Parking charges are being introduced at a Gloucestershire beauty spot to help keep up services threatened by severe budget cuts.

Visitors to the 150-acre Crickley Hill country park will pay between £1 and £3 depending on their length of stay.

The county council said the money would safeguard services such as barbecue equipment, picnic tables and toilets.

The charges are due to be introduced next month. BBC.

So it’s going to be cheaper to travel to an out of town shopping centre than it is to go to the nearest open space to Gloucester and Cheltenham – that’s surely wrong?

How much money will this measure raise? A lot more than the cost of maintaining the services at Crickley Hill and another question the National Trust owns a lot of the land at Crickley Hill – does the Trust pay the council to maintain these services – anybody know the answers to these questions?

I guess this fits in with the Tories policy of taxing the poor on one hand and giving to the rich with the other.

Plans to make it easier for English local authorities to abolish outdated by-laws and create new ones will be outlined later by the government.

It will mean councils being able to sweep away bizarre regulations, such as rules on carpet-beating in Blackpool, or frying fish in Gloucester, without first needing Whitehall approval.

Instead, town halls will simply have to consult residents.

Local Government Minister Grant Shapps said it was all about devolving powers.

Gloucester City Council has unearthed 60 old by-laws that it wants to revoke and not replace.

In addition to 1968 regulations on frying fish and “other offensive trades”, it wants to call time on a 1947 by-law regarding the cleaning of ash pits and cesspools.

It also wants to get rid of a 1911 ruling requiring domestic servants to register with the council. BBC.

So when was the last time these by-laws where used, doesn’t the council have better things to do with its money?

For instance as a Gloucester resident I’d not noticed a lack of city chip-shops – the UK’s riddled with archaic by-laws which we have sensibly forgotten.

With the Con-Dems starting the most vicious public spending cuts in living memory it seems ridiculous to waste money addressing what is largely a non-existent problem

Still what else would one expect form a Tory other than an exercise to remove cash from the poor and place it in the pockets of the wealthy – this time its cash for its friends in law – what scam’s next?

Labour MP for Stroud David Drew had the lowest claim of all the county MPs for the year, coming in at £13,059, which was to cover hotel and food expenses when in London.

Fellow Labour MP for Gloucester Parmjit Dhanda had the next lowest second home claim for the year of £17,652.69. This is Gloucestershire.

That said they’re still claiming an awful lot of money when you consider the median UK salary is a £25,428 and we are talking second home claims which include the cost of staying away from their main home. The maximum they could have claimed was £24,006 which Tory MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown of the Cotswolds and Tory MP Laurence Robertson of Tewkesbury both duly claimed.

I’ve not the figures for the latest full year but last year the total expense claim for David Drew was £133,256 and for Parmjit Dhanda was £153,906 – so there’s plenty of room for improvement by all MPs.

Javelin Park is a step closer to being the solution to the county’s landfill problem – and Shire Hall can’t rule out putting an incinerator there.

Ten bidders who put forward 13 sites to get rid of thousands of tonnes of household waste have been whittled down to four by Gloucestershire County Council – and the site it owns on the edge of Gloucester is favoured by all four. Next week the council is expected to invite them to submit detailed ideas in 2010. Their names and the technologies they would use are secret at the moment to protect commercial confidentiality – but incineration has not been ruled out.

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This is no big surprise,” said Mr Purchase, who is a member of GlosVAIN – a partnership of 12 councils opposed to an incinerator at Javelin Park.

“It’s what the county council has wanted for the past couple of years – they have not been open with the public and kept them informed.

“The fact that Javelin Park was in the list and incineration is still in there means you don’t have to be a genius to work out what is going to happen.”

Gloucester Labour MP Parmjit Dhanda said: “I think they have already made their minds up.

“It will be a Gloucester location they will dump this on. I suspect that after the General Election is over they will probably focus on incineration but until then play their cards close to their chests.”

Councillor Jeremy Hilton (Westgate), Liberal Democrat group leader said yesterday: “We are deeply concerned the Conservatives are hell-bent on building a massive waste incinerator.

“The council should back-off on their determination to incinerate people’s waste and look instead at a carbon neutral process for dealing with our waste rather than simply burning rubbish.” This is Gloucestershire.

“All the bidders that have come forward are indicating that Javelin Park would be a preferred site for the facilities they are proposing,” said Councillor Stan Waddington (Conservative, Nailsworth and Minchinhampton), lead cabinet member for waste. This is Gloucestershire.

We’ve poisoned the ground with landfill and now we can’t find anywhere else to bury the stuff we’re going to burn our rubbish and poison the very air we breathe and no surprise the County is going to dump it on Gloucester – when are Gloucester residents going to stop electing Tories to the County Council? All they do is appease all those Tory councillors from Gloucestershire’s affluent areas – Gloucester wake up and smell the fire.

SHOPPERS will be able to grab a pizza the action after the award-winning £300 million Gloucester Quays centre opened its first restaurant.

Pizza Express opened its doors at the docklands complex yesterday morning. This is Gloucestershire.

It says something terrible about Gloucester when the best place to eat is Pizza Express – don’t get me wrong I like Pizza Express it’s just that it’s not the peak of culinary excellence.

In a European first, Sainsbury’s will install the invention at its new store in Gloucester, opening this Wednesday.

Energy will be captured every time a vehicle drives over “kinetic road plates” in the car park and then channelled back into the store.

The kinetic road plates are expected to produce 30 kWh of green energy every hour — more than enough energy to power the store’s checkouts. The system, pioneered for Sainsbury’s by Peter Hughes of Highway Energy Systems, does not affect the car or fuel efficiency, and drivers feel no disturbance as they drive over the plates.

Alison Austin, Sainsbury’s environment manager, said: “This is revolutionary. Not only are we the first to use such cutting-edge technology with our shoppers, but customers can now play a very active role in helping make their local shop greener, without extra effort or cost.

“We want to continue offering great value but we also want to make the weekly shop sustainable. Using amazing technology like this helps us reduce our use of carbon and makes Sainsbury’s a leading energy-efficient business.”

The kinetic road plates are one of a number of energy-saving measures at Sainsbury’s new store in Gloucester Quays, Gloucester. The store will harvest rainwater to flush the store’s toilets and solar thermal panels will heat up to 100% of the store’s hot water during the summer, and more than 90% of the construction waste was re-used or recycled.

David Sheehan, director of store development and construction at Sainsbury’s, said: “The new environmental features within the Gloucester Quays store mark a very exciting time in store development. We are able to use cutting-edge technology to improve our services and the store environment for our customers and colleagues, at the same time as ultimately reducing our carbon footprint across the UK.” The Guardian.

Labour’s Parmjit Dhanda is the latest MP to throw their hat into the ring for the job of Commons Speaker.

Mr Dhanda, one of a handful of Asian MPs in the Commons, says he was spurred into action by the BNP winning two seats in the European Parliament.

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Mr Dhanda, who is understood to have turned down a chance to return to government, announced his move for the job in an e-mail to MPs, ahead of the 22 June election.

The former fire services minister and MP for Gloucester plans to stand on an agenda of reforming parliament, including holding debates outside the chamber in provincial towns and cities.

In his email, Mr Dhanda admitted that he was not “an obvious choice” but told MPs: “Until I see someone more likely to win who will fight for the causes I spell out here, I’ll be in this contest.”

He said the new speaker should act as “the interface between Parliament and modern Britain, championing the role of MPs and encouraging greater participation amongst the public”.

If he took the chair, that would include encouraging parties to speed up moves to make MPs representative of society as a whole – something that would take 100 years on present progress, he said.

“The Speaker must actively encourage political parties to make changes, through law, to catalyse these changes over one or two terms, not 100 years,” he said.

Mr Dhanda, who is not among MPs whose detailed expense claims have been exposed by The Daily Telegraph, said the scandal had highlighted a serious lack of parent-friendly facilities, such as crèches.

At the moment, MPs are left to “use their archaic allowances system to come up with alternative child care provision. Parliament not only stitches them up at the outset, it then hangs them out to dry”.

He told BBC News he wanted to “change the macho culture of ministerial life”. BBC.

Lloyds Banking Group is to close all 164 branches of Cheltenham & Gloucester, risking up to 1,500 jobs. BBC.

You have to wonder how long before the Barnwood C&G offices follow suit? Once upon a time the area had numerous independent financial companies – now all that’s all gone – what happened? Not London I guess?

Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre remains closed for a second day after a chemical scare which led to more than 30 people needing medical treatment.

The air in the centre was monitored overnight after it closed on Thursday.

The centre opened on Friday morning but was evacuated after seven people showed symptoms. It will remain closed until further notice, a spokeswoman said.

Police said any contamination remained “unexplained” and it was not known if was from an accident or malicious act.

Ten people were taken to hospital on Thursday with many complaining of feeling dizzy and nauseous.

The centre was opened for access before the latest evacuation on Friday morning but the shops had not reopened.

A spokesman for West Midlands Ambulance Service said seven people had been “showing symptoms” on Friday. They were treated at the scene.

Louise Hamer Brown from Bull Ring Marketing said: “We are evacuated at the moment and emergency services are performing further investigations.” Edgbaston Street remains closed between Park Street and Pershore Street.

A West Midlands Police spokesman said the incident may have been caused by “some sort of petroleum-based substance” potentially contaminating the shopping centre’s ventilation or air-conditioning system.

Six security workers were treated for the effects of fumes shortly before 0400 BST on Thursday. Later, more staff complained of fumes and the centre was closed.

A triage centre was set up away from the building to treat people for symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and water eyes and dizziness, the ambulance service said. BBC.

A Ferris wheel is to open at Gloucester Docks on Friday.

The 100ft (30m) structure, run by British Waterways, is due to start turning from midday.

The new attraction is part of a revamp of the docks, which includes shops, flats, a hotel, supermarket and factory outlets.

A spokeswoman said: “We were very keen to provide an additional attraction for the docks because there will be lots of new visitors.” BBC.

I’ve no idea how long the wheel is to remain in place and I’m not exactly sure of its attraction, then again I’m not much of a fan of amusement rides, and it’s not as if Gloucester Docks can boast quite anything like the views one gets from the London Eye.