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Welcome to Winter 2009

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on January 7, 2009 2:17 PM

By reporter David Simister

YOU know when your commute to work begins to resemble the opening scenes from Fargo that it's turning out to be a chilly week.
Pensioners slipping on pavements, children risking life and limb to skate across Snowdonian lakes, smashes on the A55 - we've seen it all in the past few days. Even one of our own reporters came a cropper when he had an unfortunate bike/ ice/ pavement meeting on his way into our office earlier this week.
It hasn't been a brilliant time for getting about in North Wales. Inside this week's edition there's the tragic story of Rebecca White, who was killed in a car crash travelling from her home town of Kinmel Bay, and the story of John Garside, who is having trouble getting his concessionary bus pass accepted in Towyn.
Meanwhile, North Wales Police reported no fewer than 79 car accidents in the region in a single icy morning, while hospitals are seeing dozens of patients admitted after falls on slippy pavements.
Whether Conwy County Council has gritted the roads enough isn't for us to decide but what I do know is that for the first time in years the two mile commute into the Weekly News office has required obsessively new levels of studying the weather forecast.
Walking, at 40 minutes, simply takes too long, and there's a scary woman at my nearest bus stop who's convinced I'm part of an extremist paramilitary group, and keeps shouting names at me, so I think catching the number 13 isn't an option.
That leaves driving, which in a 25-year-old car would probably kill several rainforests simply from the emissions of a two mile journey, and my pushbike, which my colleague has already demonstrated, is a surefire way to an icy death.
In the end I took my chances and opted for Raleigh's finest but the milder weather can't come soon enough.

Recession, depression and turkey dinners

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on December 23, 2008 2:57 PM

By Judith Phillips, reporter

WITH Christmas less than 48 hours away it seems there is very little joy and goodwill on the high street.
Believe it or not, as journalists we really do hate having to report doom and gloom, but during these past few weeks there has been little alternative, as the economy dives into recession, and the threat of redundancy hovers on many doorsteps, including our own (eight journalists are to be made redundant at our group of newspapers here in North Wales).
This week alone we've had to report how the Woolworth stores in Llandudno, Colwyn Bay, Abergele and Conwy are to close with the loss of 100 jobs, and the Jaguar dealership in Llandudno Junction has become the latest victim of the dramatic plunge in car sales as people rein in their spending.
Our hearts go out to those with mortgages and families to support who must now look for alternative employment in a very restricted job market.
On a personal note, a ray of light was cast by the work done in Llandudno town centre over the Christmas and New Year period by so called "street angels", members of three local churches who are giving up their Friday and Saturday nights and Christmas and New Year's Eves to try to ensure revellers get home safely.
They embody the true Christian spirit of the festival as do the members of the Gloddaeth United Reformed Church who are sacrificing spending Christmas Day with their families to cook and prepare a slap-up turkey lunch for the town's homeless and lonely people.
Our heartfelt thanks should go out to them for reminding us what Christmas is really about and that among all the worry and stress caused by the financial crisis there are people who genuinely care about others.

The C-word

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on December 11, 2008 2:46 PM

By David Simister, Reporter

CONTRARY to what you may have heard, we at the Weekly News haven't lost any of our staff; in fact we gained one this week. Unfortunately he's plastic, less than a foot tall and rather than helping with the reporting his sole job seems to be singing We Wish You A Merry Christmas in increasingly sick-sounding tones. As our resident ambassador for festive frolics he's doing a sterling job... at winding the rest of us up.
Yet it seems even our Santa tribute act isn't the only worrying bit of tat that's gracing streets from Kinmel Bay to Conwy this month. One reader was so incensed by the steel-fencing finishing off the Christmas trees in Abergele he actually wrote to us, describing them as having "all the charm of a crime scene".
Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, especially as it gives me something other than the credit crunch to talk to people about. In fact I've actually embraced Christmas so much that I'm subtly attempting to get the C-word into almost every article I write (and I've managed it four times in this one already!).
It's just that, at a time of year when things are supposed to be jolly we shouldn't be decorating the county with cold, grey fencing and yard upon yard of red tape (in both senses). I'm sure some of you will point out the security reasons but if it's really that bad, why not be more seasonal and surround each tree with a herd of angry reindeer?
I did ask our newest colleague for his thoughts on this but he wouldn't comment. He was too busy singing about Christmas instead...

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on November 20, 2008 9:27 AM

By Richard Evans, Reporter
richardevans.jpg
"Now you're being rude, and I hate rude people."
"Rudeness is an epidemic."
Hannibal Lecter M.D
WHEN psychiatric cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter stumbles across a person he considers rude, vulgar or discourteous he chooses to eat their liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Being a journalist on a weekly newspaper and not a cold-blooded sadistic evil genius, when someone is rude I instead either turn the other cheek, or at the very worst mutter something mildly offensive or sarcastic under my breath. Hardly a deterrent for them in the future to discontinue slamming doors in my face and treating me as if I'm their own personal door mat.
This week I really have had enough. Nothing annoys me more than when an individual assumes I may have been put on this earth to hold open doors while they shoot past without a word, or even a nod or polite half smile, which would be perfectly sufficient. Is brief eye contact too much to ask?
The other thing that winds me up is people who can't even be bothered to look at me when I speak to them or just treat me as if I am an invisible breeze.
Of course nobody is perfect, everyone has a bad day. I swore out loud just the other day when shocked by the price of the product I was buying. I was pretty miserable with the said member of staff. Realising it was not their fault (although they had been slightly abrupt and blunt when I questioned the price) I returned minutes later and apologised.
But these rude people are like this all the time and they don't even realise it. And do you know what? For the first time in my relatively short 31 years of life I have a little empathy with a serial killer - albeit a fictional one!

Urban explorers - why so coy?

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on November 5, 2008 3:51 PM

By David Simister, reporter

SOMETIMES being tarred with the "in the media" brush sucks. I came to the North Wales Weekly News with noble ambitions to do the best I can in covering people's stories, and I think everyone here does their upmost to make sure our reporting's fair, honest and reflective of the community.
Yet we still get groups of people who think that - being from the nasty, evil world of newspaper reporting - we're involved in some huge conspiracy to make them look as stupid as possible.
This is one of the lessons I've learned delving into the dark and murky world of urban exploration, an historically-minded hobby that borders on the barely legal. Essentially it involves daring photographers breaking into decaying buildings, taking snapshots of what remains, and then posting them online for preservation's sake.
Is it anti-social and illegal, or a necessary way of recording the neglected history across North Wales? That's what I was hoping to find out for a future edition of our feature series The Issue, but that's before I came across some of the hobby's more paranoid purveyors.
"There aren't any myths surrounding it, only what the press makes up," came the flatfooted refusal from 28 Days Later, one of the UK's biggest urban exploration forums after I made a polite enquiry. "So sorry, but the answer is NO."
Really? I thought if anything it'd be a lack of communication that helps perpetuate so many of the myths surrounding urban exploration in the first place. Obviously, by the very nature of it I can understand why so many urban explorers don't want to be identified, but that doesn't mean that the work they do can't be shared with the community and explained in greater detail.
The region's urban explorers remain shrouded in mystery for now, but they shouldn't be.

Fishy business!

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on October 9, 2008 2:28 PM

By David Simister, reporter

I KNEW there was something fishy going on with the e-mails I got earlier this week, but its anonymous writer reckoned he'd got us hook, line and sinker.
We seem to get millions of e-mails every week and yes, they have proven to be a revolution when it comes to chasing stories. The only problem is that I only tend to take an interest in ones about news stories in North Wales; the 24th anniversary of Britain's third best-selling brand of jam I don't.
This week's one was an absolute gem. An Abergele fisherman had caught a record-breaking 18lb brown trout in one of the region's fisheries, and an e-mail purporting to be from the fishery's owner offered me the chance to net some nifty coverage in this week's Weekly News. Only one problem: it wasn't true.
I don't know who the hoaxer was - funnily, he chose to remain completely anonymous - but he clearly reckoned we're too lazy to check our stories before running them. A quick call to the fishery's owners confirmed no records had been broken, the e-mail had nothing to do with them, and the picture "they" had promised to send was a internet-copied fake.
Oddly, the next e-mail from our hoaxing friend implied he'd had us "hook, line and sinker". Perhaps if we'd run a spoof story on our pages, he would have done. Yet all he's achieved is wasting a lot of people's time and falsely assuming a hardworking Abergele businessman's identity (although it was quite funny).
As Malcolm Muggeridge once said, only dead fish swim with the stream.

Sick as a parrot over football rights

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on September 16, 2008 11:47 AM

By Richard Evans, Reporter
richardevans.jpg
I KNOW the highlights of the international football last week were later aired on a freeview channel for all, but it wasn't much good if you didn't know about the late decision.
I don't blame Setanta Sports for trying to make the most of their exclusive rights to England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales away games, but I think most will agree it is fundamentally wrong.
Reportedly the Irish channel paid £5 million for the exclusivity of the games. In a world where nothing is free it seems you must now pay more and more for what essentially I'd expect the BBC to acquire the rights to in the first place.
The Premier League and such... okay, take it away, flog it on Sky Sports or whatever. Do the same with the Ryder Cup if you must, and the volleyball world cup and other niche sports. But the national game? Sorry rugby fans, but football is still the most popular sport in Wales, as in England, although you could argue this is not the case in terms of the international game.
Every household is forced to pay for the outdated and drastically unfair TV licence when there is a choice of literally hundreds of channels available elsewhere. Unless you like EastEnders then why would you want to spend your hard earned cash on a channel of reruns when you have hundreds of alternatives?
If you want the BBC then pay for it, but people should be given the choice. And if we aren't then the least the Government funded British Broadcasting Corporation can do is pull their finger out and secure the rights to events of national interest such as the national teams trying to qualify for the World Cup, which is still more popular than the Olympics, by the way, however commendable Team GB's performance was.
I just feel sorry for those who splashed out £15 to watch Amir Khan take a whopping in 54 seconds.
The BBC has reportedly struck a £18 million three-year deal to pay Jonathan Ross - nice work if you can get it, but wouldn't £1 million of that sum be much better spent on the wights - sorry rights - to the football? I think so.

Why Colwyn Bay is nothing like Beirut

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on September 3, 2008 1:29 PM

Steve Stratford
By Steve Stratford, Deputy Editor

IT'S so tediously easy to say that somewhere in Britain that's seen better times is "like Beirut".
Colwyn Bay town councillor Gwyn Hughes said as much in a council debate on Monday, likening Abergele Road in Colwyn Bay to the troubled Lebanese city. He admits that his comments were throwaway, but sticks by what he said - that the fact there are a number of boarded-up buildings there, and a post office under threat of closure, makes it like a war-torn Middle Eastern city that has actually managed to stage an impressive economic turnaround since the civil war.
The 2006 Lebanon "July War" might have set it back once more, but it's no longer as easy to justify likening a deprived area of Britain to this tenacious capital city.
I find it tiresome when people roll out the old "looks like Beirut" comment because it could be perceived as pretty disrespectful to the 200,000 people who lost their lives or were injured in Beirut during the conflict. There was a distressingly good reason why Beirut got the reputation for destruction that it did, and Colwyn Bay cannot boast a similar history of death and destruction.
Colwyn Bay might have its problems, but come on... they're nowhere near as serious as those faced by the Lebanese in the 1990s and 21st century.
The ironic thing about this story is that Cllr Hughes is Bay of Colwyn Town Council's representative on the Bay Life Initiative regeneration panel. So if those charged with trying to turn around Colwyn Bay's fortunes are going to be that negative, how can we expect any movement on the issue?
Beirut has a rich and impressive cultural history that is capitalised upon in its many museums, tourist attractions and Ottoman and Arabesque architecture. It is a vibrant city with both horror and splendour in its past, and perhaps Colwyn Bay could learn something from how it gets back up, dusts itself down and forges fresh fortunes every time it's knocked back.
It was poor town planning that destroyed Colwyn Bay, not civil war.

Richard Brunstrom's reputation precedes him!

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on September 2, 2008 12:49 PM

Steve StratfordBy Steve Stratford, Deputy Editor

NEWS travels fast! An exclusive story by our chief reporter Richard Evans which appeared in last Thursday's paper was picked up by at least two Sunday papers at the weekend, both articles quoting the North Wales Weekly News as the source.
It was the amusing story about Chief Contsable Richard Brunstrom denying to our reporter that he was due to retire at the end of 2009, despite the police chief telling the BBC in an interview last month that he would do so.
And luckily we got Mr Brunstrom's comments on tape so there could be no argument he never said it. In fact, you can hear him say it in a special video we have put together in our online videos section.
It's far from unusual for national newspapers (or TV and radio, come to that) to pick up on stories in the Weekly News. Indeed many news organisations trawl the regional papers on a regular basis for stories they can beef up and use again. And it's very often something to do with our controversial chief constable that gets picked up, especially by those tabloids that seem to have it in for him.
But it's always gratifying for the Weekly News to get a name-check in a version of the story that will be read by many more people across the UK, and the world online. If you missed the story, it's on page 6 of our August 28th edition, or, as I say, on the website in story and video form.

Heroes of the ocean wave

Posted by North Wales Weekly News team on August 27, 2008 4:30 PM

By Judith Phillips, Reporter
Judith Phillips
EVERY now and again stories crop up which make you aware of the selflessness of volunteers who give up their time freely to help others and sometimes put their lives at risk in the process.
This week the brave members of Llandudno's lifeboat crew have put to sea in appalling conditions twice in two days to save a total of five people whose lives were at risk when their vessels experienced problems in dangerously rough seas.
On the first occasion on Monday the all weather lifeboat Andy Pearce was at sea for a total of 10 hours after an historic wooden hulled former fishing boat with three men on board got into trouble near the Rhyl Flats wind farm site. The lifeboat battled against 12ft high waves to tow the vessel safely into the Conwy estuary.
Less than 24 hours later the Andy Pearce was launched again, this time to go to the aid of a terrified husband and wife whose yacht was floundering helplessly, pounded by huge waves in a force eight storm 30 miles out into the Irish Sea.
A rope attached to marker buoys was entangled with the vessel's propellor and steering gear. Without a thought for his own safety RNLI crewmember Tim James was lowered into the sea at the yacht's stern and attached to a safety harness, and spent one a half hours in the icy sea trying to cut the rope free.
At times he was completely submerged by the waves and all the time he was at risk of the yacht crashing down on him, with possibly fatal consequences.
Meanwhile the lifeboat crew under the command of deputy second coxswain Graham Heritage kept the lifeboat close by ready to swoop to his assistance if needed.
It was a rescue operation to match any in the annals of the long and illustrious career of Llandudno lifeboat station and left me in awe of the courage and determination of these brave men who were at sea for 12 hours until finally the yacht was escorted to its mooring at Conwy marina.
The RNLI say their names will be put forward for awards, and quite right too. Such heroism and devotion to other human beings makes a welcome contrast to the tales of wanton vandalism and violence which often make up our daily fare.