Knott End bus services

This from the Lancashire County Council website -

“Lancashire has an extensive network of bus services, from high frequency bus services serving urban areas, to rural bus services providing a vital community link.

Lancashire County Council works in partnership with local bus operators, and we are committed to providing high quality bus travel, allowing you to travel easily and safely within the county.”

(my italics.)

Apparently there’s a public consultation exercise going on about proposed cuts to the 2C, 86 and 89 bus services between Lancaster and Blackpool, but if you can find any information about it on the Lancashire County Council, Wyre BC or Blackpool Transport websites you’re a better man than me.  The cuts, which would come into force in 2014, would mean no services at all on Sundays, and no weekday or Saturday services after 7:00pm. And all this just as Blackpool Victoria Hospital is about to begin evening appointments.

A Vital Community Link?

So anyone living in, say, Cockerham or Glasson Dock, or Pilling and Stakepool, Hambleton, Stalmine or Knott End-on-Sea, who relies on buses to get home from work, or to keep hospital appointments or visits, including our clergy visits to the sick in Blackpool Vic hospital, or to get home after school or college evening activities, is going to be a bit stuck. Schoolchildren. College students. Shiftworkers. Nurses and other NHS staff. Shop assistants.  People who'd been to the theatre in Blackpool. And many of them are voters, as well as council tax-payers, and they certainly know how to use the ballot box. We are not hicks and yokels in West Lancashire. Some of us even have the Internet, as well as the electric light and indoor privies.

In West Wyre villages alone there are some 11,000 residents, many of whom rely on the rural bus services, these vital community links,  that Lancashire County Council is so proud of.

No doubt the county will argue money and falling bus occupancy. Hm. I worked in local government long enough to know how easy it is for bumblecrats to fiddle the figures. We seem to have had a lot more double-decker buses in Knott End over the last year or so, though still the same number of passengers, and I’m starting to sniff a conspiracy. While 10 passengers on a 20-seater single-decker make the bus half full, those same 10 passengers on a 40-seater make it three-quarters empty. Public Transport Authorities (PTAs) have got rid of unprofitable local railway lines and bus services for decades by thus massaging the figures and spinning their arguments, and they’re very good at it.

Knott End has a very high percentage of elderly residents. I haven’t seen many of them riding about on bikes, because in this village (pop. 5,500) disability buggies are the preferred mode of transport, yet Lancashire has invested millions of their tax revenues in cycleways and 20mph zones, and it’s quite startling, when you’re driving obediently at 20mph in your buggy, to be overtaken by that rara avis, a cyclist.

But back to the buses and Reg Varney-land. Local taxi firms must be rubbing their hands in glee. We do, however, have a voice as council tax-payers and voters. We don’t yet have the vox-pop power in the form of local offshoots of change.org, which rallies public opinion so effectively that it often changes government policy, but it will certainly come.

In the meantime - do we want our council tax to be spent on cycle lanes which hardly anyone uses, or on our rural bus services, these vital community links, to use LCC’s own propaganda?

It is up to us.

JAMIE OLIVER'S TOSSET FEAST FIASCO

JAMIE OLIVER’S TOSSET FEAST FIASCO

It had been publicised for several weeks, although those of us involved in the local background research had known about it for several months.  A revival of the Tosset Feast of Stalmine in Lancashire, to be filmed for Channel 4 today, 14 August. Details were kept top secret, but it didn’t take long for someone who’s been a news librarian and parliamentary researcher to work out that filming was to be done by Fresh One, the film company owned by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Anyway, so far so good. The centrepiece of the programme, one of a series about forgotten foods, was to be the Tosset Cake, Tosset being assumed to be a corruption of St Oswald, once the patron saint of the parish church in Stalmine.

A link for the history and recipe –

http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/tossetcakes.htm

Once the wraps were off, publicity began in earnest in the five parishes of Over Wyre. Big recreation of the Fosset Feast up at Parrox Hall in Preesall! Everybody from the five Over Wyre parishes is invited (that’s upwards of 11,000 people).

What the production company didn’t tell anybody was that attendance was going to be limited to just 350 people. Hundreds of disappointed people, children as well as adults, were turned away, some having travelled quite a distance on public transport rather than add to parking problems (me included.)

There’s no egg in the recipe, but plenty on the faces of the production company and organisers. And I rather think that Jamie Oliver’s name is going to be mud in the Over Wyre villages for a long time to come.

PS the programme went out on Friday 17 Jan 2014. In fairness to Jamie's film company, the programme was hugely entertaining and I enjoyed it. Caveats remain, however.

Andy Murray

Just a quickie, before the press pundits twig, and it comes from Mrs A, at 6:10 on 7 July, while Andy Murray is still celebrating his win.

He's 7 days older than his opponent. The date is 7/7. It's 77 years since Fred Perry last won the cup for a British male, and it was '77 when Virginia Wade was the last British woman champion.

Not that we're superstitious, of course.

PCC - guidance for new (and old) members - Part 2

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Copyright and Public Performance licences

PCC members need to ensure that their church activities, and the activities of groups using the church hall, if there is one, comply with the law of copyright.

There is widespread ignorance of what copyright actually means. When a new licence (PPL) came into operation on 1 January 2012 an advisory notice from one diocese (in December 2011…) suggested that when a church buys a set of hymnals it also acquires the copyright in the contents. That is dangerously misleading nonsense. All that comes with a set of hymnals is the implicit permission to perform the contents during acts of divine worship (including weddings and funerals.) And even though the words and music of a hymn may be centuries old, there is copyright in the typographical layout of all printed material, including pages in the hymn book.

So – lock up your church photocopier until you’ve acquainted yourself with the finer points of copyright law.

This is a good start –

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/

and I’m afraid it gets worse.

Which of these statements is true?

1)     we can show a DVD of The Sound of Music at an MU meeting without having to bother with stuff like licences

2)     we can watch telly by hooking up a wi-fi tablet to the computer projector in the hall  without having to bother with stuff like licences

3)     we can video a concert in church and sell DVDs to raise funds without having to bother with stuff like licences

4)     When we’ve got broadband in the hall we’ll be able to look at YouTube videos as well as watch programmes on I-Player without having to bother with stuff like licences

5)     We can have as many concerts in church and hall as we like without having to bother with stuff like licences

6)     We’ve got all the licences we need. They cover the church hall across the road as well as church itself.

7)     I own a book of Pam Ayres’ poetry, so I can read some of them at WI.

8)  We’ve got a local authority entertainment licence, so we can put plays on in the parish hall.

None of them is true, of course.

1)     Showing a commercial DVD in public, whether or not the audience has paid to come in, needs several different licences.

2)     You’d need a church video licence AND a TV licence

3)     Not if any of the music performed is still in copyright. Again, licences are needed.

4)     No you can’t. You’d need a TV licence and a church video licence

5)     No you can’t. You’d need both a PPL licence and a PRS licence. You’re allowed  six concerts/recitals a year without further payment or reporting back. Any more than that and PRS will deem your church or hall a Concert Venue, and then you’re in the business of reporting what’s been performed and paying the due fees, which go up as your audience size increases (so you need to count your audiences as well.)

6)     No. Separate licences are needed for hall and church if they’re not physically linked, because some licences are premises licences, not event licences.

7)     No you can’t, at least not without Pam Ayres’ permission or the permission of her agent(s), and you can expect to have to pay a fee.

Read this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/dec/17/freeversegettingcopyrightw

8)     Oddly enough you can’t. To perform straight plays (as opposed to putting on musical shows like Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas) you need a special licence from your local council. It’s an historical anomaly; a hangover from the bad old days of theatre censorship (in 1737 Robert Walpole, then First Lord of the Treasury, got so miffed with always being satirised by playwrights that the lord Chamberlain was given the power to vet every play before it could be staged and to demand whatever changes he saw fit

Fortunately, most of the licences a church might need are managed by a single body – CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International)

http://www.ccli.com/Global.aspx

and this is a quick link to which licences your church might need

http://www.ccli.co.uk/licences/guide.cfm

Other useful sites are

http://www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.ppluk.com/

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Thank you for reading. If you’re a new PCC member this is probably everything you need to get started, and all in one place, too!. If it has helped you, please pass the link on and help other new PCC members learn the ropes, or download the article and modify it to your heart’s content, without the risk of my chasing you for breach of copyright. And if you can suggest more useful  links, please do, via the Comments box.

PCC - guidance for new (and old) members - PART 1

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PCC MEMBERSHIP - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW (almost)

I have just finished my three-year term as a member of my church’s Parish Church Council and I ain’t going back. At no time during those three years was I given any guidance in my duties and responsibilities. Mine is a PCC whose agenda arrive by e-mail  the day before  the meeting, or in the past have been left at the back of church for members to pick up, and they are agenda whose biggest item is often AOB.

The governance of the Church of England since its establishment has been finely balanced between collars (some with crosiers) and ploughboys, and as a ploughboy myself I bridle rather when collars treat me like a mushroom. I suspect that the principle of keeping the PCC conveniently in the dark is more common in small rural parishes than in minsters and whopping great churches with colossal catchment areas and Sunday Schools 800-1,000 strong, like Henry Francis Lyte’s.  And I acknowledge that one of the difficulties of attracting  people onto a PCC is that if you tell them too much you’ll frighten them off.

So – self-taught in the business by necessity – here’s what I put together in my three years – the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the PCC. I’ve done it because two virgin members of our PCC who are close friends said ‘help!’

If you readers diocese-wide or even worldwide spot any factual errors please leave a comment and I’ll correct them, but I don’t answer accusations of heresy, sorry – it’s not a word you’ll find in the New Testament, or the Old, for that matter.

Let’s now get serious. Sunday best, please, and leave your clogs in the porch.

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THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE PCC

An excellent basic introduction to the PCC is -

http://www.chichester.anglican.org/documents/diocesan-booklets/being-pcc-member/

and another, here in A5 booklet format (but can be downloaded as two A4 pages)

http://www.liverpool.anglican.org/userfiles/file/Church%20&%20Society/PCC_Leaflets/PCC_MEMBERS_Leaflet_A5_booklet.pdf

PCC members are trustees of a charity – their parish church. More information about the responsibilities of PCC trustees here

http://www.parishresources.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Trusteeship-local-print.pdf

PCCs were established by the Parish Church Councils (Powers) Measure 1956. This legislation is still in force and has been amended several times. This link is to the current state of the Measure and its amendments

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukcm/Eliz2/4-5/3/contents

This is the Enabling Measure for the set of regulations governing the PCC known as the Church Representation Rules, a vital tool for every PCC member who wishes to know about, so as to work within, church law. The Rules are available in printed form, published by the CofE at £8.99 [2013 price] or, if you don’t have ethical objections, from Amazon at £6.40 [again 2013 price]. The Rules are also available online, in their 2012 edition, at

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/structure/churchlawlegis/church-representation-rules/church-representation-rules-online.aspx

Appendix II of the Church Representation Rules is where the real detail is to be found.

[comment – look at Rule 6, the AOB rule. No item that isn’t on the agenda proper can be discussed unless three-quarters of the members present at a meeting agree. This is the highest degree of majority ever required in the conduct of PCC meetings, and it is there to protect members (trustees) from any attempt to slip contentious items in via AOB, which is always taken at the end of a meeting when members are tired and want to go home. If the chair of a meeting appears to intend to introduce such an item without invoking Rule 6, any member can invoke it by raising a Point of Order with the chair, and the chair isthen  bound to seek the necessary three-quarters majority]

[comment – a new PCC is elected at every parish annual general meeting in April and may hold its first meeting immediately for the purposes of appointing officers and co-opting up to two members. Newly elected members of deanery synod should note that their term of office does not begin until after 1st June. If a deanery synod meets in April or May it is the 'old' members who are eligible to conduct business.]

[comment – it is the duty of parish secretaries to inform diocese of any changes in PCC membership, including changes of address, at any time and not just after the parish AGM. Parish secretaries also need to inform their deanery synod secretary of such changes, because for convenience diocese will ask for details of members and their addresses from the deanery synod secretary.]

Another invaluable vade-mecum for PCC members is the

 Handbook for Churchwardens and Parochial Church Councillors (this isn’t a link.)

It’s only available in print, for around £10. There is an excellent section of advice for parish secretaries on how to minute a meeting, and the advice should be heeded. Employment law, copyright law, and neglected bits of church law can all too easily bring a PCC into conflict with legal authorities, and secretaries (and PCCs) need to bear in mind that in such circumstances minute books might be called as evidence in a courtroom.

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PCC members look after church finances, and need to exercise wise stewardship of funds. Not building up unnecessarily large reserves is part of stewardship –

http://www.parishresources.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/parishreserves.pdf

Fund-raising and proper management of funds and appeals for funds are governed by

Charity Commission  rules, which have the force of (civil) law. Here they are (go to section F9 for the details)

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/publications/cc3.aspx

and more detailed guidance for charities that want to raise funds by trading -

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/Publications/cc35.aspx

(and note that Charity Commission guidance notes are not longer available in print form, but only as downloads in PDF format.)



Thank you for reading. If you’re a new PCC member this is probably everything you need to get started, and all in one place, too!. If it has helped you, please pass the link on and help other new PCC members learn the ropes, or download the article and modify it to your heart’s content, without the risk of my chasing you for breach of copyright. And if you can suggest more useful  links, please do, via the Comments box.

Elfin Safety

To the Manager, Booths Supermarket in the Village


Dear Sir

I popped into your illustrious emporium today to purchase some carburettor parts for my ageing Primera. Reasoning that the bag of peanuts I placed in my trolley was exactly what I was looking for (there was no warning that the package might contain only nuts or traces thereof) I returned home, only to discover to my dismay that the package did indeed only contain nuts.

Surely a warning could be given on packets of peanuts (and for that matter all other products) - "This package does not contain carburettor parts"  to protect the unwary consumer?

Yrs, etc

traditional working class, moi?

I took The Times's social class test yesterday. You can do it too -

click here

you might find it very revealing.

Yesterday I answered all the questions truthfully - and was assigned to Traditional Working Class. I have absolutely no beef with members of the Traditional Working Class, stalwarts all, beavering away in the salt and the coal mines, reading Schopenhauer by the light of the midnight candle to improve themselves; even breaking the mould and sending their daughters to uni. To that extent I have always been one of Them - voting Labour, supporting the miners, that sort of stuff. Why, I was even at the same grammar school as Ken Loach, though a few years behind him. In my last hibernation, and retired on not quite enough pension to do what I would like to do, I spend a lot of time reading and writing - and pondering.

I know a bit about questionnaires, and how difficult it is not to give too much weight to just one of a number of variables, so I took the Times test again today, having spent yesterday evening reading, inter alia, Eco's fable of power and corruption, The Prague Cemetery; Jeanette Winterson's erudite and achingly painful tale of power and wickedness behind the trial of the Lancaster 'witches', The Daylight Gate; David Bellos's adventure into translation, the amazing art of, Is that a Fish in Your Ear?, and Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman (which made me extremely to blush and hope that neither my wife nor my servants will be tempted to read it.) Four books at once? Why not? Thought fertilises thought.

So I tried the questionnaire again this evening, but this time I told a few fibs and changed a couple of variables. I upped my meagre pension somewhat, overstated the value of my house, and increased my savings rather, while keeping all other answers exactly the same. Phew! Now I'm of the Elite, which is about as high as you go social class-wise without actually being the Queen. And all because of money! Screw enough of it out of other people and you too could be one of the Elite (as MPs and investment bankers have already discovered - for theft and gambling are far more rewarding in the social hierarchy than honesty and altruism, providing you don't get caught.)

The message from this mishmash of a questionnaire comes out loud and clear - you stay in your allotted social place. Steelworkers must not like opera. Coal miners must read (or view) only The Sun. Farmworkers should stay with the cowpats. For social class is still all about £££ and how many of them you have got (as Alex would say on Pointless.)

The whole of the methodology of this pseudoscientific nonsense, the weighting given to what the questioners consider to be the key variables, could be inferred if enough of us were prepared to tell repeated and systematic lies and check the results against each other, and then blow the whistle.

There are children out there whom education has not yet finished inoculating against this tripe.