Being at the very well attended and totally indulgent Venus Awards Nomination Launch Event this week, hosted by Tara Howard, Founder, and Celia Delaney, Speaking Success, created to recognise Local Business Women http://devon.venusawards.co.uk/ , we were spoilt for choice – massage, mini cup cakes or Choccie Bar? Although we strenuously resisted it, we were drawn to the free samples of delightful handmade chocolates courtesy of chocolatier Katie Jones and her company Choccie Bar. With beautiful hand crafted chocolate stirrers, heart-shaped lollipops and stunningly decorated Easter eggs, it...
A Devon housebuilder is set to give one regional charity a welcome fundraising boost having raised over £2,000.
Persimmon Homes South West and its employees managed to raise £2,156 by holding several fundraising activities throughout 2012 for their chosen charity the Devon Air Ambulance Trust (DAAT).
Caroline Creer, fundraising director at the Devon Air Ambulance Trust, said: “It’s fantastic that Persimmon Homes South West has raised such a significant amount. Being independent of Government and National Lottery funding, events just like this go a long way in raising the £4...
Pupils at an Exeter primary are helped to learn by the collaborative ‘can do’ atmosphere throughout the school, according to education inspectors.
And they rate Pinhoe Church of England Primary as a good school on all five key aspects of school life.
They say Pinhoe’s overall effectiveness is good and so is the achievement of pupils, the quality of teaching, the leadership and management and the behaviour and safety of the pupils.
The rating is much improved from the satisfactory grade the school received less than three years ago and since then the school standards...
After the torrential rain of the previous two days, Saturday 23 March was fortuitously dry for the Exeter Pride 2013 parade down Exeter High Street, which kicked off all manner of Pride events in celebration of the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender community.
At first gathering at the St Sidwell's Centre on Sidwell Street, an excited buzz built up from 12pm ahead of the 1pm parade down Exeter High Street. Led from the front by the ever-cheerful Chair Alan Quick, a most colourful procession made its way down the High Street brandishing a 50-metre long rainbow flag. Incorporating...
Sir Max Hastings was one of the first national figures to express support for the Black Day for the Countryside mass march, held at Feniton on Saturday (23 March). In an e-mail to the organisers, he said, "I wish you the very very best of luck in a fight which is the fight of everybody who cares both about the English countryside and the democratic rights of local communities". Best wishes, Max Hastings.
Ben Bradshaw, MP, though unable to attend, sent a message saying, "I would have loved to come on the march" and "Congratulations on all your recent campaigning".
This winter, like the economic depression, seems to be going on and on.
The coldest March for decades was an appropriate backdrop to George Osborne's latest gloom-laden budget. True, there was some minor relief for hard-pressed motorists and beer drinkers (though not if your tipple is Devon cider or Plymouth Gin) but the rest of it was a miserable affair as the Chancellor was forced to cut his growth and raise his borrowing forecasts yet again.
The economy has now grown just 0.7% since 2010 compared with the 5.3% forecast at the time. Only two other G20 countries have grown...
Exeter Racecourse’s Family Day on April 2 looks set to be one of the best free days out for children during the Easter holidays. And with two adults tickets available for just £15, it’s without doubt one of the best value for money days there is.
There are stacks of things for children to enjoy, including a behind the scenes tour of the racecourse, a running race down the home straight on the race course, face painting, a quiz, the chance to go on an equine simulator and pretend you’re a jockey and question and answer sessions with some of the country’s top jockeys.
It’s not often you stumble across a 20,000-year-old mammoth tooth while carrying out a routine task at work, but that’s exactly what happened to Environment Agency officer Simon McHugh.
Simon was checking riverbank erosion near Newton Poppleford in East Devon when he noticed the massive molar sitting on the bed of the River Otter. Experts at London’s Natural History Museum have confirmed the unusual find as a mammoth tooth dating from the last Ice Age.
The owner of the land where it was found has agreed to donate the tooth to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. But...
Heavy rain has once again resulted in widespread flooding across the country. With climate change likely to cause further severe weather events in the coming years, methods of quickly predicting flooding will become increasingly important.
A team of engineers and scientists from the University of Exeter has developed a model, 1,000 times faster than existing flood prediction systems, which can rapidly predict when and where flooding will occur. The model uses artificial intelligence to ‘learn’, in the same way that biological neural networks in the human brain process data....
