for me as many of the students who attended reminded me of myself when I was just starting out. It was great to be able to share my story with them while highlighting the many benefits of a career in hospitality.
“Getting young adults involved in hands-on workshops, from live cooking sessions to interactive service runs, really brings to life how vibrant and varied the hospitality sector is. It has so many opportunities that many people don’t realise, especially when leaving school. That’s why events like this are so important.
“It really was a fantastic day which hopefully helped to inspire a few of the students to consider a career in hospitality.”
Rebekah Henry, senior careers, education and employability programme manager for the midlands said: “We’d like to say a massive thank you to Cleaver & Wake and specifically Laurence, for joining us in helping to inspire the many young students who attended the event. For us, these events are a really important opportunity to help encourage young adults to gain the vital skills, knowledge and experience needed to flourish in a lifelong career within this amazing industry.
Pictured: Masterchef 2018 Masterchef winner, Laurence Henry (PHOTO: Cartwright Communications)
“Springboard works with industries such as hospitality, leisure and tourism to advocate, support and celebrate them while addressing skills and staff shortages.
“A survey taken by attendees after the event showed 60 per cent of students who had not considered a career in hospitality were now considering it, while 89 per cent stated that the event gave them a better understanding of the industry. It’s results like this that really highlight the importance of what we do.”
Councillors voted down a Labour opposition bid calling for Nottinghamshire County Council to freeze council tax next year and labelled the calls as “gimmicky”.
The Labour Group on the Conservative-led authority submitted a motion to the most recent full council meeting calling for next year’s bills to be frozen to support struggling households.
The calls mirror a national policy being pushed by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer promising tax precepts would be frozen under a future Labour Government.
The party says it would fund the freeze through a “proper windfall tax” on oil and gas companies making record profits during the cost of living crisis.
The Labour Group’s motion, proposed during the full council meeting on Thursday (May 11), also called for local government to receive more long-term funding certainty.
Speaking in the debate, Cllr Michael Payne (Lab), who represents Arnold North, said: “If obsessing about a windfall tax on oil and gas companies is a badge of honour, then deal me in.
“BP has made £4bn in the first four months of 2023, Shell made the largest in their history last year and British Gas and Centrica tripled their profits.
“This is while the good people of Nottinghamshire are seeing their weekly shop go up, their council tax go up and their heating costs go up.
“I know which side of the argument I want to be on and the funding for the [national Labour policy] council tax freeze is quite clear.
“We’d raise £10bn from expanding the tax on people making profits off the war [in Ukraine] and we’d use £2.7bn of that to fund the council tax freeze.”
Cllr Kate Foale, leader of the Labour Group, proposed the motion and added: “Local government provides a wide range of services people rely on.
“But we simply don’t get enough funding to deliver that for them and have not for many years.
“Ever-rising council tax bills are making circumstances worse for people already struggling to make ends meet and the equality gap is rising.
“At a time when oil and gas companies are making enormous profits off the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s the fair and right thing to do to ask the Government to step in and find a better solution.”
However, the authority did not back the group’s motion following an 85-minute debate in which rival parties criticised the Labour Group for its tax history when previously in office.
The group was also criticised for bringing forward the motion just months after not offering an alternative budget at the authority’s February budget-setting meeting.
Cllr Bruce Laughton (Con), deputy leader of the council, said: “For the last 14 years, residents have been paying double the amount they should’ve been because past Labour administrations doubled it [between 2002 and 2009].
“I find this motion crass, it’s politicking over something they have no intention of doing. It’s a smoke screen, it’s about sending a message to residents when actually, in practice, they do completely the opposite.”
Cllr Steve Carr (Lib Dem), a member of the Independent Alliance, added: “Rising council tax is one of the biggest bones of contention for residents.
“Taking, for example, this year’s rise in council tax, Nottinghamshire Council’s rise hit the band D taxpayer with an extra £79 per year, but a council like Broxtowe implementing a similar percentage rise is £5.
“There’s no doubt residents feel aggrieved at paying council tax to the council.
“But Nottinghamshire’s Labour Group didn’t even bother to propose a council tax freeze here in Nottinghamshire in February.
“You can’t put a motion before this council without pointing out you failed to offer an alternative.
“This policy is a bit gimmicky, to be honest.”
The motion was voted down with 17 votes for, 35 against and seven abstentions.
20 years have gone by since Geoff Lee passed away but Christine Bridges, formerly of Calverton, has kept her word to her father – to share his unique story.
In the heyday of Nottingham’s Lidos John Geoffrey Lee (always known as Geoff) and his wife owned Calverton Lido from the 1960s through to the 1990s.
The Lido was opened in 1937 and finally closed in 2000 and had a diving board, pavilions, bungalows, toilets, a pump room, a social club, a restaurant and a paddling pool. Allegedly one of the attractions was reported to be two apes kept in a cage.
Very few people knew when visiting Calverton Lido of the amazing life history of owner, Geoff Lee and the combination of events that led to his story finally being told in print.
Geoff’s daughter Christine Bridges has now brought Geoff’s story to life some 20 years after he passed away.
Christine shared that Geoff had lived all of his life in Nottingham including quite a few years in Arnold. Christine herself lived in Calverton from 2007 until 2017 and her mum lived there from 1982 until 2016.
Pictured: Geoff’s book ‘POW on the Sumatra Railway’ (FACEBOOK)
This is Geoff’s story …
Christine’s parents let out the restaurant part of Calverton Lido to Eddie and June Bridges in 1970. Christine went on to marry the Bridges’ son, who was a Grenadier Guard.
Because of Eddie’s connection to the services Christine’s dad, Geoff started to talk to him about his time as a Far East Prisoner Of War. He had never spoken about it before as he said no one believed he’d been a slave of the Japanese on the Sumatra Railway.
Geoff’s story is an amazing one of hope and survival and determination to expose the truth, and had Christine not met her husband at Calverton, Lido Geoff’s story may never have been told.
Pictured: Christine Bridges with a copy of her father’s book (FACEBOOK)
Eddie Bridges, Geoff’s son-in-law had started to talk to Geoff about his experiences in the Far East in the 1970s, and he was paramount in helping him to research and contact Far East Prisoners of War in Sumatra.
Geoff then proceeded to write his remarkable book in the 1990s but couldn’t get it published before he died in 2002.
Christine Bridges promised her dad before he passed away that she would get his book published and she carried out her promise by having the book published by Pen and Sword in June last year (22).
Geoff’s book ‘POW on the Sumatra Railway’ gives detailed information about his time and experiences as a Far East Prisoner of War and the horrific treatment he received in the hell ships and prison camps.
He tells how he was treated with disbelief when he returned from the Far East. Actual letters from the 1970s received from the CWGC (Common Wealth Graves Commission), MOD (Ministry of Defence) and IWM (Imperial War Museum) showed them having no knowledge of the Sumatra Railway however in the 1980s the CWGC, MOD and the IWM acknowledged Geoff’s proof after his journey to Sumatra in 1980.
John Geoffrey Lee (always known as Geoff) joined the RAF on his 20th birthday in June 1941. He left Liverpool on a troop ship in December 1941, with no idea where he was going.
Pictured: Christine will be giving a free talk and presentation at Calverton Library on May 15 at 2.00pm. (Courtesy of Christine Bridges)
He eventually arrived in Java, where he was captured by the Japanese, along with many others. During his time in captivity, he survived several camps in Java, Ambon and Singapore and three hell ship journeys. After being washed ashore in Sumatra, (as a ferry he was being transported on blew up), he was then recaptured and suffered sheer hell as a slave on the Sumatra Railway.
Enduring bouts of malaria, beri beri, tropical ulcers and a starvation diet was bad enough, but this was exacerbated by the searing heat and extreme cruelty meted out to the prisoners by the Japanese and Korean guards.
Geoff miraculously survived, weighing just 6 stone when he arrived back in Liverpool four years later in December 1945.
After his release he found he had difficulty in convincing people where he had been as no one had heard of the “Sumatra Railway”, they had only heard of the other one, thousands of miles away in Burma. Letters to newspapers were returned as ‘Just another Burma Railway story’.
The Ministry of Defence, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and The Imperial War Museum had no records of POW’s building a railway in Sumatra.
So began Geoff’s journey, his aim… to prove to the establishment what he already knew to be true.
The new book shares Geoff’s story of his captivity, release, and subsequent efforts in achieving his aim.
Christine will be giving a free talk and presentation at Calverton Library on May 15 at 2.00pm.
The book can be purchased on the Pen and Sword Publishers website here.
Work to revamp a play area in Ravenshead is now complete after almost £35,000 in funding was found to pay for improvements.
Ravenshead Parish Council & Leisure Centre revealed at the beginning of April that work had started on a new multi-play apparatus at Ravenshead Leisure Centre.
In a statement, they said: “It’s great to see our vision for this vital community facility moving closer to reality. We are extremely grateful for the funding FCC Communities Foundation has given us and we’re looking forward to opening to the public.”
Pictured: The new children’s play area (FACEBOOK)
The project was funded by a £34,983.64 grant from FCC Communities Foundation, which is a not-for-profit business that awards grants for community projects through the Landfill Communities Fund.
Ravenshead Leisure Centre was initially established for the benefit of the community in the 1980s. Since then, it has been owned and managed by Ravenshead Parish Council.
During the past 40 years, they have grown and improved the facilities that now boast three tennis courts, five football pitches, an all-weather football pitch, petanque courts and two separate sports halls.
Ravenshead Leisure Centre has meeting rooms available for hire at very competitive rates. There is free WI-FI, whiteboards and tea/coffee-making facilities along with a choice of rooms to suit all needs.
You can contact the Booking Office for more information on 01623 491522 or Bookings@ravensheadpc.org.uk.
A large cannabis grow discovered in a Mapperley house has been successfully dismantled by the police.
Officers were called to the property after receiving reports a cannabis grow had been discovered inside.
After attending the house in Beech Avenue at around 2.10pm on Monday (8), response officers carried out a search.
Around 100 cannabis plants were then found growing up in the loft and in one of the bedrooms upstairs.
Further searches also identified that electricity had been bypassed to power the illicit grow.
The drugs were all seized by the police, while the electrical equipment was dismantled and put beyond use.
Chief Inspector Arnie Ahmed, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: “Cannabis grows like this one are a blight on society and cause nothing but trouble to communities.
“On this occasion, the electricity was dangerously bypassed to power the grow, which provided a serious fire risk to surrounding houses.
“Eradicating drug activity in all its forms is something we’re constantly striving to do – and this includes stopping those who cultivate cannabis.
“This drugs seizure was based solely on intelligence we received from the public, so I’d like to reiterate just how important it is that anyone who has information about drug activity in their area contacts us.
“These reports play a massive role in helping reduce crime in our communities, so we’d ask anyone with any information to call the police on 101.”
Labour Party candidates also celebrated their successes and explained how they plan to help their local community.
Councillor Michael Payne was re-elected as Redhill ward’s councillor alongside Katherine Fox.
Cllr Payne said: “We earn people’s trust; we listen and at the moment we know it’s difficult.
“Bills are very very high.
“This is the result we needed and we as a council will do everything we can, but we can’t make the change we need.
“It is a good set of results across the country and as a party we will continue to fight.
“So many people in this election process have said to me it’s time for change.”
His husband, Councillor Kyle Robinson-Payne, was elected for Daybrook ward and will stand with Councillor Sandra Barnes, taking over from Peter Barnes.
Cllr Robinson-Payne said: “I know I have big shoes to fill.
“It is an honour to stand with Sandra.
“I just feel fabulous.
“Being younger one thing I’m particularly up on is that we need more activities for younger people.”
He too believes wider change across the country is needed to exit the financial state the United Kingdom is in.
He said: “Everything is broken, people can’t get to the doctor or afford bills.”
As well as discussing their plans many councillors shared their experiences in the election process.
Councillor Boyd Elliot was re-elected for Calverton ward and alongside fellow conservative Councillor Martin Smith conveyed his relief.
However, he said: “I got to the polling station at 6:50pm yesterday and by then I had 413 messages which was lovely.
“But one chap outside gave me abuse, and that had more of an impact.”
Councillor Martin Smith added: “We (the Conservatives) may be small in size, but we will speak louder than our numbers indicate.”
Councillors Paul Hughes and Andrew Dunkin also asserted this message, as the Liberal Democrat representatives for Cavendish.
Councillor Dunkin said: “It is sad to say we are used to this.
“But we can have a big impact.”
Tom Randall MP agreed with many of what the newly elected councillors addressed and said: “We have had a difficult couple of years.
“I think the main thing is getting inflation down and sorting the economy.”
