Moonfest festival boss celebrates after licence is approved (From This Is Wiltshire)

Moonfest festival boss celebrates after licence is approved (From This Is Wiltshire): "The Moonfest 2009 festival will go ahead in Westbury after the organisers received a licence even though last year’s festival was cancelled at the eleventh hour.
Last year’s festival was called off when Wiltshire Police won a court order eight days beforehand, after security fears over the festival, due to be headlined by Pete Doherty’s band Babyshambles.
Undeterred, John Green, organiser of Moonfest, pressed on with organising this year’s festival, which will be headlined by former Darkness frontman, Justin Hawkins and his new band Hot Leg, at Storridge Farm, Westbury, on August 30."

Not quite to my old fogey tastes but great, fantastic diversification for a farmer.

Wiltshire Crop Circles - The View from Asia

The Phenomenon of Crop Circles in England – Mysterious Hand at Work or Agrarian Vandalism?

The season of crop circles has begun in England and as usual, it is going to produce lots of surprises, one of which, inevitably is, the clash between two ‘civilizations’: those who mock at the unseen while strictly sticking to the doctrine of logic and reason and those who are holy enough to keep an open mind while admitting to their finite thinking capabilities in a humble way.

I'm not so persuaded that there is anything mystical about them...

Wiltshire Grain Co-op Success

Silver service from co-operative (From Salisbury Journal): "FARMER-owned marketing and storage co-operative, Wiltshire Grain, had a double celebration this month.
It is 25 years since the co-operative, based in Shrewton, was set up.
It started in 1984 as a facility for drying and storing crops for just 52 members.
But operations have now increased to include refining, and about 100 farming members from Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire make use of its facilities.
The co-operative has also just been awarded nearly £2 million from the Rural Development Programme for England to help fund a major new project, which focuses on traceability."

Rural Services Community

Rural Services Community: "The Rural Services Community is the community voice for rural services, designed to provide smaller organisations with information and best practice relating to rural affairs. Our forums give members the opportunity to discuss issues relating to rural services and to share information. To join, click here."

Women in Rural Enterprise

WiRE is an organisation for rural women in business, offering a dynamic member package of practical and specific business services and support for women in rural enterprise including; WiRE Local Network Groups (60 across the UK) offering rural women in business the chance to network and do business with like-minded women, a quarterly glossy magazine, monthly e-newsletter and countless marketing opportunities.

Wiltshire Networks - Women in Rural Enterprise

WiRE business networking events in Pewsey, Marlborough and Devizes, are run by volunteers, please confirm your booking with the network leader and let them know if you need to cancel.

Networks are for WiRE Members only but guests are welcome to attend twice before joining. To join WiRE click on link www.wireuk.org/joinwire.aspx

Meetings - Monthly

Locations - Pewsey, Devizes and Marlborough

If you are interested in business networking events in Pewsey, Marlborough and Devizes please contact Jo Del Mar.

Contact
Name: Jo Del Mar
Email: millsfarm@hotmail.co.uk

Lots of Visitors expected to Wiltshire this weekend

Barton's Britain: Stonehenge | Travel | The Guardian: "This weekend thousands of people are expected to head to this patch of grass between the A344 and the A303 to celebrate the Summer Solstice, the point in the year when the earth's axis tilts most towards the sun. Last year, despite heavy rain, more than 30,000 people arrived at the stones in time for the sunrise. Many of those attending are druids, who regard Stonehenge as 'a temple to the alignment of the sun and the relationship between the sun and the earth and the moon'. At a little before 5am they will herald the arrival of the morning sun with horns and drums.
It is a glorious place to celebrate the British summer. Around here the land is rich and green and fertile, its fields rolling and tumbling, and this afternoon birdsong comes, chucking and bobbing and buffeting the breeze."

But the 30,000 don't seem to spend any money here in Wiltshire to help us rural types keep it green and fertile...

How the downturn is hurting villages

Can rural communities survive the economic downturn? The runes do not look too good, according to BBC1's Countryfile.

It visited the Wiltshire village of Whiteparish where 24-year-old Annabel Twiddy runs an equine business that swallows up most of her income, forcing her to live in a horsebox converted to include a toilet, kitchen and living area.

Her name is down for one of seven affordable homes to be built on the edge of the village but there are 30 people on the waiting list. One of them is single mother of three Tracey Davey who is temporarily living in a mobile home after giving up rented accommodation because she could no longer afford it.

At nearby Easterton, the conversion of a former jam factory into a housing development is on hold because of the recession. National Housing Federation chief executive David Orr told the programme that only a third of the homes the nation needs are being built, stranding five million people on waiting lists. "People think that this is an urban problem but it is at least as acute in rural places," he added. "The consequences are that schools, shops and pubs will close - all the things that keep villages functioning. If the drift continues, some of our villages will die."

Broadband for all - eliminating the notspots

Tim Worstall points out some flaws behind the latest Digital Britain paper promising Internet for all.
Rural enterprise needs broadband and the CLA and other have been fighting for it, but not unrealistically as some have been.
One undermentioned problem with satellite service is the latency or delay -

Latency is caused by several factors, including the number of times the data is handled along the transmission path, for instance, by a router or server. Each time a data packet is handled by a device along the path (called a “hop”) several milliseconds of latency are induced.

More importantly in the satellite world, latency is caused by the distance that the signal must travel. The satellites used for two-way Internet service are located approximately 23,000 miles above the equator.

This means a round-trip transmission travels 23,000 miles to the satellite, 23,000 miles from the satellite to the remote site, and then as the TCP/IP acknowledgment is returned, another 46,000 miles on the return trip. That's a total round trip of about 92,000 miles. Even at the speed of light, this accounts for more delay (in milliseconds) than found in a terrestrial network. It is normally in the order of 1/2 to 3/4 of a second - as seen on TV news reports from the front line

Most Internet applications including web browsing, email, FTP etc. work in their normal manner even when traversing this long distance and user experiences are very positive. Certain applications, such as Voice-Over-IP are affected but also work. Some applications, such as online gaming are not recommended.

Grain Prices to soar again?

Crops under stress as temperatures fall - Telegraph: "For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend 'climate change'. In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers."
...Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.
In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest....In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level.... it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.

Here in Wiltshire we had a fantastic sunny weekend so it is hard sometimes to remember that others are suffering. From a rural economy position soaring food prices can cheer up farmers and landowners provided their production doesn't fall as the rest of the world's.

The Salisbury Plains Great Bustards

The Salisbury Plains Great Bustards: "the truth about the re-introduction scheme and the people behind it. And believe me when I say that I will never listen to rumour and uninformed gossip ever again, because what I found was a passionate (and nearly exhausted) man who has given up virtually everything he owns to bring back to Wiltshire a species he fell in love with in the 1980s and a project which is extremely well-run and has support at the highest levels of Russian conservation…"

And if you are interested in supporting this venture head to the Great Bustard Shop for bad punned products...

Rural Services Community

Rural Services Community: "The Rural Services Community is the community voice for rural services, designed to provide smaller organisations with information and best practice relating to rural affairs. Our forums give members the opportunity to discuss issues relating to rural services and to share information."

BBC - Village SOS - Home: Searching for Village Champions and rural villages with great business ideas

BBC - Village SOS - Home: Searching for Village Champions and rural villages with great business ideas: "The search is on for six UK villages with a great business idea that will bring new life to their community. The best ideas will receive funding of up to £400,000 each from the Big Lottery Fund.

We're also looking for six Village Champions, enterprising individuals who will work with the successful villages to launch and run their brand new businesses.

Their stories will be followed for a major primetime series for BBC One in winter 2010."

New Wiltshire Business? Win £20,000

Unitary election results '09 | Wiltshire Council

Unitary election results '09 Wiltshire Council

Tory Landslide? Is that overstating it? Whatever, the Tories are clearly going to be in charge and business people will be looking to see how this will help the local economy.

‘Revive dying woodlands industry,’ says hard-hitting CLA report

Press Release: "'In England and Wales between 2003 and 2008, new forest planting almost halved, falling from 5,100 hectares a year to 2,800 hectares a year.
'And between 1998 and 2008, the number of sawmills processing home-grown timber in the UK fell from 341 to 211 – a drop of around 40 percent.
'Meanwhile, forestry and woodlands are over-regulated by Government, and out-of-control deer and grey squirrel populations have wreaked havoc.'
The report's Executive Summary adds: 'If woodland is under-managed, it can make no financial return to its owners, conservation work cannot take place, and climate change mitigation will be held back. Government needs to grasp and reverse this spiral of decline.'"

Good to see that this report has had a good press, even if it has mainly been about Charles backing squirrel bashing....

The Bustard Goes Networking

I found out that Business Networking proves friendly and fun at 4Networking Cirencester when I went along - highly recommended way of building new contacts and friends. If you want an invite just ask.

And there is more - an audio podcast of the event as well.

Local Recession News

BBC NEWS | Special Reports | The downturn | South West

Traveller Site Woes

Lack of action over Calcutt, Cricklade gypsy site stop notice breach (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard): "THE lack of power local authorities possess in enforcing stop notices has been criticised after a group of travellers flouted an order at a site near Cricklade.
Over the last bank holiday weekend the group of travellers moved onto a site alongside the A417 at Calcutt and began installing fences and septic tanks despite a stop notice which was issued within a matter of hours by Wiltshire Council.
It is well known that travellers will move onto a site and enter a planning application late on a Friday afternoon before a bank holiday weekend as it gives them three full days to develop the site before the local authority can issue a stop notice.
In this instance Wiltshire Council anticipated the move and reacted almost immediately.
But nearby residents have this week claimed work carried on even after the council imposed a stop notice, leaving WC enforcement officers checking with their lawyers to determine their next move....
North Wiltshire MP James Gray added: "There is a disturbing pattern emerging across at least the north of the county with regard to illegal gypsy encampments. Travellers buy up small plots of land, illegally invade them with many caravans, very often over a bank holiday weekend and lodge a retrospective planning application they know will be refused by the council. But they will win on appeal because of central Government planning laws."

It is the percieved bias in the planning system that is getting people's backs up. One law for everyone is what I keep hearing form increasingly angry residents. Fairness must be seen to be happening, both in that gypsies mustn't be denied their rights, nor must they be given freedom to flout the law.

Bustards - Good News

Wild Great Bustard chicks hatch
A project set up on Salisbury Plain to reintroduce the Great Bustard has announced the successful hatching of three wild chicks.
The chicks mark the first successful breeding attempts by the Great Bustard Group which has been working to bring the species back to the UK since 1998.
David Waters, the man behind the reintroduction of the birds, described the news as "absolutely brilliant".

Unacceptable Times

Flak flies over Wiltshire's poor 999 times
Wiltshire Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee is to write to the Great Western Ambulance Service (GWAS) expressing concern at its performance.
During 2008/9 in Wiltshire GWAS achieved a 58 per cent response to Category A calls (life threatening) within eight minutes. The national target is 75 per cent.
At a meeting of Wiltshire Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee Peter Biggs, chairman of the health and social care watchdog Wiltshire Involvement Network, said: “Results for Wiltshire are unacceptable. It’s no good GWAS saying it’s a large rural county, I know that. The emergency services need a strategy in attempting to reach the national target.”

And once an ambulance does find you, how long does it now take to get to Hospital. The closures were a disgrace leaving people who live and work in rural Wiltshire at risk.


(Tip of the day - you can do your bit to help by clearly putting a House name or number up - some people even add the postcode which is really helpful).