There will be a Bun Throwing, and street party, to celebrate HM The Queens official 90th Birthday on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th June 2016. “The Queen celebrates two birthdays each year: her actual birthday on 21 April and her official birthday on a Saturday in June.”
The museum also plan an exhibition on bun throwing at the same time. In the picture above, to celebrate the 2011 Royal Wedding, the bun throwing went ahead despite the County Hall being covered in scaffolding.
Scaffolding has returned in 2015 to help diagnose the cause of a vibration to the weather-vane heard in high winds… The County Hall Museum will change opening hours on Sunday in 2016 to be from 11am to 5pm (1 hour later opening and closing than other days)… The new Mousehole cafe in the basement is now being run with the help of a cafe supervisor and not exclusively by volunteers, and is doing better.
The Grants committee gave £1K, not the £2K requested by the Chamber of Commerce, to help run the Christmas Extravaganza, then noted at the end of the meeting that only 8.5% of the community grants budget had been committed so far even though it was half way through the year. An email was then sent to community groups encouraging applications be sent.
Clubs and Societies Day will be organised in Spring 2016 and up to £1K from these community grants will be used to hire a venue, as the Guildhall is not available.
The Town Council voted unanimously to use their votes to say Yes to the BID and set up a Business Improvment District in the town centre.
Sue sent me pictures of maintenance work being carried out on the chapels of rest in the Old Cemetary. This did not get a mention in the minutes. So anybody who knows what is going on let us know.
In the planning committee Mike Badcock said that “Additional mooring have been installed on the Thames and these interfere with historic fishing rights” so a Vale of White Horse officer invited to next planning meeting and explained all about moorings. There is a part time person to move people on who have stayed too long.
The council finally discussed motions proposed by Councillors:
Motion 1) That the council support the transition town initiative being led by Abingdon Carbon Cutters and as a council help take a lead by reducing its own carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, and aim to be carbon neutral by 2030. Votes went 7-7 with 3 abstentions and the Mayor used her casting vote to ensure the motion was passed.
Motion 2) Against the closure of Abingdon’s Children’s Centres. After discussion this matter was referred to the planning committee who normally reply to consultations, and all Councillors were invited.
I hope that the bun-throwing does not coincide with HM’s Birthday Parade. We don’t want buns on bayonets…
Bayonets at bun-throwing ?
I know there was dismay at the “umbrella-catchers” but cold steel might be more effective than just Public disdain !
It is disgusting that children’s’ centers in Oxfordshire are threatened with closure while we are paying to build schools in Pakistan, which has a costly nuclear weapons program, and throwing millions on foreign aid to weird and wonderful projects including in countries like Argentina which is quite wealthy in comparison.
….or that The Veil undersold the Gaol by millions and millions and millions – more than enough to have kept the Childrens centres open.
Still…mustn’t grumble.
The key point of my motion on the Children’s centres was that we want to County Council to choose an option that keeps the two centres in Abingdon open, even if there is a reduction in services at them in the short term.
This would allow time for community or voluntary groups to find ways to fund or provide services from the centres in time.
If the actual building close, which is the County Council’s current prefered option, we’ll never get them back.
Janet, we have to separate local government money from central government funding. It is clear from several postings that you prefer money to be spent at home rather than on overseas aid and development. However, it is worth noting – yet again – that out of every pound of central government expenditure less than one penny is spent of overseas development. More than ninety-nine pence is spent at home. I will leave others to decide how good a balance this is.
I agree that it is desperate that children’s centres receive insufficient funding, and I am sure that Neil is right that once buildings are closed they won’t be recovered. That is a different fight – and I hope that the CC’s proposals will be defeated. However, if cuts aren’t made there, they will be made somewhere else that others find equally upsetting.
R A Butler said is best: politics is the art of the possible. What we have to remember is that not everything is possibile simultaneously.
Janet – 4% of Argentina’s population live on less than $2 a day (world bank) and a staggering 40% on less than $8 a day.
That’s about 1.6 million people on less than $2 and 16m on less than $8.
Only a very warped sense of health and hygiene would allow people to throw buns off a roof to be collected off the floor and eaten by the crowd, but insist that the throwers wear blue gloves to prevent contamination.
I wonder who thought that one up?
I caught a bun in 1963 ! Was advised to cover in varnish……it would last forever. Put it out to dry……my friends Dalmatian came in the garden & ate it !
Mags, sounds like the dog polished it off!
Ppjs, you make some good points, and I feel educated. It still irks however that some cuts are ‘necessary’ yet the massive underselling of, for example, the Gaol is accepted.
If such hugely inept decision making were queried, questioned and someone bought to account, it might smart a little less. But they aren’t. So it doesn’t.
There IS, or could be, money in the system, if councils, and their staff, and their contractors, and their consultants, weren’t free to wee it up the wall. It is that that hurts, and fuels frustration.
If the councils have to pilage our towns, at the very least, they should be doing the best that they can, not, it seems, the least.
Nice one Mags. I’m very excited about the bun throwing. I wonder how many they will throw and how many will turn out.
Daniel, thanks – but it ought to be more than about scoring points; so I agree that this is a matter of doing something
For me, there are two ways of thinking about the world resources:
1.There’s not enough. so I am holding on to what I’ve got – whatever anyone else has or doesn’t have; and the weakest will have to go to the wall.
2. There is enough, but only if I share what I have with those who have less.
Unfortunately, the rich do tend to get richer while the poor get poorer. That said, I do not think that Karl Marx’s solution is in fact solution.
Oh golly, this sounds like a seminar – and England have just lost against Australia. I’m off to bed 😉
Wonder who makes the buns now…..Tesco ? Would have been Trotmans years ago.