The Hundred Parishes is an thoughtful, new initiative to promote 100 mainly rural parishes in Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire centred on the Essex countryside south of Saffron Walden. The website gives details of the towns and villages and walks within and between them. Annual family membership is available at the modest price of £10. Here […]

Last weekend’s first ever Christmas Fayre in Stansted was a great success. Saturday seemed to be the busiest day with crowds at the market, listening to the fairground organ, skating and visiting Santa in his grotto. (It’s a closely guarded secret that I was roped in at the last minute to dress up for the […]

I’m no great sportsman. But London 2012 was something different. It might just have been the event at which Great Britain stopped looking back; the date when it looked forward with confidence for the first time in my lifetime. In so many ways since WWII my country has dwelled on nostalgia; a yearning for a […]

Apart from a passing reference to eco-towns and the planned demise of Elsenham and Henham’s new town, Friday evening was politics-free for Stansted Liberal Democrats. Their guests for last night’s supper club were locally resident top journalists at large Jason Barlow and Sue Mott. Sue gave a post-main course round-up of her career interviewing sport people […]

Wednesday’s annual assembly of Uttlesford Futures, the local strategic partnership of councils, police, NHS etc., was well attended by members of the public. A presentation by John Mitchell, Uttlesford’s chief executive, on what the coalition’s Big Society is – or might – be about stirred up a lot of constructive comment, including “we’re already doing […]

This year’s annual constituency dinner was organised by Stansted Lib Dems at Elsenham village hall. Our guest was Julian Huppert (on left in photo with me), the new Lib Dem MP for Cambridge. Julian gave a rundown on what it was like being in coalition with the Conservatives since May. In his response to a question I […]