£3
Explore ways of establishing yourself as a novelist via an ‘apprenticeship’, writing short stories, getting publications in small-press anthologies, becoming involved in writing communities and more.
Join York SF writer Tim Major as he guides you through getting your work published. Tom’s most recent novel is Snakeskins and his stories have appeared in Best of British SF and Best Horror.
A special event aimed at supporting small businesses outside the city walls is being hosted by City of York Council and the Federation of Small Businesses this month.
The event takes place on Monday 14 October between 5.30pm and 7.35pm at Acomb Gateway Church, Front Street, Acomb, YO24 3BZ.
During the event, Tony Webster will be talking about how his fish and chips shop in Bilbrough has become a must-visit destination for Chinese tourists.
Sally Parker of Pick and Mix Marketing will be presenting a piece on how to make businesses stand out on social media.
The council’s skills team will also be on hand to share how apprenticeships can benefit small businesses.
Carolyn Frank, from the Federation of Small Businesses, said: “York is packed full of small businesses and I welcome the council’s work to further engage with the business community via events like this.
“I hope that businesses will grasp the opportunity to come along and help shape local policy, to network at the event with other business owners, and to explore how we can all work together to make York a better place to do business. No business is too small to have a voice and collectively the small business community across York and its hinterland is vital to its economic development as a world leading city.”
Cllr Andrew Waller, Executive Member for Economy and Strategic Planning, said: “We really want to support local businesses across York and help them grow and prosper. These workshops are a great opportunity for independent businesses to share their experiences, and talk through how we can better support them, and where appropriate to use this evidence to lobby for changes to help the high street to thrive.”
For information on how to register, click here
Another day and another raft of missed bin collections.
Mostly the failures are down to inadequate staffing, unreliable vehicles and full lorries.
Yet the Council has so far failed to say when replacement vehicles will arrive in the city.
…and there is a growing suspicion that other services are being depleted in a desperate attempt to plug the gaps in the waste collection service. One estate still has litter strewn around from collections which took place weeks ago.
The latest footfall figures, reproduced by the BID team, reveal that there has been a 4% drop in visitor numbers so far this year. It is even worse on a year on year basis and is below the county average
That is a poor platform on which to approach the, normally busy, run up to Christmas.
In Acomb, the picture is slightly different with some traders reporting steady business trends. This is despite the lamentable performance recently of the Council in keeping open spaces, gutters and the areas around trees and street furniture free of weeds and litter.
The picture in residential areas is also disappointing with weeds disfiguring many streets
Winter will be with us soon now and with it the risk of icy weather. Frost damage, to a poorly maintained highway surface, can be devastating making expensive reconstruction work inevitable.
Residents are being urged to report any potholes so that they can receive attention. There is rightly some scepticism amongst residents with reported highway defects often marked up with paint but then seemingly left for months before work is undertaken
Click here to report issues on line
Defects on Dijon Avenue and Kingswood Grove have been reported on several occasions. We”ll see how long it takes for repairs to take place.
£5
Sail with Cook at a reading of Remarkable Occurrences – Patrick Lodge’s third collection of poetry including a sequence celebrating Cook’s first voyage. York musician Judith Haswell provides appropriate musical interventions.
Between 1768 and 1771, Cook circumnavigated the world in a refitted Whitby-built collier, re-named the HMB Endeavour. Ostensibly to view the transit of Venus across the Sun from a vantage point in the South Seas, Cook’s secret instructions required him to search for a mythical southern continent. In so doing he sailed around and New Zealand as well as mapping the west coast of Australia. It was probably the greatest feat of seamanship the world had seen since the original navigation from Polynesia of the ancestors of the Maori.
Patrick Lodge’s third collection of poetry from Valley Press – Remarkable Occurrences- takes as its title the title of Cook’s journal of the first Endeavour voyage. The second half of the collection comprises a long sequence of poems celebrating Cook’s voyage. Not a history, a narrative nor a biography, the poetry is a personal reaction to Cook’s, to paraphrase the captain of starship Enterprise, boldly going where no –one had gone before.
Patrick Lodge will be reading from the sequence and other poems from the collection. He will be accompanied by the accomplished York-based multi-instrumentalist, Judith Haswell in a musical/poetical collaboration celebrating Cook’s voyage.
Collections were missed in the Thoresby Road part of Westfield Ward today. A vehicle fault was blamed
Council officials have now written to concerned Councillors about the chronic unreliability of the bin emptying service. It has gone in 3 short years from being one of the most praised public services in the city to one of the most criticised.
Pressures on the service have contributed to an increase in litter drift in many areas with post round tidy up sometimes being missed out.
Officials say the problems are mainly caused by “an ageing fleet (directly linked to breakdowns), driver shortages and staff sickness”
“When the service is under pressure, we prioritise household waste collections followed by recycling and then garden waste”
“We are in the process of a wholescale fleet replacement. In the 10 years since the last vehicles were purchased the city has expanded so we need to account for this, however York is a historical city which is both beautiful and incredibly difficult to service in some areas when it comes to waste collection. I want to ensure that the next fleet of vehicles are capable of serving all areas of the city in the safest possible way. Health and safety for staff and residents is top of our agenda”.
“Staffing the service will continue to be a challenge, particularly when it comes to HGV drivers. This is a national problem and experienced by our surrounding Council areas. However, this is also exacerbated in York as we simply don’t have the industries to support this. However, we are investing significantly in developing our own staff through apprenticeship programmes and development opportunities. Working on the frontline in all weather is not a job for the faint hearted. One of the reasons that ‘new’ staff turnover is high is that people underestimate how demanding the job is”.
Unfortunately the service does not seem to have published an improvement programme with milestones. No figures are produced indicating the number of bins that aren’t emptied each day, so it is impossible to test whether the claimed “improvement trajectory” is a reality.
Critically officials are staying tight lipping about when new vehicles are expected in the City or indeed if they have even been ordered.
Many will be surprised that adequate spare resources did not form part of the original vehicle leasing deal.
In other parts of the world more automation has been tried with mixed results
