News in Hadleigh

A Missed Opportunity For Hadleigh

Hadleigh has been my local town for almost 12 years. During the 4 years that I spent as a Babergh District Councillor I frequently expressed concern about the absence of any visionary plans to protect and grow the town. In Babergh Council business terms, Hadleigh always played second fiddle to Sudbury, and the bungled attempts to merge Babergh and Mid Suffolk, combined with the dubious value for money business case to support the move of both Councils to Endeavour House in Ipswich, left little time for deliberations about the developing of Hadleigh.

The Three Cons: confidence, Conservatives and conflict control

Spring is very much in the Hadleigh air. The hours of daylight are lengthening, we've had sufficiently warm days that snowdrops, crocuses and even daffodils are breaking from their winter cover and some especially keen folks have started mowing their lawns (in February: dear Lord have mercy on their souls!)

Swords into ploughshares? Not without a delay button!

In the last week or so my iPhone, in a sure sign of some inner wisdom accorded to it by the Divine Being, has autonomously changed its own camera settings.

Home schooling again? Here's how

Many parents enjoyed teaching their children at home during the first lockdown, but for others, the prospect of having to dust off their teaching skills again fills them with dread.

It seems that a few HTC Councillors, and many Hadleigh ratepaying residents, fail to understand the long-term financial crisis that the "New" HTC is facing. The problem arises as a consequence of the decision by the "Old" HTC Council to spend over £500,000 of borrowed money on extending the Hadleigh Cemetery. They did so on an ill-informed guess that burial plots in the cemetery would run out by February 2020. They have not, nor are they likely to do so in the next few years.

The problem that HTC now face is best described by an investment analogy, (see below)

What do Paris, the Maldives and Hadleigh have in common?

The answer is titillatingly obvious: passion and romance, of course.

Since March, we have seen so many changes to the way we live our lives, but particularly how we go about daily activities such as shopping and spending our leisure and recreational time.

Our high streets have suffered particularly badly, with the pressures that they were already facing being accelerated and exacerbated by the Covid crisis. But there are greater forces at play affecting high streets around the world, due to the move to the convenience of Internet shopping. In response, our high streets will change to being more focused on places where people live and enjoy their leisure time.

The Revd. Taylor was a sixteenth century Hadleigh priest martyred for speaking out against the establishment of his day. This is a regular column that channels one resident's inner Rowland, but which seeks to avoid the martyrdom bit.

And not just visitors, since many of the town's residents have also taken up the opportunity to find out more about the history of the place they call 'home'.

Maggie Quinlan responded to Hadleigh Nub News columnist Rowland Taylor's ghost, who has mentioned former town mayor and Babergh councillor Jim Quinlan, in his musings on middling Hadleigh and its middling leaders

The Revd. Taylor was a sixteenth century Hadleigh priest martyred for speaking out against the establishment of his day. This is a regular column that channels one resident's inner Rowland, but which seeks to avoid the martyrdom bit.

For decades now, Hadleigh has been punching so far beneath its political weight that it if it were a human it would be a seven-stone, asthmatic weakling with a victim syndrome to boot.