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Jan 15, 2025 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
In a shock move on Tuesday, housing association Places for People agreed to schedule a meeting with the Cambridge branch of the community union ACORN, for negotiation of demands arising from the state of PfP’s Radiance House property in the city.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
Radio Moscow had a dark, distinctive studio echo. I could always tell I was tuned in to Moscow by the quality of the silence. Radio Moscow’s speakers had voices that wouldn’t have been out of place on the BBC World Service. Radio Portugal I imagined presenting its English programmes with benign forgetfulness, from rooms that had seen better days, with lots of chipboard around and faded yellow paint.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
“Last week, two days the bridge was closed and sales went down by 15, 20%. I don’t know what’s going to happen. The only thing I’m worrying about is my business. I have no plan – just wait and see what they’re going to do. Hopefully they don’t close the bridge, but when they do close it, there’s nothing we can do.”The speaker is the manager of a shop on Mill Road, Cambridge, a street whose mile of diversity and vibrant culture is famous across the city.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Peter Thurlow |Aidan Baker |Anna Damski |Elana Katz
The Budget is the great political confrontation of the year, when MPs crowd the chamber and the great beasts of the Conservatives and Labour lock horns across the despatch box. Though it is an axiom of all budgets, it seems that the nature of what is proposed is not fully realised till a couple of days later. It is only when the smoke and musket fire have gone that those who pore over the figures fully understand what is going on.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
On 16 October, we had the story of how an official decision on a plan to build a new sewage plant near Cambridge would be delayed until 12 January 2025. That plan was to make the land occupied by the existing sewage works available for housebuilding. Opponents argue that the existing plant had been expensively upgraded 14 years ago, to future-proof it until 2050, and the new plant would come at great expense and cause terrible damage to an important greenbelt area.
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Oct 22, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926–2024) died in a Cambridge care home on 12 August, and we lost one of the greatest hymn-writers of our time. By ‘we’, I am referring to all of us in the East Anglia Bylines patch. Dudley-Smith not only died in Cambridge, he made a large part of his career in East Anglia. He was Archdeacon of Norwich from 1973-1981, and Bishop of Thetford for ten years after that.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
Diss in Norfolk has a long history of welcoming people fleeing violence and persecution including those fleeing religious oppression, antisemitism and war. In 2023, its Park Hotel became a temporary home for asylum-seeking families. Earlier this year, a group formed with the aim of making Diss a Town of Sanctuary within the City of Sanctuary movement. What is the City of Sanctuary movement?
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Sep 1, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
The judges of the Community Radio Awards (CRA) 2024 may well be at work even as I write. The deadline for entries was 31 July. Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners for each of the award categories will be announced at a ceremony later in the year – date to be arranged. Community radio is as hard to pin down as community itself. Wikipedia’s pages on community radio and its UK incarnations offer a multitude of boundaries, and some philosophical discussion of the reasons for them.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker |Clare Sansom
Thinking back to a change-of-address card from nearly forty years ago… Sunday 18 August is Poetry Bears’ Picnic Day 2024 and presents an opportunity to share some bear poems I have written over the years. Poems to be enjoyed with Fabulous Flapjack – recipe included. BearsTrue, bears are solitary and not lovable. True, I stopped buying teddy bears as the window sill filled up. True, we did not meet the bears we saw in their sunken field at Whipsnade. True, most bears live rather a long way away.
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Jul 13, 2024 | 
eastangliabylines.co.uk | Aidan Baker
Last month, to mark Refugee Week (17-23 June), Colchester‘s Mercury Theatre and Refugee, Asylum Seeker and Migrant Action (RAMA) presented storytime events with a refugee focus for children at libraries in Harlow, Colchester, and Clacton. Yes, a refugee-focused event in Farage-loving Clacton. Elizabeth Curry is Community and Volunteer Coordinator of RAMA.
