Ventnor Blog

A couple of weeks ago we went along to the premiere of a new Streets Ahead production which was created in association with the IOW Chlamydia Screening Programme.

You might remember also, that last week we published a podcast with Sarah Stringer, chlamydia screening coordinator, but she wasn’t the only person we spoke to that evening.

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We popped over to the Soul II Soul sound check at The Venue, Ryde on the afternoon before they played to have a chat to the funky dread himself, Mr Jazzie B, OBE.

Proving his reputation as a sound bloke (pun intended), Jazzie B gave us a good 40 minutes of his time for the interview.

We’ve got the bulk of the interview coming out later, but thought you’d be interested in hearing his views on the Ryde Theatre.

To say that he’s keen on the idea of keeping it open is an understatement.

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Last week we felt very lucky to be asked along to the Island premiere of Gum Fu: Enter The Clinic.

The film was created by the Streets Ahead team in association with IOW Chlamydia Screening Programme and after the screening we chatted to those involved.

The film was excellent, it was extremely informative as well as being full of humour and professionally produced. First up in our series of podcasts is Sarah Stringer, chlamydia screening coordinator for IOW. (more…)

The last of the four chats we had with people using the Ventnor skate park within the space of an hour - there were others to speak to, but we couldn’t get around them all.

These three Ventnor girls, aged around ten, were clearly unhappy about the idea that the skate park might be demolished by the IW council, saying “I don’t want it to be closed down because it’s really fun.” (more…)

Three weeks ago, just before the decision was made by Councilors to move to a two tier system and close all middle schools, we went along to the unveiling of a new piece of public art at Nodehill Middle School.

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Vice Chancellor, Professor Bill Wakeham of the Uni of Southampton gave an excellent presentation at the Eco Island Conference last week, Simon caught up with him during the first coffee break.

It was interesting to see that almost 25% of the Island’s carbon footprint relates directly to transportation.

Much of this is made up by ferry crossings, so Simon posed the question “Is there a more efficient way to cross the Solent?” (more…)

One of the first people we bumped into at the Eco Island Conference last Wednesday was an American writer and poet named Jack Tupac Pennington.

Simon was quick to pull out his ever faithful audio recorder after Jack explained that he’d embraced the Eco Island vision and decided to walk all the way from Ventnor to the conference in Cowes.
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During the Eco Island conference on Wednesday we were lucky enough to catch up with Dame Ellen MacArthur for a chat.

Simon, as you can see from the photo, set sail (well drifted away from the jetty slightly) with Ellen and Dan (from Island 2000) on the Island 2000 Purple Kite.

Purple Kite Background
Just a quick bit of background on the Purple Kite first - the team at Island 2000 decided that they would do their bit for sustainable transport and set about building a boat to take them across to the conference at the Cowes Yacht Haven from their offices in East Cowes. (more…)

We went along to the Winter Gardens when the auditions for tonight’s circus show were being held.

We did a quick interview with the leader of the fire troupe to get an understanding of what they get up to.

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In the middle of January we took ourselves over to the West of Wight to see Chris & Hilary Jarman in Totland.

They, and a number of other West Wight residents, were becoming ever-more concerned over the potential uses of Weston Manor, as the Real World Trust proposed using it as an alcohol and drugs rehabilitation centre, with - let’s be generous - what appeared as minimal consultation with locals.

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The last public demo in objection to the proposed mass closure of at least 22 primary schools and one middle school (incidentally - the most highly equipped school on the Wight, Nodehill) took place in Newport today.

According to the Police, there were around 500 people on the march which departed Church Litten at 11am and the Wall of Protest made its way down to County Hall. In our view, these were pretty good numbers given the horrid weather, lack of support from certain quarters and the fact that the results were already in for the survey.
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VentBag are continuing the process of pursuing the non-plastic bags for use in and around Ventnor.

They started pursuing this idea well before the rest of the Island, and latterly, the rest of the UK woke up to the idea.

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Yes folks, the rumours have been flying around for some time now, but we heard it from the horses mouth today.

Robby and Josie are in the process of buying a property in the greater Ventnor area and intend to set up home there some time soon.

We reckon that they will be brilliant additions to the Ventnor community and welcome them to our wonderful town.
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Rob Da Bank was down in Ventnor today, visiting St Catherine’s School, where he recently became patron to.

After his tour of the school, there was a QandA session with the students which brought up some fantastic questions - we hope to get the podcasts of these out later in the week.

We met up with Robby after his visit and had a quick chat to find out what he thought of the school.

He started off by telling us that he found it really inspiring to see so much effort being made to provide such a great place for the students to develop. (more…)

Here’s an interview that we recorded last week with Katie, one of the people behind the Drive To Survive idea starting tomorrow.

The idea is show how much more traffic would be generated if pupils are forced to travel to a school located away from where they live.

If there is more traffic, then it’s not only the parents taking their children to school that will be affected, but anyone else using the Island roads at school start or picking up time.

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It is with great regret to say that the audio file of Steve Beynon’s presentation has corrupted (arrghh) and is unable to use. We will endeavour to record it again at one of the next couple of public consultation meetings and will put it out on VB as soon as we can.

In the meantime, David Pugh’s recording is still in tact and follows now.

Councillor Pugh started his presentation by stating that …
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We attended the public consultation meeting in a very packed assembly hall last Monday at Ventnor Middle School.

As some people were turned away due to limitations on capacity, we thought it would be useful to broadcast the presentations from the evening. We’ve broken them down in three parts. The first features Alan Wells who you may’ve heard on the IW Radio phone-in several times over the last few weeks.
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A planning application for 3a Undercliff Gardens, home to Michael Jennings was considered at last night at the Planning Committee.

The case officer responsible, Steve Cornwell, was recommending conditional permission on the development where Michael Jennings has been up to his old tricks of building first and then seeking retrospective permission (what this means, is getting planning permission granted and then changing what’s built and if someone happens to notice, slapping in a planning application in an attempt to approve what you’ve built anyway - something we feel is very wrong). (more…)

As promised we have more vox pops from the Save Our Schools demo that took place outside County Hall on Saturday morning.

We asked the question “What does the proposed school closures mean to you?”

Every day this week, we’ll be bringing you more vox pops from the people.

Chale:

St John’s CofE, Sandown:

Whilst we were at the sew-a-thon in the RNLI window on Saturday, we spotted a couple who were looking on at the sewing with a glint in their eyes.

We grabbed a quick interview with them to understand why they liked it.

Separate to this, we also learnt that the woman we chatted to, runs her own knitting blog, so details of it may appear there too!

As promised, we dropped over to the RNLI in Ventnor on Saturday to see how Sheila and Angie were getting on with their Make A Bag, Make A Change bag making session in the front windows of the RNLI in Ventnor.

Not only did it attract considerable attention from those passing in the street, but lots of them came in to buy things from the RNLI, so they could qualify for their own free bag. Others also donated further money by-way of appreciation.

The volunteers had already built up a stock of 60 bags at the start of the day, lucky really as they ended up distributing over 110 bags during just one day!

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As we reported at the weekend, there was tremendous support for the Save Our Schools Campaign on Saturday, with the police estimating almost 2,000 people attending.

In our conversation with Patrick Joyce yesterday, VentnorBlog learnt a number of interesting points about the proposed changes to schooling on the Island.

He told us that the council is saying that they hope to make one million pounds worth of saving if they close at least 22 of the Island Primary Schools.

The sobering revelation was that with approximate 19-20,000 pupils currently in the Island education system, this £1m would only equate to roughly £50 per pupil.

In the words of Cllr Joyce, that’s “not going to make an iota of difference to the education of that child,” he continued, “that £50 would be used up in administration, but actually improving the academic ability of that child is most unlikely.”

One of the major arguments put forward by the Isle of Wight Council as to why they should carry out the proposed primary school closures, is that the schools currently have a short-fall in the number of pupils entering the schools, in turn leading to a reduction in Government grants.

In a conversation with Patrick Joyce today, he explained to VentnorBlog how simple it was for this to be altered.
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Whilst we were gathering vox pops at the Big Green Picnic launch last week, we also caught up with Lynn Clarke, Community Liaison Officer from Island Waste Services.

Lynn is very passionate about recycling and sustainability on the Island, and as her answer to the question “What does Eco Island mean to you?” was so comprehensive, we felt it was worthy of it’s own podcast. (more…)