CRICKET: Troubled Priory in line for drop
The three year tenure of Hastings & St Leonards Priory cricketers in the Sussex Premier League seems to be slipping away without reprieve or consolation. On the last two Saturdays, 14 and 21 July, the team suffered its eighth and…
NHS CUTS: Getting Local
Hastings and Rother GPs Lose Budgetary Control As NHS Care Commissioning Group Is Required To Balance Books Hastings and Rother Care Commissioning Group (CCG) together with the neighbouring CCG of Eastbourne, Hailsham and Seaford have run up a combined deficit…
Scorched Earth
At 10 am on 1st June, as happens every day of the year, a local volunteer at the Met Office Weather Observations compound in White Rock Gardens took weather measurements for the previous 24 hours: maximum and minimum temperatures, number…
FOOTBALL: The World Cup – A Morality Play
Many years ago – before Britain even entered the EU, let alone determined to leave it – a well-travelled South African explained to me a fundamental difference in outlook between the English and other Europeans. ‘If you call a Frenchman…
HASTINGS COUNTRY PARK – Going Nowhere
No Current Plan to Reinstate Ecclesbourne Glen Footpath As many readers will know, the main walking route into Hastings Country Park from East Hill has been blocked off following serious ground erosion that started around six years ago at Ecclesbourne…
Judge a Man by the Company he keeps
So how did the Sheikh with a string of failed and failing companies get his pier bid approved? “The aim throughout the process was that the heritage asset be sold to the party which demonstrated the highest probability of sustaining…
Jubilation in Hastings (for now)
Popular expectations of World Cup success for the England team this time round have seemed at an all-time low. They are what a trade analyst might call a damaged brand after their first round exit four years ago following defeats…
The Sheikh of Eastbourne
Abid Gulzar arrived in Britain from northern India in 1965 aged 19. In a profile of him on the (national) Independent website in November 2015 at the time of his purchase of Eastbourne pier he told his interviewer that the…
Engaging with the Community – On What?
On Friday 15th June the pier structure and its ongoing business were sold by the Administrators of Hastings Pier Charity to Sheikh Abid Gulzar, owner of Eastbourne Pier. At the time of going to press both the Administrators and the…
HASTINGS COUNTRY PARK – Going up
Straw Bale Build to Start in August at Inflated Cost Building of the long planned “Interpretive Centre” at Hastings Country Park is hoped to start in August, according to Cllr Colin Fitzgerald, environment portfolio holder at Hastings Borough Council (HBC):…