I always like reading Andrew Brown‘s roundups of stuff that’s happening in his area – Lewisham – that he regularly posts to his blog. I haven’t the discipline to do anything regularly, but here are a couple of things I’ve been looking at recently.
First up is that I took another look at the website for my village – Broughton, near Kettering in Northamptonshire. Before you click the link be warned: it’s not a very modern design. Indeed, as I suspected, a quick ‘View Source’ shows that the thing is done in Frontpage (argh!). But ignore that…
…because the content in fabulous. It’s a really, really good community resource. There’s stuff for the Parish Council, loads and loads of photos and bits of history about the village. Elaine Bradshaw, who is behind the site, really has done a terrific job.
The only shame is that I can’t find any contact details for her on the site, firstly to congratulate her on what she has achieved, but also to wonder how much easier it would be if we WordPress’d the whole thing. Maybe stuck all the photos up on Flickr, made it easier for anyone in the village to contribute… If somehow you end up reading this, Elaine, do get in touch.
Secondly, on the way to work today I saw a large fluorescent sign, imploring those that saw it to ‘Save Naseby Battlefield!’. I wasn’t under the impression that the battlefield was under any threat, but apparently it is:
Power company E.ON is investigating the possibility of installing turbines close to the historic battlefield.
The proposals have been met with anger from historians, who are working on plans to boost the national reputation of Naseby by building a visitor centre at the battle site.
A further bit of digging revealed that the campaign has its own site, and it runs on WordPress! Stop Kelmarsh Windfarm is the name of the site, which I can’t help but feel is a rather negative slant on things (‘Save Naseby Battlefield’ sounds much nicer, I think).
It also confuses the hell out of me. I mean, wind farms are good things, right? But heritage stuff is important too… argh!
Thanks Dave, I’m never quite sure how useful it is, often I feel I’m linking to stuff that many of my readers will have already read. But, I guess I feel that there’s still some value in pulling us all together, and with del.icio.us taking most of the hassle out of doing it the effort doesn’t seem disproportionate.
You’re lucky that there are so many bloggers in your area – and that you have managed to find them!
Yes, I’m not quite sure how it’s become such a hotbed of local (often civic) blogging, but I’m certainly enjoying it.
Do you have any blogging get-togethers down in Lewisham, Andrew?
Yes, we have been getting together about once every 3 or 4 months for 2 years now. I thought that we had a big enough blogging community, and was intreged to meet a number of people who I enjoyed reading to see how they came out in the flesh.
Our first meeting was such a success that it felt worth repeating and now it’s almost a fixture. The bloggers keep changing too. At first there were quite a few active (or in my case just released) politicians but they’ve become fewer as the meetings have continued.
I’ve enjoyed every single meeting for different reasons. And am now looking forward to the next one which I guees I’ll try to organise for July.