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Miss England runner-up

Former ACM musician returns to Guildford

Lease plan agreed for Nonsuch Park
by Sam Blackledge

THE future of one of Surrey’s oldest historical landmarks looks to be secure after a 125-year lease to two councils was agreed.

Nonsuch Park and Mansion House in Ewell will be handed over from Surrey County Council (SCC) to the park’s Joint Management Committee (JMC), made up of representatives from Epsom and Ewell Borough Council and the London Borough of Sutton, ending months of uncertainty surrounding the site.

The JMC will take on full responsibility for the park and will receive a total financial boost of £180,000 towards maintenance over the next three years.

More than 150 residents and campaigners attended a meeting of the county council's executive committee on Tuesday, where a petition containing more than 400 names was presented by Stoneleigh and Auriol Residents Association.

"Real heroes"

Councillor Nick Skellett, leader of SCC, said: “This is a marvellous result.

“In the county of Surrey, jewels such as Nonsuch Park must be looked after and this council is committed to supporting that.”

Fears that the council was planning to sell off the Grade II-listed mansion to create luxury flats and offices were dispelled, to the delight of campaign leaders.

Bill Slaughter, chairman of Stoneleigh and Auriol Residents' Association (SARA), said he was relieved that the end was in sight after a 14-month campaign.

“It is a testament to just how deeply people care about safeguarding the future of Nonsuch Park and the Mansion House - they are the real heroes,” he said.

“There is no doubt that without SARA’s campaign and the support it received from thousands of people, the Mansion House would by now have been sold off by the county council, resulting in public access to the house and its gardens being lost forever.”

Formal approval

Joyce Shaw, from Friends of Nonsuch, a voluntary group dedicated to preserving the Mansion House, said: “We’re very pleased that the question of the lease has been settled.

“It has been a completely unnecessary process and has wasted an awful lot of money.

“We are now anxious to see how the JMC will use the lease, because they have to find ways of making money.”

Formal approval of the plans will now be sought from the two borough councils, and the lease is then expected to be granted within three months.

Once all the details have been settled, the JMC intends to allow public access to the Mansion House, as well as appointing a catering firm to renovate the building for weddings and other functions.

First printed in Surrey Advertiser Online

The journo in the corner

The England cricketer Andrew Flintoff once described his first meeting as a young Lancashire intern with his all-time hero Ian Botham.

“I just dropped my shopping,” he said. “I didn’t know where to look.”

For such a recognisable and seemingly confident personality to admit to bashful hero-worship suggests there is hope after all for the socially inept among us.

I recently found myself in a similar situation at a certain media event in London.

I arrived unfashionably early, and after chatting briefly to the press officer, was left cowering in a corner, buried in my notes as a procession of national journalists, broadcasters and academics entered and hobnobbed before me.

There was the BBC’s home editor, Mark Easton; Saturday editor of the Times, George Brock; former Olympian and sports journalist Matthew Syed; and City A.M Editor Lawson Muncaster.

I disappeared further and further into my corner, drinking the complimentary tea like it was going out of style and reading and re-reading the press release in hope of discovering a formula for invisibility.

You may have guessed from all of this that I am not a good networker. I never have been.

Put me in a room filled with people I’ve never met before, place a drink in my hand and tell me to “mingle” and I descend into a navel gazing, quivering wreck.

Not very convenient for a journalist, you might say, given that the old adage of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” could have been invented for the fickle world of media.

One a one-to-one basis, I’m usually fine. I can laugh when I need to laugh, I can nod and look serious, heck I can even stretch to a witty remark now and again.

But as a newly qualified rooky, how do I go about introducing myself to people who have been to more press briefings than I’ve had hot dinners?

People whose profound discourse I was reading only yesterday in The Guardian were now standing just feet away providing what more sure-footed colleagues would describe as “the perfect networking opportunity”.

I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to chicken out.

I stuck to my corner, eventually following the crowd into the event, simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief and choking on my supreme embarrassment.

Maybe in the future, people will no longer communicate face to face and the phrase ‘social networking’ really will be confined to the impersonal comfort of technology.

Until then I remain the journo in the corner, my innate awkwardness shining through for all to see.

In praise of radio





WHEN ASKED to describe his reaction to the invention of the radio, German physicist Albert Enstein said: “Radio is a kind of very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.”



A mangled kind of explanation from arguably the greatest genius of all time, but you can see what he was getting at.



Before the invention of the magical box we have come to know as the ‘telly’, families used to crowd round the wireless and listen for news of events from around the globe, interspersed with the occassional Noel Coward play or spot of frivolity from the likes of Arthur Askey.



Simpler times, some might say. In this modern age of ipods, bendy buses and ‘Kit Kat Orange’, it can often be hard to keep up with the latest trends in technology.



Not a day goes by, it seems, without another channel appearing on TV – the BBC is spreading itself increasingly thin across it’s ever expanding empire – but online radio is the pot of gold at the end of this digital rainbow.



I recently found myself with an unexpected day of leisure, so rather than going for a healthy walk in the country or visiting one of the capital’s many culturally enlightening galleries, I decided to stick some hot cross buns in the toaster and settle down for an afternoon of radio.



There is something brilliantly comforting about Radio 4’s classic quiz show ‘Just a Minute’. No matter what is going on in your life, you get the feeling that it will always be there.You could be standing in the burning wreckage of your flat, your treasured possessions going up in smoke as your spouse bids you farewell for the final time, and still you would raise a smile as Clement Freud attempts to talk for 60 seconds on the subject of ‘what I did on my summer holidays’.



The main thing that struck me as I surfed through the stations and indulged myself in radio goodness is that everything is so much slower, and better off for it.



Television is becoming overwhelmed by the constant need to keep the viewer from switching over, flashing graphics and blaring adverts, just in case we get bored and contemplate doing something more wholesome with our time.



Radio, on the other hand, assumes that it’s listeners are more patient, and thus there is more opportunity for the ‘aimless ramble’ – an intergral and neglected part of communication.



On his Sunday afternoon music show, actor and writer Stephen Merchant is a master of this art. The conversation between Merchant and his co-presenters spanned a variety of topics, very few of which I can recall off the top of my head, but such is the nature of this kind of unplanned spontaneous setup.



Comedians Adam and Joe have a similar ethos with their Saturday morning slot on 6 music, but to the point where they are just saying the first thing that comes into their head – and it’s very, very funny.You don’t get that kind of spontaneous humour anywhere else.



At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, TV is packed to the rafters with ‘comedy’ panel shows which masquerade as platforms for comedians to indulge in topical banter, but are in fact as carefully staged and scripted as the Labour party conference.



So here’s to radio, the oft-neglected orphan of the digital revolution.



Next time you find yourself pulling a cat’s tail, think of Einstein, and let yourself drift off into a magical, wireless world.



Sam Blackledge

Convicted murderer to visit Epsom schools

A convicted murderer will be visiting schools in Epsom and Ewell to discourage young people from getting involved in crime.

Mick Hart served 26 years in prison for murder and now works for Southampton based charity The Door UK.

He will be visiting around 1500 children aged 14 to 18 to give a series of talks during the tour which starts in March.

He will warn them about the consequences of crime and show them a video he has produced of life inside which includes interviews with prisoners.

"No hesitation"

The tour, which is now in its third year, was organised by Epsom and Ewell’s Youth Affairs Officer PC Kevin Gargini, and funded by the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP).

PC Gargini said: “The presentation is aimed at 14 to 18-year olds which can be a difficult age group to engage with.

“They are at an age where some young people might think it makes them look cool to commit crime and behave in an anti-social manner.

“However, I defy anyone who watches Mick’s presentation to think it is ‘cool’ to offend.

He added that the talk should discourage young people from getting involved in crime and antisocial behaviour.

“Mick comes across very well to the young people and quite clearly wants the best for the youngsters. I have no hesitation in recommending this presentation to all young people.”

Sam Blackledge
First printed in Surrey Advertiser Online

Piglets born during college class

Students at Guildford College’s Merrist Wood campus had some unexpected arrivals last week when a litter of piglets was born right in the middle of an animal care lesson.

New mother Gloria gave birth to seven rare kune kune piglets during the practical class, and the students named the little bundles of joy after themselves.

Gloria’s sister Gaynor has since given birth to three more piglets, leaving farmer Luke Gates to take care of all 10 of them.

“The students were very excited that it happened during the class, and they will get to see the pigs grow up over the next few weeks,” he said.

Sam Blackledge

First published in Surrey Advertiser Online

Stills by Steve Porter for The Surrey Advertiser

New scheme to improve "chaotic" transport system

Public transport in Surrey is “disorganised, chaotic and confused”, but the county council has pledged to do something about it with a new initiative to revolutionise the way we travel.

The Transport for Surrey scheme has been approved by the council’s executive, with the aim of bringing together the different operators and establishing a central board along the lines of Transport for London.

Consultation with district and borough councils and government agencies is also under way, with tentative plans to introduce an equivalent of London’s Oyster card to Surrey.

The county council’s head of transport, Iain Reeve, said patience was required.

“The transport system we’ve got is disorganised, chaotic and confused,” he admitted.

“It’s fairly obvious that if you wanted to design a transport system, you wouldn’t start from here.

“The system we have got with privatised bus and train services is the result of history. What we want to do is create a single co-ordinated point.

“Eventually what people will find is, a bit like in London, there is a very obvious place to go to get information or to complain about transport.

“At the moment people are not sure who to go to or who is in control.”

A central body would oversee all aspects of public transport services, with designated hubs in Woking, Guildford and Reigate-Redhill being the main focus for development and government investment.

Tread carefully

Bus company Southdown PSV is one of the parties already in discussions with the council.

Managing director Stephen Swain said: “We’re definitely on board. Co-ordinated transport is the way forward. To get people out of their cars, transport has to be attractive and easy to use.”

But Kevin Wilde of Leggs Travel, another bus firm, said the partnership should tread carefully to begin with.

“If they’re trying to set up a Transport for London-type thing, in one way it’s good because of the co-ordination, but on the other hand there is a danger of it becoming a beast of bureaucracy,” he said.

Plans to establish a single card to cover all major bus operators are a long way off, but the council said it was definitely a possibility.

Mr Reeve said: “The beauty of something like an Oyster card would be to stop the fragmentation of the industries and bring everything together."

Councillor David Munro also admitted the current set-up was “uncoordinated”, adding: “It would be fantastic to have an Oyster card for the whole of Surrey. The technology is there, it’s just about the will.”

The first step for the project is a conference bringing together all the relevant parties on February 22.

Mr Reeve stressed that the scheme would not come at a cost to the taxpayer, as the council’s annual transport budget of £70m would be added to money from the private travel companies.

Sam Blackledge

www.surreyad.co.uk

Two paramedics who saved the life of a peer with a method of treatment they had never used before have been hailed as “unsung heroes”.

Howard Newlan and Kevin Cover – both Surrey-based paramedics with South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) – were called to Shadow Defence Minister Lord Astor’s Kent home when he began complaining of chest pain on New Year’s Day.

He suffered a heart attack, and Mr Newlan and Mr Cover had to shock him with a defibrillator before trying what was for them an untested method.

Known as thrombolysis, it involves administering a “clot-busting” drug which works to reduce damage to the heart muscle.

"Enormously relieved"

Mr Newlan said: “When we arrived he was in some distress, so we sat him down and calmed him down and started doing our routine checks and procedures for what turned out to be a heart attack.

“Those initial few minutes were very important. If we had been any longer, it would have been much harder to get him back.”

The paramedics were thanked by 61-year-old Lord Astor when they met at the ambulance service’s headquarters in Banstead on Tuesday.

He praised their quick response and said he owed his life to the two paramedics.

“I remember feeling enormously relieved when they arrived,” he said.

“Straight away their consummate professionalism inspired a lot of confidence.

“They saved my life and I am very grateful to them. I feel that ambulance clinicians are the unsung heroes of the NHS.”

Difficult recovery

Thrombolysis has been used by SECAmb since 2006.

“There is a very small risk that because you’re cleaning blood it could cause a stroke, but the benefits far outweight the risks,” said Mr Newlan.

He added that Lord Astor would take a while to recover from his ordeal.

“The guy has been through a lot,” he said. “He’s a fit man, and to have a heart attack can have a huge emotional and physical effect on your life.”

Lady Astor echoed her husband’s praise for the paramedics, and is relieved that everything turned out well.

“I was very calm in a crisis, although the ambulance journey was one of the roughest rides I’ve ever had,” she said.



Words and video by Sam Blackledge.

Picture by Steve Porter for The Surrey Advertiser.

First posted in Surrey Advertiser Online.

the death of journalism?

The Guardian came over all self-pitying and masochistic today.

On Comment is Free,Martin Bell believes that newspapers and TV networks are "retreating into a comfort zone of celebrity stories, consumer news, sport, health-scares and crime...the coverage is mawkish, exploitative and highly speculative."

In MediaGuardian, Nick Davies goes one better, suggesting that the media is involved in the "mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda." Journalists have become "passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest," he says. "Not journalists, but churnalists."

While it is frustratingly true that much of a journalist's work nowadays involves wading through a sea of PR guff, most of the reporters I have met over the past year seem to be in it because they care about issues and want to tell the truth. If the Murdoch empire and increasingly media-savvy press departments block the way occassionally, then we'll just have to find another way around.

S