Community News

The reimagining of Shakespeare’s New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon reached a significant milestone this week as the new lawn was laid in the Great Garden, restoring it to its former glory. This heralds the final stages of the ground breaking project undertaken by The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust as part of Shakespeare’s 400^th anniversary celebrations.

Bells from over 80 church towers will ring out simultaneously at 7pm on BBC Music Day, Friday 3 June. This unifying moment of celebration will happen throughout towns, cities and villages across the UK, with over 650 bell ringers aged from 11 to 90 years old taking part. Cathedrals involved include Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Blackburn, Birmingham and Worcester, and there are many parish churches from Saint Francis Xaviers in Liverpool, and St Mary's at Turville in Buckinghamshire, to St John’s Dumfries in Scotland, and St Teilo's Church, Llantilio Crossenny in Wales.

A new innovative experiment commissioned by Direct Line Home Insurance reveals that men are proving “it’s good to talk,” spending more time chatting on the phone than women.  Men spend 66 per cent longer talking on their phone than women – equivalent to 10 minutes more each day. When it comes to overall phone usage, men spend an hour longer each day using their phones than women. 

A new strategy has been unveiled by the Safer Wolverhampton Partnership designed to continue the good work being done to protect vulnerable people in the city. The Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy seeks to tackle domestic and sexual violence, female genital mutilation, honour-based violence and forced marriage.

Refugees, Tim Peake, Star Wars, Shakespeare, and social media are just some of the events, people, and subjects that influence British children’s creativity and use of language, says a report published by Oxford University Press (OUP).
Following OUP’s analysis of the 123,436 entries for the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Chris Evans Breakfast Show’s 500 WORDS short story competition, a wealth of fascinating insights into the lives of British children and their imaginative use of English have emerged.

Young workers starting their careers in 2016 will have earned a total of £1 million by the time they are 46 years old, according to new analysis by Prudential. The results show that an 18 year old starting their career this year and earning the projected average salary for their age group throughout their career, will have amassed earnings of more than £1 million by 2044 –  at the age of 46 years and 1 month.

Popular traders at a historic street market in Tottenham have moved into temporary premises while the transformation of their old stalls into a modern and bustling shopping space gathers pace. Businesses at Holcombe Road Market, opposite Bruce Grove Station, have moved onto Tottenham High Road while huge improvements to a new, permanent market are made by Haringey Council as part of ambitious regeneration plans for Tottenham.

The UK’s largest dog welfare charity is appealing to MPs to support a call for the use of fireworks to be restricted in the interests of animal welfare. The subject was debated by Members of Parliament after a petition by the Firework Abatement Campaign attracted more than 100,000 signatures. The petition is calling for fireworks use by the general public to only be permitted on Bonfire Night, New Year’s Eve, Diwali and Chinese New Year.

Birmingham mums were told that parenting experts only provide the tools to help with child care issues, and the real magic comes from families themselves, when TV parenting guru Jo Frost crossed the Atlantic to drop in on mums and their children at The St Thomas’s Children’s Centre, Bell Barn Rd, yesterday.

Last Friday a team of insurance professionals from across the Midlands raisied funds for Fisher House by playing a charity football match against Lichfield Wolves at The Molineux. The insurance team, led by Mark Hands (LV= Broker) and John Court-Jones (Arthur J Gallagher), was made up of 17 keen footballers from local companies including LV= Broker, Arthur J Gallagher, Idex, Adler Insurance Brokers and Jelf.

I have just returned to the UK after a short trip to Calais, France - a journey thousands of British families will make this summer as they go on holiday. Yet I went to visit the children living all alone in the refugee camp that's become known as 'the jungle'.  The young boys I met had all made dangerous journeys to escape war and many are trying to reach family members who are waiting for them right here in the UK.

City of Wolverhampton Council is urging the public to have their say on a new masterplan to link up areas of Wolverhampton for walkers and cyclists. A series of ‘Connected Places’ consultations continue on Dudley Street and in the Mander Centre. The council is working with the university, Mander Centre and other city partners Wolverhampton Wanderers FC and Wolverhampton BID to develop the strategy.

The new Mayor of Wolverhampton will be going back to the future in his year in office. Councillor Barry Findlay, who was elected the 158th Mayor of Wolverhampton, says he wants to champion the history of the city – and look towards exciting times head. He said: "It is customary for the Mayor to choose a theme for their year in office, and I wish to continue that tradition by choosing the theme of Preserving the Past, Building the Future.

Anyone wishing to vote in the EU Referendum must be on the electoral register  – and the deadline for registration is 7 June 2016. After this date, people who have not registered will not be able to vote in the EU Referendum. Anyone who has not yet registered to vote can do so online at www.gov.uk/register-to-vote – it only takes a few minutes.

A Beekeeping course tomorrow at Martineau Gardens is aiming to encourage people to find out more about bees and take up the craft of beekeeping. The British Bee Keepers Association (BBKA) claims that ‘one in three mouthfuls of the food we eat is dependent on pollination’. By encouraging people to find out more about bees through this course, Martineau Gardens hopes to raise awareness of bees needs.